Between 1977 and 1982 I lived in Trumansburg, NY, in a house once owned by the widow (Antoinette Pierson) of one of the P&SB RR bigwigs, William Pierson. I became interested in its history and had begun to document its remnants until I moved to a new job in Massachusetts. I previously submitted three of my surviving pictures to Russ's "Unfinished Railroads of NY" site. My recollections:
In Trumansburg at both creek crossings there are grades and at the Taughannock Creek crossing abutments. The section of grade from there to Trumansburg Creek through school property was gone, but there were high grades on both sides of Trumansburg Creek. I never got close enough to see if any stonework remained. The supposedly once deep cut across Cayuga Street was long gone, but north of that the grade curved around some friends' property forming the back side of a pond enclosure that they swam in until their daughter discovered a snapping turtle. A little farther the grade was visible in a cornfield near the Seneca Road Prospect Street intersection.
North of there in Seneca County the land flattens out somewhat and the grade was less defined, but I had photographed that long section visible through a wooded area and a piece of the grade in Covert. The former photo I lost lowever during my move here. There were other lest distinct remains, but I never got farther north than Interlaken.
South there are (or were anyway) lots of remnants in the more uneven terrain.
The locals in the DeWitt (Ithaca) and Trumansburg Historical Societies filled me in on other stuff. The general agreement was that the grading had been completed between Summit (on Ezra Cornell's Ithaca and Athens line) and Lake Ontario except for an unfinished cut at the very south end. No rails ever appeared in Tompkins County, but an old woman I spoke to recalled being shown a pile of rotting lumber as a little girl, that was described as the unused ties for the P&SB. Another person said his grandfather complained that all we got for our investment was bumps in the road with "Look Out for the Locomotive" signs. I believe that somewhere in the Cornell or Ithaca library systems I had once seen a grade map for the entire line, that I thought should have been saved on microfilm. But that was just before my move.
In Trumansburg at both creek crossings there are grades and at the Taughannock Creek crossing abutments. The section of grade from there to Trumansburg Creek through school property was gone, but there were high grades on both sides of Trumansburg Creek. I never got close enough to see if any stonework remained. The supposedly once deep cut across Cayuga Street was long gone, but north of that the grade curved around some friends' property forming the back side of a pond enclosure that they swam in until their daughter discovered a snapping turtle. A little farther the grade was visible in a cornfield near the Seneca Road Prospect Street intersection.
North of there in Seneca County the land flattens out somewhat and the grade was less defined, but I had photographed that long section visible through a wooded area and a piece of the grade in Covert. The former photo I lost lowever during my move here. There were other lest distinct remains, but I never got farther north than Interlaken.
South there are (or were anyway) lots of remnants in the more uneven terrain.
The locals in the DeWitt (Ithaca) and Trumansburg Historical Societies filled me in on other stuff. The general agreement was that the grading had been completed between Summit (on Ezra Cornell's Ithaca and Athens line) and Lake Ontario except for an unfinished cut at the very south end. No rails ever appeared in Tompkins County, but an old woman I spoke to recalled being shown a pile of rotting lumber as a little girl, that was described as the unused ties for the P&SB. Another person said his grandfather complained that all we got for our investment was bumps in the road with "Look Out for the Locomotive" signs. I believe that somewhere in the Cornell or Ithaca library systems I had once seen a grade map for the entire line, that I thought should have been saved on microfilm. But that was just before my move.
Gonna have to do some field work to reliably locate it.