Gone, But not Forgotten

The locomotive on the front of this post card is a GP-9 developed by the

General Motors Electro-Motive Division. The picture shows it operating on the Tioga Scenic Railroad in Owego, New York. This website: https://familyfunpa.com/directories/tioga-central-railroad/ tells us the following about the railroad: Tioga Central Railroad operated scenic excursion trains over a right-of-way which in part dates to 1840. The section between CP CORN (a location just south of Corning, New York) and Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, was part of the Tioga Railroad, opened in 1840 to connect Blossburg, Pennsylvania, with the Chemung Canal at Corning. The Tioga Railroad was renamed the Blossburg and Corning Railroad in 1854. The section between Lawrenceville and Wellsboro Junction, Pennsylvania (with the exception of the ten-mile section along Hammond Lake built in 1977) was completed in 1872 as the Wellsboro and Lawrenceville Railroad. This line extended south from a connection with the Blossburg and Corning Railroad at Lawrenceville through Wellsboro to the coal mines at Antrim, Pennsylvania. And our friends at Facebook tell us this about the same railroad: the Tioga Central Railroad was a heritage railroad that was formed in 1984 to operate seasonal passenger excursions on former Lehigh Valley Railroad track owned by Tioga County between Owego, Flemingville, and Newark Valley, N.Y. The operation later relocated to a portion of the Wellsboro and Corning Railroad between Wellsboro, Pennsylvania and Corning, New York. During the tourist season, which lasted from June to October, it operated excursion trains on a sector of this line, from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania to Tioga, Pennsylvania. Due to COVID-19 capacity restrictions, the line suspended passenger operations during 2020 and 2021. In 2022 the railroad was reported to have permanently closed and its website was offline.

The photo is courtesy of Thomas Trencansky of the Cornell Railroad Historical Society. Mary Jayne’s Railroad Specialties published this post card in 1994.