First time in Buffalo...sights and sounds to see?

OK...you guys helped me out on my Rochester trip back in the springtime. What can you tell me for a first time visit to Buffalo?

Places? Spots? THANKS!!!

I'll give you a few spots I know off the top of my head.

Bayview Road: This is a spot where you can see action from CSX's main line as well as NS, as their lines are parallel. Last time
I was there, there was plenty of room for parking on the north side of the crossing.

Coordinates: 42.776785, -78.846899

Lake Ave. crossing in Blasdell. The CSX/NS main line crossings are a little further apart, but here you can also see rail-traffic from
the short-line Buffalo Southern mixed-in. There is also plenty of parking nearby.

Coordinates: 42.797760, -78.835097

Tifft Street bridge: Here, you can see it all. CSX, NS, Buffalo Southern, Buffalo & Pittsburgh RR. The only drawback is you'll have to park
your car on the access road just off of Tifft Street at the east end of the bridge. Keep the car as close to Tifft St. as you can, as this access
road is railroad-property. It's been a while since I was here but last I knew, it was ok to park here.

42.845044, -78.842502

Old Broadway Ave:

Right at Buffalo City-limits and Cheektowaga, this is a spot where CSX has crew-changes at Frontier Yard. There are normally a couple other
people that park there to also catch the action. This is a "CSX only" location but you also can see them shifting the yard and also you can see
CN transfers to CSX.

Coordinates: 42.898277, -78.803435

Hope this helps, have a great time!

Charlie

Amtrak Depew station on Dick Rd near Broadway. Crew change for CSX and obviously Amtrak arrivals. Signals are in view in both directions so if you don't have a scanner.....you're covered. Plus you have restrooms and vending machines. NS is kind of viewable from the station but not perfect. Bring binoculars as looking eastbound on CSX is several miles.

Charlies picks are all great. As an alternative, I often park my car at the sports park located at the west end of the TIfft Street bridge. it's 100% legal and also rather quiet for most of the day.

I will also add the Harlem Road bridge over NS's Bison Yard in Cheektowaga and the trail next to the same yard.

Do not venture into the area around Central Terminal. But do include the History Discovery Center on Lee Street which is owned and operated by the Western New York Railway Historical Society. Check their website for open hours.

erie2937 wrote:Do not venture into the area around Central Terminal.

A visit to Buffalo and passing up a chance to view Buffalo Central Terminal would be a mistake. There's nothing wrong with the area around BCT as long as you visit during daylight hours. That kinda goes for visiting any big city area. Of course, the standard warning applies: If you don't feel comfortable someplace, leave.

I don't know who's in charge of the CRTC these days, but here's their latest web site: http://buffalocentralterminal.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

-otto-

I was recently out in Kansas City, Mo. On the maps and across the street from the WWI museum is the Union Station. Never having been to Kansas City before, I kinda expected a dumpy surrounding. WOW was i wrong. The Union Station is like no other station that I've ever seen. You would think that it was just built. If you are ever passing through the area on I-70, stop in. Across the tracks from the station is an old freight house. Several upscale restaurants within it which I ate at one of them while watching BNSF trains pass through.

The reason I posted this is that it's such a shame that NYC moved the BCT to its current location. How would they know "what was coming." While walking through Union Station at Kansas CIty, I thought to myself, why can't Buffalo be like this? As the usual answer is, its loaction. The neighborhood sucks in almost every way. No upstanding business is going to relocate to this area and put there employees in danger. Mostly at night. The BCT has such extraordinary potential but its location will kill any advancement.

You shouldn't have any problems during daylight. Sundown is approximately 745pm.

Otto: I will second you on the mention of visiting Buffalo Central Terminal - BCT is well worth a visit especially if any BCT Historical events - tours or any train shows - are there...

I first visited BCT in the Summer of 1977 and remember traveling there during the last two or so years when it
was Buffalo's only Amtrak station - I remember it well. That East Side neighborhood surrounding BCT was one of
Buffalo's "Polonia" neighborhoods that was interesting in itself - the nearby Broadway Market is worth a visit -
especially if you have a taste for Polish food. An interesting fact about Buffalo is that it once had the second
largest Polish-American population in the US - only Chicago was larger in this respect...

Since BCT closed in the Fall of 1979 every scheme to use the BCT site for something has fallen through - and
luckily the BCT Historical group has come forward to save this interesting relic of Buffalo's past. I recall visiting
the BCT neighborhood and site in the early 2000s and I noted that the neighborhood demographics had changed
but I did not feel threatened in that area in midday in or around BCT - but I do agree that avoiding the area after
dark is a good idea - and the thought about leaving if you feel uneasy about a place is a good rule to have.

If you travel to Downtown Buffalo - and ride the NFTA LRRT light rail line on Main Street - or stop off at BFX
to watch any Amtrak trains another interesting thing to do is go to the observation deck at the top of Buffalo
City Hall - the second largest behind Philadelphia's in size in the US - and check out the view.

Buffalo is a interesting city - and its railroads are one of its better features for anyone interested
in trains and railroading...

MACTRAXX

If your visit to Buffalo includes September 12 and 13, there will be a train show at the Buffalo Central Terminal. If September 19, a car show.

http://buffalocentralterminal.org/visit-us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SST wrote:The reason I posted this is that it's such a shame that NYC moved the BCT to its current location... The neighborhood sucks in almost every way. No upstanding business is going to relocate to this area and put there employees in danger. Mostly at night. The BCT has such extraordinary potential but its location will kill any advancement..

Huh? No one "moved" BCT, it was built new in 1929. The NYC hoped it was constructing a union station complex the other railroads would want to use, but that didn't happen. As for neighborhoods being terrible, yeah, that would be true if you believed that neighborhoods never change over time. But, whatever.

-otto-

Buffalo's been slowly going down hill for a long time. You can go across New York and watch the economy get worse, at least from a sales standpoint, the further west you go, the less you sell, even if the event has the same attendance.

It wasn't a bad neighborhood when BCT was built.
New York Central had no way to know the area would decline like it did.

also, the timing couldn't have been worse..but again, the New York Central had no way to know that when the station was planned, built, and opened.
it opened in 1929! when it was still the "Roaring Twenties" and life was great..
there was nothing but optimism about everything, including the future of passenger rail travel.
In 1929, the station, and its location, made perfect sense to everyone...the future was bright.

then the Depression hit, mere months after the station opened, and it was nothing but downhill from there..
for the station, for the raiload, for passenger service, and for the neighborhood..
But no one saw any of that coming when the station opened.

Scot

Actually the area around BCT was always a "tough neighborhood". Before the NYCRR started building the terminal the Buffalo Police had to evict many households with a bit of "extra strong persuasion". The railroad got the properties via eminent domain and the current owners where not too happy about it. But with some "rule of law" they were "moved along" out of the area of the terminal. The area around the terminal was never the "gilded" part of town.

The location of BCT was a bit of a compromise, the old (pre BCT) NYCRR station (near the south end of main street, or the "Foot of Main Street" to locals) had many operational problems. Through trains (NYC to Chicago) had to pull into the station and then back out to get back onto the old LSMS (or in NYCRR speak: "Lines West") route to Pa, Ohio... Chicago.

There where proposals to build a "Union Station" (about 1905) for Buffalo but those fell through. One of the proposals included loop tracks (like Grand Central Terminal) that would allow through trains to enter the station then depart around a loop that went back to the "mainline" west to Chicago. The NYCRR offered to rent space in BCT to the other passenger RRs in Buffalo (PRR, LV, TH&B, DL&W, etc.) before BCT was built but only the PRR and the TH&B were interested.

So the NYC went ahead and built BCT where it made the most operational sense for them hoping the additional economic activity around the terminal would cause the neighborhood to become more "Upscale". Sadly that did not turn out to be the case. In the case of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan this is exactly what happened, covering over the old smoke filled railroad yards and selling "air rights" to build swanky hotels above the railroad generated enormous economic activity in mid town Manhattan. Remember that the tremendous economic growth in mid-town Manhattan north of Grand Central Terminal (completed in 1913) really took off in the mid 1920's. So it was reasonable to assume around that time that the same thing might happen in Buffalo, a fancy railroad terminal where all the connections to the outside world were concentrated and lots of inexpensive real estate that could become hotels and corporate headquarters, it made sense at the time. Perhaps without the Great Depression that part of town would have grown into something more "high end".

An interesting footnote, when they did the grading and drainage work for the terminal and the train platforms (including the underground baggage tunnel) they included future expansion for four more tracks south of the existing platforms (16 tracks if I remember correctly). They (the NYCRR) were very optimistic about the future of passenger trains and the demand for services. As I understand it all of the "prep work" to add four more passenger tracks (two additional platforms) was completed while BCT was built. Sadly those extra tracks where never needed. As Yogi Berri said: "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future".....

I would check out BCT in the daytime with no worries, but I would not hang around much after dark, same as most inner city areas. I did arrive several times into BCT on the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited in the middle of the night back in the late 70's before they "shut her down" and never had any altercations, but that was a wee bit back in history....

Cheers, Kevin

Thanks for the tips, guys! Just got into town yesterday (Bowmansville) and already spotted one hell of an abandoned ROW, complete with nice vintage wooden relay case still standing (and still locked with batteries in the bin for a track which is long gone. As I haven't researched it yet, it begs the question: What did I see?

It has to the the former New York, West Shore & Buffalo (West Shore) ROW that ran parallel to the NYC
from Albany west to Buffalo. Not sure how familiar you are with the West Shore, but it was absorbed by
New York Central in a short amount of time. There were some sizable chunks of the Shore left in place
by NYC and it's successors and the line through Bowmansville survived quite a while. There was a quarry
just east of Bowmansville that was served into the Conrail era and traffic ran west to a connection with
Frontier Yard.

Charlie