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."