Big Flats

When I lived back east, one of the closest rail lines to my home was Conrail's route through New York's southern tier. This line was the former Erie Railroad mainline, the same one that went through Lanesboro Pennsylvania and the Canisteo River gorge. The line didn't have a lot of trains. In the early years of Conrail the railroad ran only two trains a day. This met the letter but not the spirit of the contract with the state of New York, who had invested heavily in rebuilding the line to retain industry in the few online towns. Some days the train would consist of two locomotives, a boxcar, and a caboose. Sometimes it seemed to us that it was the always same car running back and forth.

In later years traffic picked up, but it never was a busy line. By the 1990s eight trains a day were using the line. The timing was such that half of those passed through my area in a two hour period, with the line being dead for most of the other 22. I could go out about noon and almost always see four trains before heading home at 2. I could pick a photo location and know I'd get my shot. It was almost too easy.

On this late November day I captured an eastbound near the town of Big Flats, New York. The day was cold, but not snowy. The pond hadn't yet frozen over. The sun even popped through the clouds when I needed it to! But a storm was moving in, and the next morning I awoke to a blanket of white. I didn't see the ground this bare  nor the pond as ice free for months.