Southern Tier Line

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The Southern Tier Line is a railroad line owned by Pennsylvania Lines LLC and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. states of New York and Pennsylvania. The line runs from Suffern, New York northwest to Buffalo, New York^[1] mostly along a former Erie Railroad line. From its east end, NS has trackage rights south on the New Jersey Transit Main Line to Conrail's North Jersey Shared Assets Area; it junctions with the Lake Erie District at its west end. Along the way it meets the Corning Secondary at Corning, New York.

[edit] History

The oldest piece of the line, from Suffern to Goshen, opened in 1841 as part of the New York and Erie Rail Road.^[2] Extensions opened to Port Jervis and Binghamton in 1848,^[3] Owego in 1849,^[4] and Dunkirk (leaving the Southern Tier Line at Hornell) in 1851.^[5] At the Buffalo end, the Attica and Buffalo Railroad opened from Buffalo east to Attica in 1842,^[6] but was part of the New York Central Railroad system until 1852, when it was sold to the Buffalo and New York City Railroad east of Depew. Also in 1852, the Buffalo and New York City Railroad built southeast from Attica to Hornell and west from Depew to Buffalo.^[7] The entire line became part of the Erie Railroad through leases and mergers.

A small part of the line, from East Corning west through Corning to Painted Post, is not the former Erie but the former Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, opened in 1882 by the New York, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.^{[citation needed]} After the Erie and Lackawanna merged to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, that portion of the former Erie was abandoned and traffic was rerouted to the ex-Lackawanna.^{[citation needed]} The EL was taken ovey by Conrail in 1976, and in the 1999 Conrail breakup the Southern Tier Line was assigned to Norfolk Southern.