It's too bad tomorrow's excursion on the Falls Road Railroad is running on the east (Medina-Brockport) segment of the line and not the west end, because there is a very impressive upside-down bridge over the Erie Canal at Lockport, NY.
It's too bad tomorrow's excursion on the Falls Road Railroad is running on the east (Medina-Brockport) segment of the line and not the west end, because there is a very impressive upside-down bridge over the Erie Canal at Lockport, NY.
The Falls Road Railroad takes it's name from the name of that section of rail under New York Central ownership, being referred to as the Falls Road Branch. The line can trace its origins to the Lockport & Niagara Falls Railroad, which was chartered on April 24, 1834. The roughly 20 mile long railroad was completed in 1838. The Rochester & Lockport Railroad was chartered on May 15, 1837, but little was done except for some grading and bridge construction. A reorganized company, the Rochester, Lockport & Niagara Falls Railroad was granted a state charter in 1850 and the nearly 76 mile long railroad between Niagara Falls and Rochester, by way of Lockport, was opened to traffic in 1852. In 1853 the line became part of the New York Central. The area served by the RL&NF, better known as the Falls Branch, was mainly rural and agricultural in nature along with various industries located in the towns along the right-of-way. During the railroad's heyday, as many as six passenger trains a day traveled the route in both directions with commuter service pairing Lockport with Niagara Falls and Rochester with Albion. Passenger service ended around 1957.
The Falls Road served as a pretty important shortcut for the NYC (albeit a rarely photographed one), because traffic could hop on at Rochester, continue to Niagara Falls and bypass Buffalo, then jump the border and get on the NYC's Canada Southern subsidiary and go right to Detroit, versus having to head down across Pennsylvania and Ohio and then come up the western shore of Lake Erie. In the '50s and '60s, there were lots of auto-rack trains headed east from Detroit to Rochester and they all came across the Canada Southern and Falls Road.
The line was conveyed from the Penn Central to Conrail in 1976, and the line from Brockport to Rochester was abandoned and salvaged in 1994 by Conrail. Eventually, Conrail was no longer interested in operating this line, was ready to file for abandonment until GVT stepped up to purchase the property from Brockport to Lockport, while the easternmost Niagara Falls-Lockport end was abandoned The transaction was consummated in October 1996 and the Falls Road Railroad subsidiary of GVT was formed.
The FRRR #2035, an ex-NYC RS-32, passing the remains of the old union station at Lockport, NY
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