Evening Niagara Yard local L035 shoves a single two-bay hopper over Hyde Park Blvd, coming out of the very infrequently served Tam Ceramics in Niagara Falls.
Tam is presently the last customer on an almost dead clinging by a thread CSX branch, known as the "Country Industrial" despite nothing in the surrounding scenery resembling a typical countryside. Their speciality is in Titanate and Zirconia powders used for industrial manufacturing. It is by far the least frequently served business catered to by CSX in the western region of New York. If the phrase "as-needed" warranted a dictionary definition, look no further than Tam Ceramics. There have been times when they go months without a car delivered to them. I cannot understate how rare it is to see a job going up the Country to work them. At best when I first found out about them, service there was once a month if at all. If it weren't for a friend of mine pointing this business out to me back in August of 2021, this shot might not even exist.
Historically, Tam is now at the end of trackage from what remains of the NYC Hojack line at its western end. There are various bits and pieces of the Hojack across the northern portion of the state, but fewer portions remain in service year after year. Some notable ones include the Somerset Railroad which reused the Hojack right of way. Ironic how that area near Appleton, NY was once torn up, then rebuilt, and now torn up again in the last couple years, following the shutdown of the Kintigh Generating Station. There was also a portion of Hojack retained near Charlotte, NY. In fact, I just explored it a couple days ago, and much of that has been torn out now as well, with some still left in place east of Russell Station. However that area hasn't seen traffic in years, due to a washout on the Charlotte Runner. A small yard which used to stage coal cars for Russell Station has been reduced to one track. So, the Country Industrial is really quite significant in terms of remaining Hojack trackage. The line used to cut through Niagara University just north of here, serving Stauffer Chemical up until the early '80s. When they quit rail service, the line was cut back to where it is today. A bridge with rails on it still runs along Rt. 104 by the Niagara Power Vista, just south of the university.
The Country was once, as all things railroad tend to be, a much busier branch even up until a few short years ago. Per my 1987 Conrail ZTS map, just north of Tam there were spurs for Greif Bros (now IMERYS), and a team track for the power vista immediately south of Greif Bros, who occasionally still receive transformers by rail. Such was the case in 2023, which a depressed flat car was delivered to Tam for unloading as it's the closest place to do so without the team track. An inquisitive eye can still spot rail in the ground at both IMERYS and along Power Authority Service Road where the team track was, including a bumping post or two left behind. South of Tam the trackage was even more plentiful along College Ave. While most of the businesses moved out of that area, one major customer stuck around until the end of 2018. Globe Metallurgical, owned by Ferroglobe, the final occupant of a plant which had occupied its location on Highland Ave for over a hundred years. A leading producer in silicon, they opted to move out of New York due to poor economic conditions bringing them down, relocating to a site in Waterford, OH formerly on CSX trackage, which was purchased and now ran by the Belpre Industrial Parkersburg Railroad. With the majority of business once along College Ave, a yard job from Niagara could spend an entire 12 hour day switching up there. The last dedicated job to the Country, Y125, was abolished some time in early 2021. I recall being up there one morning in January of that year, and heard someone ask where Y125 was, to which the yardmaster replied they were "out in the country." If only I'd known what that meant back then, or had the wherewithal to check this area. Having never seen train cars or power up there otherwise, I had written it off as out of service. The switch to the spur along College Ave, the runaround, and track into Globe is all still intact today. It's a wonder CSX hasn't done away with it. Perhaps they're hoping someone else will still move in. So yeah, that's the current state of the Country. Nothing left except for Tam.
Once Y125 was done away with, Tam became an overnight switch with the customer relegated to the night job Y325. Back in 2021, Y325 was still a busy job with OxyChem in the mix alongside Covanta. In fact, there was a second yard job which worked a couple days a week overnight to help with all the switching. Between Covanta and OxyChem alone they had their hands full, which meant that service to Tam was slowly taking a back seat. For whatever reason, crews don't like going up there, probably due to the seldom used rickety trackage which suffers from overgrowth and tree branches galore. For safety reasons, this is not a run which should be made in darkness, but that's just how it was. I monitored Niagara Yard for two straight weeks back in October 2021 waiting for any sign of a car for Tam. My first encounter ended up being on a whim, as I followed L035 (back then Y203) out to Lockport due to a good crew, where the conductor fatefully informed me they would be switched later that night, probably around 2:30 a.m. Back then band practice used to go pretty late for me, so I managed to hang around long enough to kill time before driving north back to the Falls. I'll link the shot from that night below, as it's already on Flickr. Ironically my first shots of them came the day of my friend's birthday, the same friend who pointed Tam out to me in the first place. Being new to night photography at the time, and having no faith in my night abilities, my shots turned out surprisingly well. My next goal for this place was obviously a daylight shot, an opportunity I honestly thought I'd never get. Well, that's usually how these things happen.
Fast forward nine months later, it's August of 2022. It's a Tuesday and I'm in Syracuse for an Incubus concert, for which I had VIP tickets to a meet and greet and more. While I was in the room talking to Incubus, little did I know my phone was ringing in my pocket (on silent of course so as not to interrupt). Who could it be? None other than Rodney Kantorski, to most people online the angry rambling PRR hater, but to us Buffalonians a friendly CSX engineer. He was off that day for personal reasons, but he had been informed by the crew running for him on L035 that they were ordered to go pull a car at Tam, which had been sitting for months and dodged by Y325 every time they were told to go get it. And so, the yardmaster set his foot down and had someone else do it. My heart sank knowing full well I was about to miss the hardest shot to get probably in all of WNY. I informed everyone I could who I knew would be interested. Waiting with baited breath, I berated them for updates along the way. The news which came back was a total shock. It turns out a massive tree limb had fallen across the tracks halfway up the line. Normally a train cree might just push it out of the way, however due to where the limb was reaching out from, connected to someone's back yard, the crew turned around and never made the pull. It is quite possibly one of the greatest strokes of luck I have ever had, spared from missing out on such a hard to get shot. Lo and behold two days later, Rodney was back in the job, and once again L035 was still assigned to go grab this car. The tree limb had been taken care of by MOW workers, and the line was assured to be clear of debris and safe to travel on. Rodney even called me again before going on duty that day to let me know once more. I made sure to show up in thr Falls nice and early as I awaited the chase north. Inside the plant, there was chatter aplenty between Rodney and his conductor, including a joke about the stick rail being "good for 60." It was revealed there was a second hopper inside of the plant which for some reason had not been released, despite being inside even longer than the one they were told to pull. They had to move that one out of the way to get at the released car. The unreleased car had supposedly been in there since March of the same year. It was retrieved at a later date as Y325 resumed going up there, much to their displeasure. Following this, L035 would shove all the way south and back to Niagara, then run light power out to Lockport for a normal Thursday evening. Rodney even said he had considered going down along College Ave to run around, but with the track condition unknown the idea remained just that. Would have made for a hell of a photo shoot though.
I managed to shoot Tam not once, not twice, but three times in 2023, two of those at night. The first was to pull a hopper surprisingly only a week after it had been placed. With a new CEO in charge of CSX, the customer first mentality was starting to shine through in Niagara, retrieving the empty cars in a week's time instead of leaving it for a month. The transformer load for the power vista was a wacky situation. Tam had not received another car since I shot Y325 pulling in March. Allegedly an FBI investigation took place related to them, which had the plant shut down for an indeterminate amount of time. The night Y325 was supposed to deliver this transformer in August, the track it was sitting on was locked out of service, and so with it being ineccessible the crew decided to take a ride up the Country anyways. Their concerns about the line being too overgrown to safely take the transformer up were confirmed, as it would have to be a shove move rather than pulling north as they normally do when there's a hopper to deliver. A couple weeks passed by with uncertainty over the matter, having been quoted a couple weeks to clear the entire line of encroaching brush. Meanwhile the city considered trucking it from where the transformer sat in the yard, however the surround residential streets posed an issue. Finally it was once again L035 to the rescue with Rodney at the throttle to deliver the car, returning early from Lockport to do so. I just happened to follow them out there and found out in person, but he was going to contact me anyways. A week later, L035 was tasked with running up to retrieve the empty car and bracketing box cars, on a non-Lockport night oddly enough. Lack of normal work otherwise that day allowed them to do so.
By the end of August 2023, Y325 had been moved to afternoons as Y225 and Tam was once again receiving hoppers. In fact, I missed a broad daylight run one afternoon due to showing up just late enough to miss them depart, then sit and wait long enough to hear them call to come back. Shame on me. Traffic is still irregular, but I'm happy to report that they have received two hoppers within the last two weeks, with Y294 (RCO version of Y225) making three trips up there in that time: one to place in late February, followed by a trip to place and pull this past Sunday, and another pull just last night. Hopefully the future remains bright for Tam Ceramics in a state where industrial business is hard to conduct. You can bet I'll be around to document it every chance I get.
