Southern Tier Line

The Southern Tier Line is a railroad line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. states of New York and Pennsylvania. The line runs from Suffern, New York northwest to Buffalo, New York mostly along a former Erie Railroad line. From Suffern to Sparrowbush along which passenger service still runs, the line is leased to and maintained by Metro-North Railroad for its Port Jervis Line. From its east end, NS has trackage rights south on the New Jersey Transit Main and Bergen County Lines to Conrail's North Jersey Shared Assets Area; it junctions with the Lake Erie District at its west end. Along the way it meets the Corning Secondary at Corning, New York.

History

The oldest piece of the line, from Suffern to Goshen, opened in 1841 as part of the New York and Erie Rail Road. Extensions opened to Port Jervis and Binghamton in 1848,Owego in 1849, and Dunkirk (leaving the Southern Tier Line at Hornell) in 1851. At the Buffalo end, the Attica and Buffalo Railroad opened from Buffalo east to Attica in 1842, but was part of the New York Central Railroad system until 1852, when it was sold to the Buffalo and New York City Railroad east of Depew. Also in 1852, the Buffalo and New York City Railroad built southeast from Attica to Hornell and west from Depew to Buffalo. The entire line became part of the Erie Railroad through leases and mergers.

Southern Tier

The Southern Tier is the counties of New York west of the Catskill Mountains along the northern border of Pennsylvania. It generally includes the counties that border Pennsylvania west of Delaware County, but definitions of the region vary widely.

The region is bordered to the south by the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania, and together these regions are known as the Twin Tiers.

Constituent counties

The eight counties almost always included in the Southern Tier are:

Often but less frequently included in the "Southern Tier" designation are Schuyler County, Yates County (the regional sentiment is stronger throughout the southern portions of Yates county, such as the village of Dundee), Cortland County, Tompkins County, and (far more rarely, except for Chenango) Schoharie County, Chenango County, and Otsego County (the last three of these, along with Broome County, are also commonly considered part of the tourist designation "Central Leatherstocking Region"), however Schoharie County is also listed as part of the Capital District. At least one definition used by the state Department of Transportation includes Sullivan County, which usually isn't included in other definitions. The National Weather Service office in Buffalo occasionally includes Wyoming County and, more rarely, Southern Erie County in its definition.