Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad: Map & History

Last revised: September 15, 2026

The Buffalo & Susquehanna was Frank H. Goodyear’s railroad: hemlock out of north-central Pennsylvania, sole-leather tanneries, then bituminous coal to Buffalo. It is not the New York, Susquehanna & Western. That Susquehanna is a New Jersey Midland child that still runs. This one started as the Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad, opened as a common carrier on December 14, 1885 from Keating Summit to Austin. A 1893 merger of five logging companies made the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad. At its peak the map ran about 250 route miles from Buffalo, New York, to Sagamore, Pennsylvania, with more than 400 miles of track counting spurs. The Buffalo extension never paid. Both the Railroad and the Railway defaulted on May 6, 1910. The Baltimore & Ohio bought control in 1929 and took operations on January 1, 1932, the same season it took the neighboring Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh. A July 1942 flood cut Galeton off from the rest of the B&O. What was left became the Wellsville, Addison & Galeton on January 1, 1956.

1930 system map of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad

Buffalo & Susquehanna system map, 1930. The Buffalo extension is already gone; Galeton is still the hub. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Goodyear and the Sinnemahoning Valley · The 1893 railroad · Wellsville, Addison, Galeton · South for coal · The Buffalo extension · May 6, 1910 · Railroad without the Railway · Baltimore & Ohio · 1942 and the WAG · The 1930 Guide

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal names	Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad (1893; reorganized 1913–14 as the Railroad Corporation). Buffalo and Susquehanna Railway (1902)—Wellsville–Buffalo extension, 999-year lessee of the Railroad from July 1, 1907, until 1910
Headquarters	Austin, Pennsylvania, at first. Galeton after 1898
States served	Pennsylvania, New York
Promoters	Frank H. Goodyear and Charles W. Goodyear, Buffalo. Firm F. H. & C. W. Goodyear from 1887
Genesis	Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad, chartered May 9, 1885. Common carrier December 14, 1885, Keating Summit–Austin
Buffalo & Susquehanna formed	1893 merger of Sinnemahoning Valley, Buffalo & Susquehanna (of 1891), Susquehanna Railroad, Cherry Springs, and Cross Fork
Peak map	About 250 route miles Buffalo–Sagamore; more than 400 miles of track with logging spurs, 1907
Traffic	Hemlock, bark, leather, then bituminous coal and coke. Passenger service as the Grand Scenic Route
Bankruptcy	Railroad and Railway both May 6, 1910. Receiver H. I. Miller
Buffalo line	Opened 1906–07. Sold 1915; Wellsville & Buffalo operated December 15, 1915–November 17, 1916, then scrapped
Baltimore & Ohio	Stock control 1929. Operations January 1, 1932, with the BR&P. Formal merger into B&O 1954
Last B&O passenger	November 19, 1949, Addison
Successor on the mountain	Wellsville, Addison & Galeton, first trains January 1, 1956. Last movement November 7, 1979

Opening and merger dates follow the Pennsylvania State Archives B&S records and the Sinnemahoning Valley common-carrier opening. B&O dates are stock 1929 and operations January 1, 1932. Information compiled September 15, 2026.

Goodyear and the Sinnemahoning Valley

Frank H. Goodyear was a Buffalo lumber and fuel dealer. In 1885 he bought thousands of acres of hemlock in Potter and Cameron country. Pine and spruce were already gone. Hemlock shook and knotted, but it would sell, and the bark would tan hides. There was no river worth floating. He chartered his own railroad.

The Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad was chartered May 9, 1885. It left the Buffalo, New York & Philadelphia (later Pennsylvania Railroad) at Keating Summit, switchbacked, and dropped down Freeman Run to a mill at Austin. It opened as a common carrier on December 14, 1885. Most neighboring woods roads were three-foot gauge. Goodyear laid standard gauge and 70-pound rail, built for a future that was not only logs. In 1886 the line went 13 miles south to Costello and a sole-leather tannery that used the bark the mill threw away.

In 1887 he and his brother Charles W. Goodyear formed F. H. & C. W. Goodyear. That firm owned the timber, the mills, the locomotives, and, in time, the railroad. Shay geared engines worked the woods. A Baldwin 2-8-0 handled the common-carrier main. By the late 1890s the brothers employed about 2,400 men, ran mills at Austin, Galeton, and Cross Fork around the clock, and moved log trains with patented Marion loaders over some 75 miles of temporary logging track that tied into the B&S. The logging industry as a type is its own hub. This page is the common carrier those woods roads fed.

Five companies, one name, 1893

The hill between Costello and Galeton was the problem. Four switchbacks crossed the ridge instead of a tunnel. Trains were limited to about 15 cars. Between 1891 and 1893 the Goodyears built connecting companies around that hill: the Buffalo & Susquehanna of 1891 from Galeton toward Cherry Springs; the Susquehanna Railroad from Costello through Wharton to Hull (Conrad); the Cherry Springs Railroad that closed the gap; the Cross Fork Railroad, 13 miles down to a boom town of 2,500; and the Coudersport & Wellsboro from Galeton east to Ansonia and the Fall Brook. In 1893 those pieces plus the Sinnemahoning Valley became the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad. The main then ran 62 miles from Keating Summit to Ansonia, with the Cross Fork branch. Offices stayed at Austin until Galeton took them.

Eleven new locomotives came in 1894–95 as the map grew. By 1899 the railroad roster was on the order of 19 engines—Consolidations, Ten-Wheelers, and 4-4-0s, mostly Baldwin, one Brooks—while F. H. & C. W. Goodyear kept a separate fleet of Shays in the woods. Frank stepped down as president on the reorganization and sat as chairman; Charles was general manager; Marlin Olmsted took the presidency.

Wellsville, Addison, Galeton

In 1895–96 the B&S built 37 miles northwest from Galeton to Wellsville, New York, and an Erie interchange. Midway, the Wellsville grade hit about 2.84 percent. The Wellsville, Coudersport & Pine Creek, a ten-mile stub from Wellsville to Hickox, was leased January 1, 1896, for 85 years after the B&S started grading a parallel line. Galeton got a mill. The Goodyears had timber on Pine Creek to cut.

From Ansonia, beginning March 18, 1896, the B&S reached Corning over the Fall Brook at 14 cents a ton for 43 miles, and from Corning into the Erie for New York. That agreement expired June 1, 1898. The Goodyears had already bought the 45-mile Addison & Pennsylvania from Senator Thomas C. Platt—the old narrow-gauge Galeton–Addison road, standard-gauged in 1895. A half-mile connector at Gaines Junction tied it to the Ansonia line. Parallel Gaines–Galeton track came up. Addison gave the B&S its own Erie door. The Fall Brook went into the New York Central the next year.

Between 1894 and 1898 the company moved its shops from Austin to Galeton: a yard, six-stall house, car shop, brick freight and passenger stations. Galeton was the mountain hub for the rest of the railroad’s life. The 1930 map at the top of this page still shows it that way.

South for coal

Hemlock would not last. The Goodyears went south from Wharton in 1900–01 to Sinnemahoning and a Philadelphia & Erie (Pennsylvania Railroad) connection near Driftwood, then on to Du Bois in 1902–05 and Sykesville. Medix Run, already a small mill and tannery town, became a Goodyear lumber camp; they bought the mill, a short coal railroad, and 20,000 acres. In 1906 Galeton, Austin, Medix Run, and the Lackawanna Lumber mills at Cross Fork were among the busiest in Pennsylvania.

Coal was the second empire. The Buffalo and Susquehanna Coal and Coke Company took the Clearfield Coal property at Tyler in 1901, then Berwind-White and Peale, Peacock & Kerr lands around Du Bois. By 1904 it ranked sixth in the district. Holdings were later put at about 120 million tons. The big plant was Sagamore, a town that did not exist until the railroad arrived in late 1905 with lumber for the first ninety houses. To reach it the B&S used 16 miles of Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh between Stanley and Juneau on a 20-year lease, then 21 miles of its own iron to the mine. Designed for thousands of tons a day, Sagamore never hit the paper number. It still loaded enough that by 1907 the railroad was a coal road that happened to have mills, not a lumber road that happened to have mines.

Railway, steamships, and a 999-year lease

Buffalo was the point of the whole machine: coal and coke to furnaces, ore in from the lakes, leather and lumber to market. In 1902 Frank organized the Buffalo and Susquehanna Mining Company on Mesabi ground and the Buffalo & Susquehanna Steamship Company. Two freighters, Frank H. Goodyear and S. M. Clement, were built for the ore. The same year the brothers incorporated the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railway to build Wellsville to Buffalo, nearly 90 miles, and took the company public for about $17 million. A $15 million mortgage on the Railroad, Fisk & Robinson of Wall Street, paid for Sagamore and the north end together.

They built two blast furnaces on Lake Erie with William A. Rogers of Rogers, Brown & Company as the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company, more than $4 million. The Union Ship Canal was a joint hole in the waterfront with the Pennsylvania and Lackawanna Steel. A Terminal Railroad switched the furnaces, elevators, and foundry. The Railway’s chosen line ran Wellsville down the Genesee to Belfast, across to Arcade, west to Springville, and north down Boston Valley into South Buffalo. Regular service reached Springville in September 1906. Passenger trains used Erie iron into Buffalo from February 4, 1907, until a Lake Shore connection could be finished. The card advertised the Grand Scenic Route, a buffet-parlor between Buffalo and Galeton, and Sunday trips to Crystal Lake. The right-of-way even cut the Erie County Fairgrounds.

On July 1, 1907 the Railway leased the Railroad, the Addison & Susquehanna, and the Wellsville, Coudersport & Pine Creek for 999 years and ran the whole as the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railway. The map now stretched about 250 miles, Sagamore to Buffalo. Brooks and Pittsburgh had begun delivering a long series of 2-8-0s, 123–168. Forty locomotives, 32 passenger cars, and nearly 2,500 freight cars were on the property. The line was longer, steeper, and more redundant than the Pennsylvania’s and Erie’s existing paths to Buffalo. It existed so the Goodyears would not pay those roads to haul their own coal.

Frank H. Goodyear died May 13, 1907, a few months after the Erie passenger deal. Charles took over. They never saw a return on the Buffalo iron.

May 6, 1910

The first full year of the Buffalo extension, 1908, the company lost about $593,000. 1909 lost about $509,000. 1910 lost more than $765,000. Lumber shipments had already peaked. The Iron Company passed to Rogers-Brown in December 1909. Fisk & Robinson, the house that had sold the $17 million, failed in February 1910 and blamed those bonds. Bondholders of the Railway’s $6 million first mortgage formed a committee in April.

On Friday, May 6, 1910, the interest went unpaid. Both the Railway and the Railroad filed. Harry I. Miller, who had run the Goodyears’ New Orleans Great Northern, went in as receiver. Ten more Brooks 2-8-0s, 169–178, were cancelled. One of that undelivered order, intended as B&S 169, later became Tooele Valley 11 in Utah. Plans to tunnel out the Galeton switchbacks and to push toward Pittsburgh died with the paper. A few weeks later the steamer Frank H. Goodyear, ore-laden, was cut in two in fog on the lakes. Charles W. Goodyear died April 16, 1911.

Austin was wrecked on September 30, 1911, when a dam failed on Freeman Run—88 dead, the mill town washed downstream. Cross Fork’s timber was gone; the Lackawanna mill had closed in 1909, the stave mill in 1912. The B&S ran its last train on the branch May 31, 1913, and pulled the rails in 1914.

Railroad without the Railway

The Railroad was the piece worth saving. Sold under foreclosure at Coudersport for $5 million, it became the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad Corporation at the end of 1913 (operations from the last day of that year into 1914). Old bondholders took 70 percent in new bonds and some stock. The Railway kept losing. In September 1915 the Wellsville–Buffalo property, about 90 miles, sold on the $6 million mortgage for $300,000. The Susquehanna Finance Corporation formed the Wellsville and Buffalo Railroad, leased it back briefly to the B&S, and ran it from December 15, 1915, to November 17, 1916. There was almost no on-line freight. Passenger trains ran late. Wartime scrap prices finished the argument. The iron came up that fall.

A scrap of the Railway survived in Arcade. The Arcade & Attica, successor to the Goodyears’ Buffalo, Attica & Arcade, got permission in 1917 to use about a mile and a half of the old B&S in the village. That is an Arcade story. The Buffalo extension as a through railroad was gone.

Stripped of Wellsville–Buffalo, the Railroad earned again. War coal from Sagamore and Du Bois put it in the black; 4 and 5 percent dividends, then an application for 7 percent in 1918. The United States Railroad Administration ran it with everyone else and paid $593,000 in compensation. The 1920 Transportation Act first sketched an Erie grouping, then a B&O grouping. Neither consolidation happened. The B&S stayed independent through the 1920s. Coal mines began closing in 1925. The 1930 map and the Official Guide plates on this page are that smaller railroad: Galeton still the hub, Addison and Wellsville still the Erie doors, Ansonia still the Central, Du Bois still the coal end, no Buffalo main.

Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad timetables from the 1930 Official Guide of the Railways

Buffalo & Susquehanna timetables from the 1930 Official Guide of the Railways. American-Rails.com collection.

Baltimore & Ohio, 1929–1932

Daniel Willard wanted a B&O path toward New York that was not the Reading’s charity. In 1929 the B&O bought a majority of Buffalo & Susquehanna stock and, in the same campaign, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh. Operations of both, and of the B&S Coal and Coke Company, passed on January 1, 1932. Willard’s idea was to use the BR&P and the B&S as a link toward the Reading at Williamsport, then New York and New England. The Depression did not pay for a Williamsport extension. The B&O got coal and a Buffalo terminal. It did not get a New York main. The B&S name stayed on the mountain until the 1954 paper merger into the parent.

July 1942 and the Sole Leather Line

In July 1942 another Sinnemahoning flood took the track from Sinnemahoning to Burrows and from Wharton to Austin. The Galeton end of the old B&S was an island, divorced from the rest of the B&O. Passenger trains made their last scheduled run from Addison on November 19, 1949. After the war the orphan earned less every year.

In 1954 the B&O merged the remaining B&S corporations into itself, clearing title for a sale. The ICC approved a transfer in 1955 to the H. E. Salzberg Company, about 91 miles and six 2-8-0s for $250,000. The Wellsville, Addison & Galeton Railroad ran the first trains on January 1, 1956: Galeton to Wellsville, Addison, Ansonia, and a Burrows stub where the flood had cut the line. The Potter Enterprise called the price the biggest steal since the Brinks holdup. WAG’s last movement was November 7, 1979.

Sources

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, MG-457, Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad Co. Records. Sinnemahoning Valley May 9, 1885; 1893 five-company merger; 1910 receivership; 1914 Railroad Corporation; B&O 1932
Taylor, Ronald. Allegany County Historical Society railroad notes: Frank H. Goodyear death May 13, 1907; Charles W. Goodyear April 1911; Cross Fork last train May 31, 1913; Railroad Corporation December 31, 1913; Wellsville & Buffalo rails 1916; B&O 1932; July 1942 flood; last Addison passenger November 19, 1949; 1955 Salzberg sale
Wikipedia, “Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad,” for the 1891–93 connecting companies, Wellsville lease, Fall Brook rights, Sagamore/BR&P, Railway lease July 1, 1907, May 6, 1910 default, and 1915–16 Wellsville & Buffalo, cross-checked against the archives notes above
American-Rails.com, Wellsville, Addison & Galeton: ICC 1955, $250,000, January 1, 1956, November 7, 1979
Official Guide of the Railways, 1930. Timetables reproduced on this page
1930 system map reproduced on this page

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