There were two through freights on the Tier. OIBU and BUOI ran between Oak Island in Newark NJ and Frontier in Buffalo. The other pair was OIEL and ELOI, which ran between Oak Island and Elkhart, using the Meadville Line, the former EL Main Line, west of Hornell into Youngstown. OIEL ran most days east of Gang Mills, but ELOI was another story. There was not a lot of carload traffic(or much else for that matter) on the Meadville Line. The trains ran mostly at the insistence of NYSDOT, which had put up a pot full of money for track rehab, etc. The trains were often short-car counts in the teens-and would terminate in Gang Mills, with BUOI forwarding the cars. So it was an unusual thing to see ELOI in Elmira, and I caught it this day at Southport with a pair of EMDs. |