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B&O Freight Station Closed at Osceola (Article dated May 1952) Sent in by Kathy Sarber

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad closed the Osceola station Friday and will abandon the property, to maintain a no agency station handling carload freight only.  All freight and express will be handled through the Elkland station.

William Roche, station agent, has been transferred to Newfield Junction.  The Elkland man had been at the Osceola operation for the past four and one-half years.  Before taking the agency at Osceola he worked there briefly under D. E. Wiess.

The closing leaves Osceola without a railroad station, since the Central abandoned their station several years ago and had been using the B&O facilities.  The closing was authorized by the Public Utility Commission on April 15th, after hearing the road apply for abandonment at Wellsboro in November.  Osceola people fought the closing unsuccessfully, despite the fact that the Osceola station was showing an average yearly profit of over $20,000.

The B&O sent the last passenger train over the rails on November 19, 1949 and stopped Sunday scheduled freight service at that time.  With the loss of passenger and mail revenues, and the Sunday freight, the station last year still had a revenue of $63,048.99.

Hay, lumber and milk were the principal materials handled by the station since it was opened in 1882 when the rails pushed westward from Elkland.  The present building was erected about 1895.  At the peak of valley railroading the station handled as many as eight trains daily – four were passenger trains.

The Central pulled rails between Westfield and Newfield Junction in 1926 and discontinued passenger service on their entire Cowanesque line in 1932 – Closing the Osceola and other small freight stations as other means of transportation cut into revenues.  With the curtailment of powdered milk manufacture and the closing of the Osceola Powdered Milk Plant three years ago, the steady downward trend of lumbering and the rail shipment of farm products, freight revenue hit a new low last year when the Osceola station showed a $19,129.18 profit.  That year the station handled 78 cars of freight and 353 cars of milk.

A. J. Dayton, B&B Auditor of Wellsville officially closed the station Friday and ordered equipment shipped to Dubois.  He was accompanied by NYC auditors and other B&B officials.

I opened up another can of worms earlier in the week by posting a query on the PABRADFO [Ttri-County] list concerning passenger rail service in Tioga Co. The response has been extraordinary!

You may want to check out this link - since I saw that you had posted a few photos of old train stations.http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/images/e/ErieRailroad/

The 'Tioga Division' section has photos of nearly all of the stations along that line - mostly from 1909. This time, I'm keeping track of the responses, links, anecdotes and whatever, as they come in.

Dave Clark   Belmont, NC

Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

Published On Tri-Counties Site On 01 AUG 2001 By Joyce M. Tice Email Joyce M. Tice You are the  visitor since the counter was installed on 01 AUG 2001