Nostalgia & History > Buffalo Central Terminal

Good article in Buffalo News regarding the money needed to shore up the old Buffalo Central Terminal. It is a beautiful building. If someone had deep pockets it could be converted into some useful living space.

http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121211/CITYANDREGION/121219809/1003

Nobody would WANT to live there. The neighborhood surrounding the station is shady at best.

Here's what Buffalo Central looked like in 1977. If I have any closeups that show how dreary the interior was by then, they haven't been scanned.

The RDC train is the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo service to (no surprise) Toronto. I think TH&B called them "Dayliners". "Take off--to the Great White North. Beauty, eh?"

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DNRY122, I've never seen those views of Buffalo CUT. Thanks very much for posting them. They're great.

By the way, a trivia contest. How many "CUTs" were there?

Myself and a few fraternity brothers took the Th&B Dayliners up to TO in the late 70's. A great ride and had a fun up at University of Toronto.

DNRY122 Wrote:
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> Here's what Buffalo Central looked like in 1977.

A quick tour of the property with Google Earth shows that it has gone somewhat down-market since your pictures. That building on the right has a total of some four panes of unbroken glass in its entire length. The two-story building that continues it to the south no longer has roof in many places.

When I included these photos in an account of the "Dog Tired Tour of 1977" someone chimed in with a report that the last passenger train to this depot left in 1978 or 79. When I came back from Toronto, there wasn't a useful TH&B train, so I used the bus, arriving at the Buffalo Greyhound station shortly before midnight. By contrast the "Dog Kennel" was almost new, and was quite modern in design. I sometimes wonder just how well it has aged, or if another bus station has replaced it.

I rode the TH&B RDC Toronto to Buffalo in 1980, and by that time Central Union Terminal had been closed and Exchange Street had been reopened by Amtrak. We ran to Exchange Street, connecting with an Amtrak train from Niagara Falls, NY. We crossed the river on the bridge from Fort Erie.

My first memory of railroading is being aboard the eastbound Empire State Express, NYC train no. 50, about to depart Central Terminal for a visit with my grandmothers, who lived in the New York City suburbs. This would be about 1950. I rode into, out of, and through the terminal many times in the 1950s and 1960s. It's a shame to see what's happened to it over time since then.

Art House
Gettysburg, Pa.

My first trip out of BCT was a baseball excursion to Cleveland and the power was a 4-6-4. A real long time ago.

Was in Buffalo just after the great blizzard of 77. Wandered all over the place and wound up in the disprs office. Visited with the Chief for a while, and went down to the platforms and shot the westbound Lake Shore. It was bitterly cold and still lots of snow, but well worth the trip. Rode the TH&B Budd cars to Toronto but mostly after dark, I have a slide similar to the one posted