Wednesday, September 17, 2014

20th high school reunion (from 1979)


Buffalo News
Aug. 17, 1979

CLASS REUNION

A tale of adult ego in conflict with uneasy memories of adolescence. And a happy ending.

        “Dear Classmate,” the letter began. It was only the second time in my life that graduating from high school had ever put anything in the mailbox except graduation cards. The first time, it was an invitation to the 10th anniversary reunion of the Class of ’59, Fredonia High. I missed it. This one was for the 20th, coming up four months hence. It would be a two night affair – a picnic Friday and a dinner-dance Saturday. I marked the dates on the calendar. This time wild horses wouldn’t keep me away.
        In return, the reunion committee wanted two things: money and a synopsis of the last 20 years. I wrote a check for $28, which was the easy part. Not so easy was the task of cramming more than half a lifetime of misadventures into the questionnaire that came with the letter. In the end, the cross-country motorcycle trip and the rock band went into the space reserved for honors and awards. So much for honor.
        What chance does the adult ego stand, anyway, against those messy memories of adolescence? No matter how sophisticated you are, someone always remembers the way you looked in your raunchy gym uniform. No matter how much you’ve accomplished, there are witnesses to testify how dumb you were that night at the prom. As the fateful weekend approached, there was a final touch of teenage irony. I sprouted a big, ugly, red zit, right in the middle of my chin.
        Ours was the last class of less than 100 to be graduated from Fredonia High. Being a small group, we were particularly cohesive. Scholastically, we were sharp. More than half of us went to college. When it came to sports, though, we flunked. Our Dunkirk rivals mopped us up all year long in football, basketball and baseball. We had a zippy yearbook with a red cover. We defied conventions by dedicating it to the school’s head janitor.
        Going to the picnic was like going back to “Happy Days.” There was lots of pizza with Italian sausage. A tape layer boomed out the rock ‘n roll hits of the late ‘50s. No sooner did I arrive at the grove than I was accosted and carried off by two jolly beer-drinkers I hadn’t hung out with since the days when we were getting kicked out of physics class together. It was nostalgia at first sight.
        One of these guys now was an engineer in Rochester. The other was a scientist in Corpus Christi, Texas, with a Texas drawl to match. The revelations didn’t end there. Another classmate was a maverick computer repairman in Connecticut. Another was a highly successful salesman living in East Aurora. Still another was married to a man who’s a partner in all the Wendy’s and Arthur Treacher’s restaurants in metropolitan Buffalo.
        Roughly half the class was still living in the Fredonia area, many of them holding positions of responsibility in the community. One headed up a division of a large commissary operation. Another was in charge of Dunkirk’s school music program. The chairman of the reunion also served as chairman of Fredonia’s annual harvest festival.
        The hometown classmates said, however, that the hometown wasn’t what it used to be. The old families and the coziness were gone. Several were living in rival Dunkirk, where real estate wasn’t so expensive. The growth of the state college was what changed the village, they said. They maintained that the bigger high school classes that followed us did not have the same spirit or sense of community. We really had grown up in a golden age and that golden spirit was alive with us that night.
        The uncanny part of it was that, except for a few gray hairs, almost everyone was a sleeker, fuller version of the kid they were 20 years ago. They looked good. For comparison, one could always refer to the gawky pictures in the yearbook. Nevertheless, there was still room for mistaken identity. Few occasions in life are more embarrassing than meeting someone you saw daily for four years and calling them by someone else’s name.
        There were more opportunities for that the next night at the dinner-dance. Most of the picnickers were back for a second round. Also on hand were a few folks who missed the picnic. Still absent was the class president. Among the guests was the janitor, now retired, to whom we’d dedicated the yearbook. He got up and told a couple geriatric jokes, giving everyone a hint of where all of us middle-aged war babies were headed.
        Thanks to the reunion committee, however, the occasion stopped just short of turning into a thoroughly adult dance party. What they did was bring back the old jokes and the old personalities. Someone suggested we all head for the lakeshore and go bushwacking. Bushwhacking – the act of harassing romantically-inclined couples in parked cars – was the one sport the Class of ’59 excelled at. Then one classmate, an Army careerist who flew in from Germany for this, was prevailed upon to explain for once and for all how he came to be nicknamed “Chicken.”
        And there were awards – baldest man, most changed woman, newest marriage, oldest child (the winner graduated from high school this year) and, of course, furthest distance traveled. That went to our Swedish exchange student. She came all the way from Stockholm. Pictures were taken, addresses were exchanged. The committee offered to send out copies of their master list.
        There was an audible groan when the class voted to try to get together again for a 25th anniversary bash in 1984. It came from the committee, which worked for six months on this affair. Their two-night brainstorm was a popular success. As intended, the picnic ironed out most of the stiffness that stifled the 10th anniversary dinner. But to do it again? “We’ll see,” was all they’d say.
        When the band struck up its standard wedding and party repertoire, the class clumped into its old cliques. Couples who hadn’t danced together in 20 years took to the floor again. The band didn’t know how to play a song to do the Stroll to, but they knew the Bunny Hop. Quick as a wink, a huge Bunny Hop chorus line engulfed the room. For a crazy minute or two, I could’ve sworn I was back at a dance in the gym.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

1989 feature on Shooters

Denise Jewell Gee quoted from this story in her column on Monday, Sept. 15, 2014.
Here's the whole thing.

Lifestyles feature
May 24, 1989

FINDING SHOOTERS IS A TASK; ENJOYING IT SHOULD BE EASIER
PICTURESQUE WATERFRONT CAFE OPENS TONIGHT WITH A SPLASH

  
THE NEWEST addition to Buffalo's shoreline -- Shooters, which bills itself as "Waterfront Cafe U.S.A." -- opens at 8 tonight with a burst of fireworks appropriate to the launch of a major civic appurtenance. Even with skyrockets as a guide, however, the big question is how to get there.
    Forget such designators as Seaway Piers Marina, its nautical address, or 325 Fuhrmann Blvd., which is of help only to the postman. By land or by sea, the key is to look for the Skyway.
    Sailors will find Shooters near the south end of the Skyway. Landlubbers, on the other hand, have two approaches.
    Those driving south from downtown Buffalo should take the first exit they see after they get off the Skyway. Those heading north toward downtown should turn just before the Skyway begins.
    In either case, the signs to follow are the ones that say "Coast Guard." There's a Coast Guard base not far from Shooters.
    Arriving by car, you'll find the waterfront cafe at the end of what will seem like a vast parking lot, but not to worry. Motor on up to the loop at the front door, trade the keys for a claim check and let the valet parking staff take care of the rest. As for do-it-yourselfers, just look for an empty spot.
    Similarly, boaters pulling up to 340-foot floating dock will find valet docking. Trained attendants will direct sailors to open berths and secure them.
    No matter how you get there, be assured that no attire is too casual for Shooters. The gentlemen who founded the original restaurant in the chain in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1982, did it because they couldn't find any other respectable waterside oasis that would accept them as they were in their shipboard clothes.
    Done up in "Miami Vice" pink and turquoise (actually, says Jan Idelman, the chain's publicity director, a reflection of the colors at Pilot Field), the sheer sumptuousness of the place may inspire more dress-up than the other Shooters. According to Clay Thompson, vice president of operations for the chain, this is the glitziest of them all.
    Shooters, however, feels quite different from the city's other dockside restaurant, Crawdaddy's at Erie Basin Marina. Where Crawdaddy's is cloistered and labyrinthine, Shooters is big and wide-open.
    Inside and out, Shooters is oriented entirely toward the lake. A greenhouse of glass gives everyone in the tiered main dining room and bar on the first floor a watery panorama unequaled in Western New York.
    Look north and there's downtown Buffalo rising above the ruins of its grain elevators. Look west and see the broad expanse of Lake Erie, with the Canadian shore across the water paralleled by harbor breakwalls. Look south to find the hills of the South Towns, the hulking remnants of the old Bethlehem Steel plant and the largest stretch of undeveloped shoreline in the Northeast.
    The vistas are even wider outside on the patio. The best views of all, though, are upstairs in the second-floor bar, banquet room and terrace, an area reserved primarily for private luncheons and parties except on Friday afternoons, when it's thrown open for happy hour.
    From now until Labor Day, most people going to Shooters will wind up on the patio, which seems twice as large as the indoor part of the restaurant and which has its own free-standing bar. At 3 p.m. on Saturdays, weather permitting, the patio will be the site of Shooters' most notable promotion -- "hot bod" bikini contests, which carry $1,000 in prizes.
    Along with dozens of umbrella-shaded tables and four tropical palm trees, the patio area includes a sandy beach and a pool. The beach is a sunning beach rather than a bathing beach, being situated behind a rocky breakwater that rises 20 feet above the harbor. And the pool, three to four feet deep, is for wading, cooling off and perhaps volleyball, but not swimming.
    A promenade running the length of the dock is considered a public access area, open to all who want to drop by just to gaze at several hundred thousand dollars worth of sailing vessels. Those aboard the boats can disembark for food and refreshments or get restaurant service on board, though state law forbids bringing on any alcoholic beverages except for beer.
    Taking care of all these details will be a staff of more than 300, chosen, Ms. Idelman says, for experience, energy and enthusiasm. Dressed to complement the colors of the place, all have undergone more than a week of training, testing and drills under the guidance of staffers from other Shooters restaurants in Florida and Ohio.
    "We call our staff a team," Ms. Idelman explains. "When something needs to be done, everybody pitches in and gets it done. The only place you can compare it to is Disney World."
    Connotations of the restaurant's name (Shooters being, alternately, high-rolling big spenders or mini-cocktails concocted by mixing liquors, liqueurs, juices, creams and sodas in a cocktail shaker) might suggest it's dominated by its bar business. Ms. Idelman says sales figures indicate just the opposite. Food accounts for 60 percent of revenues.
    Shooters offers a menu that's best described as late 20th century American eclectic. There's a little bit of everything -- more than 100 familiar items, none more expensive than $14.95 and most in the $5 to $10 range. There's pasta; there's Mexican; there's seafood and steaks; there's Sunday brunch.
    Most popular items at other Shooters are the $8.95 teriyaki chicken and the potato skins, which go for $5.95 loaded and $2.95 plain. The entry least likely to be encountered at other Buffalo restaurants is a Florida specialty -- conch fritters at $3.95.
    As for drinks, Shooters may double the per-capita consumption of rum in Western New York. The list of specialty cocktails is deep with frozen daiquiris and other tropical potions. Prices are reasonable for a fancy place -- or fancy compared to most Buffalo bars.
    Frozen and tropical drinks run $3.60 and $3.80. Beers go $1.80 for drafts, $2 for bottled domestics and $2.80 for bottled imports. Shooters -- eight are listed on the place mat, among them the Kamikaze and the Alabama Slammer -- vary from $2.80 to $3.40.
    Finally, just because you found the place and spent a couple of pleasant hours there, don't expect to know your way back by land. The exit road is one-way south. Those heading home in that direction can simply take the first entrance ramp onto Route 5.
    Going north, however, means finding a U-turn. Look for the first Coast Guard sign, turn left there, then follow the highway back toward Shooters until you see the on-ramp at the base of the Skyway. The rest should be easy.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

1985 Belt Line Story

    Gusto Cover Story
    July 26, 1985

    We really shouldn't be here on Conrail property. We know well enough that there are laws against trespassing and, yes, the railroad still maintains its own security crew to enforce them. We're also aware that hundreds of our fellow Western New Yorkers have gotten maimed or killed during the past 150 years by behaving carelessly when a train came by, though none of us has seen the film that Conrail offers to schools to inform youngsters of the perils of playing on or around the tracks.
    Nevertheless, we felt obliged to take the risk because there was no better way to explore the Belt Line, a 14-mile length of track built to circle the city in the decades right after the Civil War. In many aspects, it's a fascinating route. Among other things, it represents one of the earliest efforts by transportation planners to serve a congested area by building a ring around it, a strategy which modern superhighway designers have employed all across America.
    Historical accounts, however, give little notice of the Belt Line. In turn-of-the-century books about industry in Buffalo, it's merely a footnote to the list of more than two dozen railroads that served the city then.
    Maps of the 1901 Pan American Exposition show it as a passenger line on the northern boundary of the grounds. "Buffalo: Lake City in Niagara Land" observes that it encouraged some of the Polish immigrants in the Broadway-Fillmore area to resettle in Black Rock-Riverside.
    These few facts only hint at the role that the Belt Line played. Installation of track actually began in the 1860s, according to architectural historian John Conlin, formerly a lecturer at UB and now a consultant. The northern loop was in place by the time civic leaders brought in Frederick Law Olmsted to design Delaware Park and the city's parkway system. In laying out the street plan for the Parkside neighborhood, Olmsted bent Crescent Avenue to parallel the path of the tracks.
    Conlin points out that the line was essentially complete by 1881, missing only a short link built the following year, which ran tracks through an excavation downtown just north of where Memorial Auditorium now stands. New York Central ran freight trains on those tracks, but it also carried passengers, competing with the slow and often crowded horse-drawn trolley system.
    A complete circuit of the city on the Belt Line took only 45 minutes. It's said that Darwin Martin of the Larkin Company regularly rode the Belt Line from his Frank Lloyd Wright house on Jewett Avenue to his Frank Lloyd Wright office on Seneca Street.
    In 1881, the Belt Line boasted 19 passenger stations: Terrace, at West Swan and the Terrace; Seneca Street, at Red Jacket, just west of Jefferson; William Street, just east of Fillmore; Broadway, at Lathrop; Genesee; Driving Park, at Fillmore and Northland; Main Street, near Jewett; Starin Avenue, near Amherst Street; Colvin Avenue, at Crescent; Delaware Park, at Linden; Cross Cut Junction, at Elmwood where a spur cut south to Scajaquada Creek; Austin Street, near Tonawanda Street; Amherst Street, also near Tonawanda; Black Rock, at Tonawanda and Niagara streets; Clinton Avenue (now Potomac), at Niagara; Ferry Street, where there was a major customs and immigration depot; Water Works, at the foot of Massachusetts Avenue near the Erie Canal; Porter Avenue, at Front Park; and Georgia Street, near the canal. Within a few years, additional East Side stations were built at Steel Street (now Kensington Avenue) and at Emslie Street.
    The Belt Line certainly must have succeeded in making New York Central one of the dominant rail services in a booming commercial center which, in the 1880s, contained more miles of track than any other city in the world.
    It provided a direct link from the Central's major yard on the East Side to the International Railroad Bridge to Canada and it was the only route which followed the river and the canal from that bridge to downtown Buffalo. The Erie Railroad thought so much of the scheme that it built its own loop about a mile north of the Belt Line, just south of the city line.
    But if the New York Central had built the Belt Line with the intent of developing freight service to industries along the track, that dream was slow in becoming a reality. Conlin points to an 1891 city map and building survey which shows only a handful of structures adjacent to the northern loop of the line. The major activity then was still in a two-to-three-block-deep stretch of factories along the canal and in the extensive rail yards, livestock yards, lumber and coal companies and quarries on the East Side.
    The advent of a speedy and efficient electric-powered trolley system, considered once to be the best in the nation, spelled the end of passenger service on the Belt Line in the early years of the 20th century. The track itself was made less accessible in 1908 and 1909 as the New York Central revamped the railroad, raising parts of it, lowering others, to eliminate what was then the city's greatest menace -- grade crossings. Eventually, all the passenger stations, save one, were demolished.
    Conversely, as passenger service faded, factories sprang up along the line. It was this industrial heritage that greeted our small band of trackwalkers as we set off northward from the old Central Terminal on Paderewski Drive on a hot, humid Sunday afternoon.
    In truth, the first sight that struck the group was Conrail's unconscionable cut through the old Central Terminal itself, disconnecting the tower from the old passenger waiting room and the stairways to the tracks. This was done to allow bigger freight cars to use the line closest to the building. The waiting room sits wide open on one end, its windows shattered. In similar condition is an old powerhouse nearby, built from the same materials as the station. This was a prelude to what amounted to a tour of Buffalo's mostly-abandoned industrial backside.
    The Belt Line tracks, however, were in fine shape. Though other rails around the terminal were rusty and neglected, this set was shiny and freshly touched up with new gravel, all part of a $3 million refurbishing a couple years ago.
    A few moments after we set foot on the trackbed, we saw why. Along came a pair of freights -- a Chessie train headed west and a Conrail train full of truck trailers headed east. We waved. The engineers waved back. About 20 trains use this track daily, it turns out.
    So do a fair number of trespassers, we discovered, though we only encountered about half a dozen of them overall. The tracks near the Central Terminal were littered with the remains of firecrackers. Scattered north of East Ferry Street were pieces of supermarket shopping carts demolished by trains.
    On the East Side, other trash consisted mainly of empty wine bottles -- mostly Wild Irish Rose. On the northern part of the loop, it was beer cans. And around Elmwood Avenue, gin bottles. Beside the trackbed was a profusion of wildflowers, especially Queen Anne's lace.
    Immediate acknowledgement of the Belt Light was sighted from the top of the overpass at Broadway. Staring us straight in the face was Joey's Beltline Grill, currently for sale and topped by a stone which says it was built in 1909. A brick industrial building between it and the tracks carried the date 1910. Sidings in front of old loading docks were overgrown with weeds and two-story-high trees.
    The view from the elevated trackbed gave a picture of the neighborhood that's not as evident from the street, notably the three sets of double church spires nearby, a sight from the Polish community which is replicated in the double spires of Assumption Church in Black Rock several miles down the Belt Line.
    For the most part, however, the tracks gave perspective on things like the Irish Corp. dumping ground near Sycamore Street, the abandoned elevator that still reads Peter Jurek and Son, Wholesale and Retail Coal and Coke, or aging brick warehouse-like structures, such as Bandag Tire on Walden Avenue.
    North of Genesee Street we witnessed the first active rail customers along the route, Nabisco's dog biscuit factory. The siding is so wavy, it's a little wonder a derailment took place there not long ago. Across from Nabisco, a Wonder Bread plant clattered with machinery. Its siding appeared to be inactive. An abandoned spur veers west to the abandoned George Urban Milling Co. building.
    Sicne this part of town was already heavily populated when the track was raised, many of the little side streets have their own underpasses. Several of them are surfaced with brick or even cobblestones.
    The tracks veer west above East Ferry Street and pass the still-active Curtiss-Wright plant, where spur lines are intersected by huge electrical gates. Just north of East Delavan Avenue sits the relatively modern Sears Distribution Center, where 10 once-busy freight doors face a now-rusty siding.
    North of the Kensington Expressway, the tracks descend to grade level, then drop below grade to enter a cut that continues beyond Main Street. The sight of a series of arched bridges over the tracks is reminiscent of a European scene. The Kensington Avenue bridge, which is not arched, gives plenty of evidence why it's due for reconstruction. Crumbling and rusty, it drips from recent rains. Stamped in the concrete foundation is the date 1908. The arched bridges were built in 1909, as was the Main Street bridge.
    Here are some abandoned factories, most notably the old Hewitt Rubber Company, which faces its impressive brick and stone façade directly toward the tracks, unlike the other factories. A brick building at Jewett, painted blue, was here in 1891, manufacturing bicycles. Just north of it is the architecturally significant Trico Plant 2, with a brick and terra cotta surface designed by Albert Kahn in 1915. The word "Ford" can still be seen on its brick chimney. A fallen tree blocked Trico's siding.
    In the vicinity of Main Street, the stone walls above the track trickle water, which collects in small streams that extend to around Amherst Street and the Starin Avenue Station, the only passenger stop that still exists, although it's a good 10 to 15 feet above the trackbed. Its current owners are refurbishing it. It has a new roof.
    As the track straightens, rises above ground level and heads west beyond Main Street, the factories give way to two- and three-story wood-frame houses, which comprised something of a suburb when they were built in the first decades of the century. Their back yards are hidden by garages, hedges, fences and sometimes accumulations of trash.
    At the Parkside Avenue overpass, an asphalt path crosses the tracks, but leads only to a fence blocking off the yard around brick apartment buildings. At Colvin Avenue, the 1909 overpass is graced with ornamental iron railing posts. An ancient half-buried concrete stairway leads partway up to the tracks.
    The Delaware Avenue overpass, wide enough to accommodate six tracks, overlooks the greatest amount of modern enterprise along the Belt Line -- new Denny's and Perkins restaurants and the big shopping plaza that includes a Tops supermarket and a Hills discount department store. A spur veers off alongside the supermarket, behind which sit Rupp Rental's construction cranes.
    Another spur turns sharply toward the old Pierce Arrow plant and runs the length of it. Up along the main tracks is a crumbling concrete wall that runs perhaps a quarter of a mile, fencing off a brush-filled lot. Near one end of the wall, not far from Elmwood Avenue, the tracks are bracketed by a concrete platform. Could this be what's left of the old Pan American Station?
    An active siding serves the Gioia spaghetti factory. A few freight cars are pulled up beside it. The railroad widens to eight tracks as it passes junkyards and comes to a series of buildings that make up the Buffalo Weaving and Belting Company. One section of the complex, a structure with a multiple-step façade, predates 1891 and was cited to his students by architectural historian Reyner Banham. Looking into the windows, one of our party set off an alarm. A guard appeared and informed us that the plant makes the slings that catch planes landing on aircraft carriers.
    Beyond Military Road, the two tracks of the Belt Line converge into a single switch, after which one set of rails heads north to Tonawanda and the other heads south to the International Railroad Bridge, entering a vast trackyard that parallels Tonawanda Street. The overpass at Austin Street is so wide it's hard to tell that it's actually the top of a bridge.
    Approaching Amherst Street, more old brick factories lined the tracks -- Sikes Office Chairs, the old Buffalo Co-operative Stove Co. and the Amherst Foundry. The abandoned Schaefer Brewing Co. Malting and Grain Division tower dominated the view ahead. Just south of Amherst Street, trains can switch to cross to Canada. We watched a long Norfolk and Southern freight make that maneuver.
    There's less of interest along the tracks south of the old, open-bottomed iron bridge over Scajaquada Creek. The sidings are abandoned at the factories along Niagara Street, although many of the buildings are still in use. Conrail, about to install new ties along this stretch of the line, which is called the Niagara Branch, has dumped them on the set of tracks closest to the river.
    The tracks pass over a series of bridges which at one time must have led streets like Auburn and Breckenridge avenues down to the towpath along the canal. Now the Thruway has replaced it. The only active underpass is at West Ferry Street, which has access to Squaw Island via a lift bridge.
    At the abandoned Agway building, the oldest surviving industrial structure on Niagara Street, dating back to around the Civil War, we found a cable-operated turntable that swung freight cars 90 degrees so they could be pulled up to doors on the south side of the building.
    Retaining walls box in the tracks as they pass under the Peace Bridge. When they reach grade level south of Porter Avenue, pieces are missing from the tracks closest to the river. Further along, a small machine sits on the tracks and the spikes that hold the rails to the ties have been removed. Downtown, at the Exchange Street Station, the rails on the second set of tracks have been pulled up entirely.
    At the underpasses approaching the foot of Main Street, there were indications that people sleep along the tracks, which must be a frightening proposition considering how fast and furious an Amtrak passenger train zipped through. In front of Memorial Auditorium, one can still see the Medina sandstone walls from the original construction of this final link in the Belt Line in 1882.
    East of the Exchange Street station, the route runs through an extensive and mostly abandoned track yard, with occasional spurs curing off to the south. Here the second Belt Line track has been pulled up and the trackbed has been bulldozed.
    Beyond the bridge which takes Louisiana Street over the tracks is the old Erie Freight Station, extending nearly all the way to Hamburg Street. Currently it's occupied by Stetson Chemical Co. A Kerr-McGee freight car was pulled up at one of the loading dock doors. Other freight cars sit on little-used tracks, full of gravel for the sole active pair of tracks. Beyond Stetson Chemical is the only grade crossing left on the Belt Line, complete with black-and-white-striped gates. It crosses Exchange Street.
    As the tracks headed north and east toward the old Central Terminal, we saw more abandoned sidings leading to such enterprises as the Samson Warehouse and the abandoned William Simon Brewery at Eagle and Emslie streets. At a burned-out control tower near the Swan Street bridge, someone wrote on the door: "Scum puppy lives here."
    Near Clinton Street, a Conrail coal train crept up from a track that comes from Lackawanna. Another Conrail freight full of truck trailers passed us as we neared the Central Terminal's old Railway Express building. Footweary from the loose gravel and the inconveniently-placed crossties, we wondered whether the Belt Line would ever again become a viable part of the city's public transportation system.
    In places, a revival of the Belt Line might make sense. There's an ideal park-and-ride location at the supermarket plaza on Delaware Avenue. There's possibly another one where the old Black Rock Station used to be, once a dilapidated brick factory building is torn down. A station could easily be sited at LaSalle Park, where the tracks are at grade level already. And stops on the East Side might provide a link to downtown and the subway, via the Exchange Street Station.
    But such a move, if it's ever taken, is probably a few years away. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority is just beginning to look into the viability of railbus service starting in the Southtowns. In the meantime, Buffalo's once-extensive rail mileage is being lost daily as tracks are ripped up and bridges are removed.
    "It's a matter of seeing something that's already there," says architectural historian Conlin, "and seeing the possibilities it opens up. Instead of having a subway that people say goes from nowhere to nowhere, we'd have a complete rail transit system. Using existing tracks will cost a fraction of what it cost to build the subway, but there are all these railbeds that are going to be taken out if nobody comes up with something for them. They've already taken 60 railroad bridges out of Buffalo and the track for the Tonawanda turnaround has lost a switch. Five or 10 years from now, a lot of what's still left won't be there."