Buffalo Central Terminal

RAIL FANS MINE RICH LODE OF HISTORY PAPERS IN OLD TERMINAL DETAIL OPERATIONS OF LONG-GONE LINES
November 7, 1990
By KEVIN COLLISON News Staff Reporter

Michael and Stephan Koenig recall vividly the first time they discovered the treasure trove hidden in the tower.

“Everyone was awed,” Michael Koenig said. “It was like letting a bunch of kids into a candy store. One 85-year-old man had been there the day they opened the place. He was crying when we left because of how it had been neglected.”

The tower is part of the historic New York Central Terminal off Paderewski Drive. Its treasure is a cache of abandoned documents that reveal the history of railroading in Buffalo dating to the late 1870s.

Details small and mighty have been found in the 16 truckloads the Koenigs and members of the Western New York Railway Historical Society hauled away before the new owner took over the vacant building.

Now they plan to get back inside next week to rescue the rest — to save the records of dead railroads such as the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo and the Lehigh Valley — before the elements and vandals erase part of Buffalo’s history.

“It’s like a time machine,” said Michael Koenig, 47. He and his son Stephan, 18, a student at Erie Community College, share a passionate interest in railroading and railroad lore. The basement of their house on Newburgh Street is jammed with more than 3,200 HO-scale models of locomotives and train cars.

Many bear the emblems of the long-vanished local railroads that once rumbled through the New York Central yards.

When the Koenigs first looked inside last spring, the 61-year-old terminal on the city’s East Side had been vacant for more than a decade. Vandals had ripped out its copper, smashed its trademark buffalo statue and broken its art deco clock. Fires had been set in the tower among the records.

But the men found enough to persuade Thomas Telesco, the former owner, to allow a rescue party from the railway historical society to make several trips inside.

They hauled away employee records that listed who served during World War I, who was injured on the job, who took sick leave, who was promoted and who was fired.

The more spectacular stuff included files on railroad accidents. In a 1953 disaster, two passenger trains slammed into debris from a freight train and derailed near Conneaut, Ohio., killing 21 people. The final resting places of the cars and locomotives were detailed painstakingly in the report that had been left behind when the Penn Central Railroad, successor to the New York Central, cleared out.

The building was closed last summer by Bernie Tuchman, its new owner, before the railroad buffs could finish their work. Michael Koenig said repeated attempts to reach Tuchman had not been successful until Tuesday.

In the meantime, he said, vandals continue to get inside. He also said the records, which already are yellowing and scented with mildew, may not last much longer without protection.

When reached by phone at his Buffalo office, Tuchman said he had no problem allowing the Koenigs and their fellow railway historical society members back into the building.

“I’ll be glad to help them,” he said.

Koenig said his son talked with Tuchman on Tuesday, and they agreed to set up an appointment next week to retrieve the rest of the records.

Many of the records — with routine entries of day-to-day activities — seem insignificant. But William H. Siener, director of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, said their importance shouldn’t be underestimated.

“More and more, social and labor historians are interested in adding people who are sometimes referred to as the ‘inarticulate’ to the historical record,” Siener said.

Inarticulate people, the historian said, didn’t keep diaries or send letters describing themselves or their times. Their stories appear in the ledgers of promotions or accidents like those stored at the terminal.

“As far as I can tell,” he said, “the kinds of records these folks come up with, when added with other bits of information, can provide a transportation history of the area and the people who made it go.”

Some of the documents the Koenigs and others have retrieved will be on display during this weekend fund-raising showings of the film “The General,” starring Buster Keaton. The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Erie County Historical Society, 25 Nottingham Court.