Hi,
I would like to know what caused the Buffalo Line to decline as it went from couple manifest trains from Enola to buffalo to know just coal trains 632/633 and 10Z/11Z from Sunbury and few locals out of Northumberland I am also curious regarding manifest trains BF4 and BNY-14/16 and how long were there usually around 40’s and 50’s
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I don’t have a specific answer. Downturns in traffic usually indicate either a downturn in business on the line or the company has implemented a new operating plan, for its own reasons that has moved traffic off the particular line segment.
My years at CSX and their operations had the Operating Plan adjusted on a weekly basis - the reason was to accommodate the large gang MofW operations that were taking place around the property. These large gangs and all their mechanized equipment take hours to insert themselves into the track structure and hours to exit the track structure and the go to a clear up spot, In most cases train traffic will only be permitted for 12 hours on the day and thus only the most sensitive traffic will continue to operate. In some cases, like the Howard Street Tunnel clearance project CSX just started the first of this month - rail operation through the tunnel is stopped until the project is completed, expected to be the end of 2025.
In as much in the 40’s and 50’s the area was the Pennsylvania Railroad - a property that had yet to merge with the New York Central and go bankrupt and ultimately become a part of ConRail which used a sharp economic knife to pare away unprofitable lines and ultimately become profitable and then get split 58/42 between Norfolk Southern and CSX - with all that having transpired the traffic of the 21st Century cannot be compare to that of the 40’s & 50’s.
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I never quite understood why the Philadelphia and Erie never became a real powerhouse like the old 'state-route over Horse Shoe to Pittsburgh and thence across Ohio and Indiana to the West. It would have intersected the ‘new passenger main line’ (the extended Sam Rea line) for M&E stuff not prioritized to places like ABE iin Pennsylvania, or the New York market ‘not via Philadelphis’ and all the wretched compromises that even today plague that part of the route from Enola east.
On the other hand, the Sam Rea line was a grand piece of civil engineering with almost no future for modern railroading, either as it has evolved or how it might have been imagined starting in the TrucTrain years. Very much like the A&S, with very low grades but plenty of curves, admittedly for 100 passenger mph rather than 50, but still incapable of even non-tilting HrSR, with turn-of-the-century electrification probably having to be rebuilt at least twice (and now, again with constant-tension cat) BUT with all the sometimes very sizable tunnels built to single-stack dimensions.
Lake Erie, whether at Buffalo or other likely port, ceased to be the major destination for rail except for mineral and commodity traffic fairly early, with the bulk of actual freight going further west to Chicago and St. Louis for gateways. The convoluted way to get from Lake Erie west did not help matters much. You will note that when Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley, and other carriers had to share what business there was, profitability enough for major line construction on the order of the NEC or some of the line across from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh was not ‘the best use of available capital’.
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