Ohio St yard in Buffalo

I haven't been doing a lot a rail road exploring this year and I haven't really been downtown much. But today, while waiting for the winds and waves to calm down [they didn't] I rode my bike around looking for things. Two things I saw today:

The first thing I saw is with all the huge contruction going on on Rt 5 off the Skyway, that the little rail connection from the Ohio St yard to the former Freezer Queen and a small business on Furhman Blvd has been severed. The alternate road that was contructed now goes over the row. Some of the rails have been ripped up but still, some are in place. As far as I know, the line was used last year as I saw one or two tank cars at the small business. Today there were only tractor trailers.

As I came back up and over the Ohio St yard I noticed that there were a lot of rail cars in the Child St elevator yard. They were all covered hoppers. I'd guess about 50 cars were there and many of them had CANADA stenciled on them. A small green and yellow switcher was lit up at the elevator but not moving. I couldn't see what the stencilling said on it. I didn't want to cross the active rails so as not to attract anymore attention than I did.

Off topic: ABC Good Morning America is advertising something about using the rails and going across the country. Looks pretty interesting.

I believe you're talking about the old Burrow's Lot Yard, now being served by the Buffalo Southern...Simtrains could provide a better explanation than I could.

That is the old burrows lot yard off of ohio st. yard. It has been brought back to life in the last few weeks with the Buffalo Southern serving the old Con Agra plant. They are getting in loads of wheat I believe. CSX has many more of those cars stored back in Ohio St. yard and the old Seneca yard.

Is someone operating the former Con Agra site now?

Yea, I forget there name. There just handling wheat for now, waiting on the ethanol plant to be built to expand into corn and all that.

In what came as a surprise move, RiverWright LLC, owners of the property along the Buffalo River destined to become the new Ethanol Plant, decided to sell off the Lake & Rail elevator during early June. A new start up holdings corporation called Whitebox Commodities bought the newly refurbished elevator with plans to start using it to transship grain for the coming harvest season. RiverWright felt that the American, Pero, and Marine “A” elevators represented enough storage capacity to begin the Ethanol Plant operations in 2009 so they sold the Lake & Rail to Whitebox after having just brought the building back to life within the last year or so. A few train loads of corn and soybeans were stored there over the winter for distribution to fuel and feed customers downstate as a trial run of the elevator’s railcar unloading and transfer equipment. I would hazard a guess that RiverWright turned a nice profit on their investment at the Lake & Rail after initially buying the property at bargain basement prices and fixing up the elevator for reuse by Whitebox. RiverWright was also able to secure about $120 million out of their projected $180 million required to start the Ethanol Plant through a Canadian financing firm called Corpfinance International LTD of Toronto. Strong markets for agricultural products to be used in the food and fuel industry have revived interest in idle storage and transfer facilities such as the grain elevators on the Buffalo waterfront. Our position as an inroad to the North Eastern area from the Great Lakes may help a surge of business to return to some of the excellent industrial infrastructure we have here. Time will tell with steady operations at the Lake & Rail to possibly start as early as the Fall of 2008, with the Ethanol Plant coming on line in late 2009. Whitebox is now installing a hopper on the river side of the Lake & Rail to accept cargo from self-unloader boats and the keep the railroad honest.
Here's a link to a photo:

http://www.boatnerd.com/news/newsthumbs ... bs_696.htm

B in B

Is Lake & Rail the elevator which was essentially junk and all run down, immediately to the south of the ConAgra plant and on the east edge of Burrows Lot Yard? If so, I'm impressed! When I worked there that place looked like a total ruin and appeared to be worthless. Good to see something come back to life.

BR&P:

I don't know Buffalo that well, but here are some aerial shots from maps.live.com

Looking North:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&F ... &encType=1

Looking East:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&F ... &encType=1

Looking South:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&F ... &encType=1

Looking West:
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&F ... &encType=1

In the last shot, it looks like the metal things can move back and forth?

Brooks

In the last shot, it looks like the metal things can move back and forth?

They used to, I don't think that they have in my life time though...

I want to see development to bring back Concrete Central. Now that would be impressive!

As stated in a earlier post by Railroaded, about a company called River Wright owns the property. They sold some of the elevators to a midwest company who are railing in carloads of wheat and the BSOR (yeah) is doing the switching once again.
BSOR - BUFFALO SOUTHERN RAILROAD


Tom

In the last shot, it looks like the metal things can move back and forth?

They used to, I don't think that they have in my life time though...



Unless you're 3 months old they have. The Marine Leg Unloading Towers move on a set of railroad wheels & rails built in the deck of the dockface and they still move. They recently moved them down the dock to get them out of the way of the hopper being installed and to clear the dock for the a self-unloader boat to pull in. They were last used in 2000-2001 to unload a lake boat where they moved freely about the dock all the time. The legs of the Standard Elevator and the Frontier Elevator were moving around into the late 1990's for boat unloading until those docks converted to Self-unloader only.

Lake & Rail is the elevator on the bend in the river, directly across from the corner of Hamburg & South st. The Elevator you are thinking of was the Marine A, also part of the Ethanol Plant deal, but not being considered for use at this time.

-B in B

Marine A is the one I was thinking of then. Thanks. For what it's worth, much of what is now the junkyard used to be yard tracks at one time, probably to serve that elevator when it was active.

The Junkyard site was once the location of the Delwood Elevator and it's flax seed crushing plant. That is the reason that the Junkyard has a long concrete dockface. The dock is the site where the elevator once stood. The junkyard bought that property to have riverfront access to scrap ships, which they did only once as a trial. At one time there were tracks throughout that property crossing into Burrow's lot, the Marine A's loading shed, the Delwood, and the nearby BCK Roundhouse.

Marine A is in a state of total decay. If the Ethanol Plant was to become a success, and if they needed more storage capacity, Marine A would be the last building at the site to be used. It would require a complete and total rebuild from top to bottom, using only the concrete walls that exist at this time. All metalwork would have to be completely stripped and replaced due the advanced state of decay it's been in for 30 years. I'd rule that out as a "probably not". A better bet would be the reuse of the American and Pero Elevators first.

-B in B

I know almost nothing about elevators but I remember the Marine A looked like a total wreck. That's why I was so surprised when I mistakenly thought that was the one which was put back into use. Guess it's kind of like looking at some old locomotive - you'd love to see it running again but common sense tells you it just ain't gonna happen!

I caught BSOR at what I thought was Ohio Street back in August...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3059/286 ... f0d342.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/286 ... 62fa17.jpg

So this is Burrow's Lot Yard?

-otto-