I lived in a small community (E. Pembroke) in Western New York and everyone called the RR that went through the village the Peanut Line. It delivered coal to the Kohorst business and may have serviced a canning factory as well.
Any suggestions on how I can research the Peanut Line and find out where it went and the owners? The NYC mainline was not that far away.
This website may be of some use. Looks to be a New York Central branch.
http://www.crookedlakereview.com/articles/136_167/142springsummer2007/142sheret.html
I Googled "The Peanut Line railroad" and got a number of hits for a NYC branch in New York. Good hunting.
Old Timer (but up on the technology) hehehehe
Hm, I've been to Honeoye Falls but don't recall seeing the railroad grade, nevertheless it looks like an abutment is still in place.
http://tinyurl.com/ybg7ym9
The last train ran on January 15, 1939 . It was NYC .
Many upstate New York branches quit around that time period. Syracuse & Chenango Valley, which if purchased by NYO&W could have given them an outlet to Syracuse, was cut back to Cazenovia around the late 30s.
I find it interesting that the Central New England Railway was also torn up in 1938-39 (most of the steel being sold to Japan who graciously returned it to Pearl Harbor). The CNE was owned by the New York, New Haven & Hartford; but one has to wonder what prompted the closure of all these viable branchlines at roughly the same time?
Ray
Essentially, what prompted those abandonements was the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Depression killed a lot of businesses upon which the lines depended for traffic. Also, the growth of paved roads cut into passenger traffic as more people switched to their own autos and express traffic moved to trucks. Same thing happened with a lot of interurban and suburban electric lines. They were particulary vulnerable to good roads.
I don't know if New York state was affected but many branch lines in New England were abandoned due to heavy damage after the huricannes and floods of 1936 and 1938. They weren't worth repairing due to low traffic on these lines.