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Re: (erielack) Buffalo

Rich and Group,

The Buffalo yard situation was quite interesting. There were actually a half dozen "East Buffalo" yards at one time: West Shore's, NYC (Frontier), E Buffalo stock yard (NYC), LV, Erie (SK) and DL&W's. In what now looks like a preview of Dereco coordination, Lackawanna and NKP began planning a joint hump yard in the late 50's, basically a rebuild of DL&W's E Buffalo yard. By the time Bison became fully operational in 1964, the players were EL and N&W. Ironically even though NKP contributed the lion's share of money, it was excluded from using the facility by EL labor opposition; presumably they didn't want to share jobs with NKP people. This was resolved when it became N&W, and former Wabash (Pere Marquette) operations were also incorporated. The former Erie SK yard continued to be used although of course it was downgraded. In 1971 most EL and N&W trackage in the Buffalo area including Bison yard was combined into the Buffalo Terminal Division. Supposedly the hump computer was never able to fully cope with the prevailing westerly winds coming off L Erie blowing against cars rolling westward down the hump; I wonder if any former EL employees can confirm that.

Conrail departed Bison in favor of nearby Frontier. N&W continued to use a small portion of the facility, mostly for TOFC and auto unloading. More recently NS was forced to rebuild some tracks there in the aftermath of the Conrail merger service meltdown, similar to what happened with the former PRR Enola yard in Harrisburg. Apparently the suits trying to run the outfit learned the hard way that yards are still necessary since freight cars don't magically classify themselves.

Paul B

         Speaking of Buffalo, when the Erie and the
Lack merged who's yard did the use I know there was a
joint yard formed that also was connected to the NKP (
NW ) yard. Can anyone explain what the progression was
not having ever been there?

Rich Y


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