Buffalo Creek

Company History: The Buffalo Creek Railroad, commonly referred to as the "little Giant" of the Queen City's rail center, observed its 100th anniversary of service in 1969. The railroad was organized in 1868 and incorporated in 1869. The Buffalo Creek was considered a virtal link in the progress of Buffalo's waterfront. As of 1969, the railroad was measured at 34.23 miles of trackage. Little of it ever stood still during operations that carried on 24 hours a day., seven days a week. The railroad fully dieselized in 1948 when its nine steam engines were retired. In the late 1960s, the staff was at 140 employees and annual payroll in excess of $1mm.

Buffalo Creek was a switching road in the heavy industrialized southern portion of Buffalo NY. It was jointly leased and controlled by Erie (Erie-Lackawanna) and Lehigh Valley, and served as the primary switching carrier in Buffalo's grain elevator and mill district. The railroad was recognized far beyond its Buffalo confines by its fleet of grain box cars with the flour sack in a circle logo. When Conrail was formed on April 1, 1976, Buffalo Creek followed EL and LV into the new railroad, and was formally merged out of existence in 1983.

Successor/Parent History: The Consolidated Rail Corporation, commonly known as Conrail (reporting mark CR), was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeast U.S. between 1976 and 1999. Conrail is a portmanteau of "consolidated" and "rail" from the name of the company.

The U.S. federal government created Conrail to take over the potentially profitable lines of multiple bankrupt carriers, including the Penn Central Transportation Company and Erie Lackawanna Railway. With the benefit of industry-wide regulatory requirements being reduced (via the 4R Act and the Staggers Act), Conrail began to turn a profit in the 1980s and was turned over to private investors in 1987. The two remaining Class I railroads in the East, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), agreed in 1997 to split the system approximately equally, returning rail freight competition to the Northeast by essentially undoing the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad that created Penn Central. Following Surface Transportation Board approval, CSX and NS took control in August 1998, and on June 1, 1999, began operating their portions of Conrail.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.