New booklet focuses on historic railroad corridor

A new publication from the Sayre Historical Society titled "Route 220: The Railfan Road in Bradford County" focuses on the fascinating railroad history along Route 220 in Bradford County. The historic corridor includes interesting accounts of the canal and railroad as well as coal mining and lumbering. The booklet was inspired by an October 2019 cover story in Trains magazine by Oren Hoelbok that followed the historic highway through five states and over 680 miles.

CAPTION: The extensive "system shops" of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Sayre are shown in this photograph from the new publication "Route 220: The Railfan Road in Bradford County".

The new 28-page booklet was printed by Clare Printing in Sayre and funded by a grant from the Bradford County Tourism Promotion Agency.

"The booklet is intended to serve as a tour of Route 220 in Bradford County with notes and images of the railroad history along the way, states the publication. The tour starts at the beginning of Route 220 in Waverly, NY and travels south through South Waverly, Sayre, Athens, Milan, Ulster, N. Towanda, Monroeton and New Albany. Approximate miles points on Route 220 are included."

More than 25 historic photographs (several in color) and two maps are included in the booklet.

The historical account also includes a list of books and resources used in the publication. These include Robert Archer's A History of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Staley Clarke's "The Romance of Old Barclay", and Richard Palmer's "The Coming of the Railroad to Sayre", among others.

Side tours in the publication include the remote coal mining settlement of Barclay Mountain and the "railroad that never was" called the Pittsburgh, Binghamton & Eastern Railroad. A brief mention of Dushore, also along Route 220 just over the county line in Sullivan County, includes an 1896 photograph of the railroad trestle that ran through town.

The section on Sayre includes mention of railroad founder Asa Packer and his son, Robert, as well as the Southern Central Junction and the "new" railroad shops which opened in 1904.

"All major car and locomotive work was centralized on 70 acres in the Susquehanna Valley (in Sayre), and the scattered smaller shops phased out or reduced to minor repair work," stated Herbert Harwood, Jr. in an article from the April 1972 issue of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. "Sayre itself was central - slightly half the way from Jersey City to Buffalo - and was within easy reach of both the coal country and the widespread New York state lines. Sayre was subsequently publicized as the country's third largest railroad shop and, for the first 22 years of its life, built new locomotives as well as handling normal heavy repairs and rebuilding."

The member-supported historical society is funded by the Bradford County United Way and the Bradford County Tourism Promotion Agency.