(erielack) Fuel Deliveries by Rail

["Richard Recordon" <recordor_@_comcast.net>]

Joshua's listing of the fuel depots in Cortland NY and Schuyler's memories of Blitzen Supercharged Gas jogged my memory of other rail facilities in the area.

In that time before interstate networks and powerful over the road tractors and big tank trailers most distributors got their petroleum products via rail. Marathon NY on the DL&W S&U Divison also had rail delivered fuel. There was at least one dealer, possibly two. There were tanks behind the GLF feed store behind the station and at one time there were at least 4 horizontal tanks elevated on angle iron frames in the remnants of the small yard across the track from the station. As I recall from photos one of these tank groups was marked for Gulf Oil.

Just North of Owego NY on the LV Auburn branch there were a number of large horizontal tanks in a complex between the tracks and NY 38. If memory serves gasoline was distributed from there. 

Ten miles further up Rt 38 and the Auburn Branch there were two horizontal tanks at the end of the Bliss Mills siding in Newark Valley, NY. Bliss was a feedmill-coal dealer-oil dealer. Delivery trucks for the oil were filled by gravity from the tanks. They were marked Gulf Oil too if my memory serves. I am not sure if he distributed gasoline to farms or not but almost every farm of size had its own fuel tank.

I am sure that a any of us aging boomers who cares to remember will re-call similar facilities in most towns with a rail-served coal dealer up through the late 1950s.

Rusty Recordon

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