(erielack) Bison Yard

["David J. Monte Verde" <dmvgvt_@_earthlink.net>]

 Have a look at this Bison diagram. I don't recall where I got the 
 original, but George Elwood did a pretty good job of redrawing it on the
computer. http://rr-fallenflags.org/el/loco/bison-1.gif


When the EL tore up most of the DL&W's Buffalo Div, a lot of rail went to
the rebuilding of Woodward (? Former Erie President??) Yard in East Hornell
a logical spot for a system yard, as the Buffalo & Chicago lines divided
here. After only a couple of years, I think 1964 they decided to build a new
joint NKP-C&O-Wabash yard in Buffalo tearing up the East Hornell yard and
again moving the DL&W 132# rail to build Bison. 

When I first started at General Railway Signal in 1970 we were doing some
upgrades. The yard was build on the foot print of the old Lackawanna East
Buffalo yard; using the old brick car shops on the north side of the yard,
and the Lackawanna's mains became the receiving yard lead and the hump lead.
The Erie main was the south border of the yard, closely paralleled by the
Lehigh Valley main-constricting any further southern expansion. One of the
biggest problems, as the diagram shows the receiving yard was on the north
side of the hump and so no EL trains could be 'received' from the east while
they were humping cars.   The C&O and Wabash trains could arrive and depart
from the west up the Black Rock Branch (in the top right corner of the map
at the top of the wye).

At the east end of the map the four track yard lead was the DL&W main, and
the track at the south east where the "Engine By-pass" track connects with
is the Erie main, which afforded west-inbound EL trains to cut off of their
train east of the yard (acting as a 'receiving yard-tracks') and run the
Erie main down to the engine service facility. 

The EL did build a connection between the DL&W and Erie two miles east of
the yard at "WK" where trains from the east could enter the yard, and
conflict with the hump engines. At WK our Depew Lancaster & Western-to
be-then the Lancaster Spur continued the DL&W main 3 miles to the east.

I remember in the railfanning 70's being thrown out of Bison many times as
we tried to sneak in off of Union Road and snake our way down to the engine
service facility to see EL, N&W, Wabash now N&W F's and C&O GP30's that both
operated through Canada. After Conrail ripped up the yard, only a Conrail
local and our diminutive DL&W RS3 operated into the large plot of weed grown
real estate. I remember plenty of times being part of the only crew
operating into Bison for interchange.

Alas today, NS has re-laid a lot of the yard and it is again very active as
a block swapping and flat yard, with most of the hump dozed away!

David J. Monte Verde
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