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Wellsville, Addison & Galeton Railroad (WAG): The Sole Leather Line

Last revised: August 28, 2026

By: Adam Burns

The Wellsville, Addison & Galeton Railroad (reporting mark WAG) was a Salzberg short line on leftover Baltimore & Ohio / Buffalo & Susquehanna track in northern Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York. It was incorporated in 1954, started running on January 1, 1956, and made its last movement on November 7, 1979. Railfans called it the Sole Leather Line after the tanneries at Elkland and Westfield. The paint was red and cream. The power that made the photographs was a handful of secondhand Ford Motor Company GE centercabs, then former Southern Pacific and Western Pacific F-units bought from General Electric.

It was never a large railroad. The ICC sale was about 91 miles for $250,000, plus six ex-B&S 2-8-0s, cabooses, a plow, and work equipment. Galeton, Pennsylvania, was the hub. One leg ran northwest to Wellsville, New York (Erie interchange); one northeast to Addison, New York (another Erie connection); one east to Ansonia (New York Central, later Penn Central / Conrail); a stub southwest toward Burrows marked where the 1942 flood had cut the B&O off from the rest of its old B&S. Grades on the Wellsville line hit 2.85 percent. Ten-mile-an-hour slow orders were normal. Floods and closed tanneries did the rest.

A crewman climbs down from F7A #2200 to uncouple and run around the train at the Conrail interchange, Ansonia, Pennsylvania, November 24, 1976. Doug Kroll photo.

On this page: At a glance · Buffalo & Susquehanna · Salzberg and 1956 · The map · Sole leather, oil, and boxcars · Cutbacks, 1956–1973 · Agnes to November 7, 1979 · Motive power · Complete diesel roster · What survives

At a Glance

Buffalo & Susquehanna under the B&O

The track the WAG inherited was Frank H. Goodyear’s lumber-and-coal railroad. In the 1880s he bought timber in northern Pennsylvania and southern New York and needed a way to Buffalo. The Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad opened from Keating Summit to Austin, Pennsylvania, in December 1885. He and his brother added the Susquehanna Railroad, Cherry Springs, Coudersport & Wellsboro, and Cross Fork lines and reorganized them as the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad in 1893.

Galeton became the mountain hub. In 1895 the B&S reached Wellsville and bought the ten-mile Wellsville, Coudersport & Pine Creek to Hickox. In 1898 it reached Addison over the Addison & Pennsylvania. Coal branches multiplied. The line into Buffalo opened in 1906; the whole system became the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railway in 1907. Peak mileage was more than 400, on grades that never stopped being a problem.

The Depression handed the wreck to the B&O in 1932, in the same era the B&O took the neighboring Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh. Daniel Willard wanted a B&O route toward New York. The B&S and BR&P were supposed to help. They gave the B&O coal and a Buffalo terminal. They did not give it a New York main line. Following Willard's death in 1942 the B&O gave up on a direct New York route. That same year a flood isolated the old B&S south of Burrows from the rest of the B&O. After World War II the orphan earned less every year and the B&O eventually put it up for sale.

WAG 132-tonner #1700 (built as Ford #1006) laid up in the weeds in front of the depot at Elkland, Pennsylvania, 1960s. Ed Lewis photo. American-Rails.com collection. #1700 is the only Ford centercab that survives.

Salzberg buys an orphan, 1954–56

H. E. Salzberg Company, already in the shortline business, took the property with ICC approving the sale in 1955. Included in the deal were six B&O class E-60 Consolidations (ex-B&S, 1907–08), four cabooses, snowplow, and odds and ends. Salzberg did not want steam and thus transferred a 50-ton GE from the family’s Southern New York / Unadilla Valley orbit, leased two Rock Island Whitcomb 75-tonners, and acquired two Ford 125-ton GE centercabs.

The Wellsville grade made that bet look thin; the 50-tonner went home on a flatcar, the Whitcombs went back to the Rock Island, and Steam filled in for a few months. Interestingly, only #3127 was ever lettered WAG. Five heavier Ford 132-tonners, #1400–1800, arrived in late 1956 and 1957 which then allowed the 2-8-0s to be scrapped. The railroad that railfans remember—red-and-cream centercabs on 10 mph track—starts there.

How to read the map

Everything radiated from Galeton:

• Wellsville Branch (about 37 miles, 1895)—northwest to the Erie at Wellsville. The 2.85 percent grade. Sinclair Oil’s refinery. After 1964, the crossing with the Coudersport & Port Allegany at Newfield Junction.
• Addison Branch (about 54 miles, Addison & Northern Pennsylvania, 1883)—northeast through Elkland and Westfield to the Erie at Addison. Tanneries. The nickname.
• Ansonia Branch (about 8 miles, 1896)—east to the New York Central on the Pine Creek line. After Addison and Wellsville were gone, this was the only way off the railroad.
• Burrows stub—southwest, the dead end of the old connection toward the rest of the B&O. Abandoned for lack of business in 1956, as soon as Salzberg started running.

Official 1958 system map of the Wellsville, Addison & Galeton. Author’s collection.

Sole leather, oil, and per-diem boxcars

Two daily jobs left Galeton in the good years, five days a week. One went to Elkland for the Elkland Leather Company and to Westfield for Eberle (Tioga Oak sole leather). That traffic is why boxcars and the railroad itself wore The Sole Leather Line. The other job went to Wellsville for Sinclair. The refinery was large enough that the WAG kept a switcher there.

Sinclair announced the Wellsville plant would close in 1958. That was the first hole that did not get patched. Salzberg did what short lines of that decade did: buy old cars and put them into interchange for per diem. Seventy-eight wooden boxcars came first. Steel boxcars, gons, and tanks followed. The interchange fleet grew to about 761 cars. For a while the cars made more money than the trains. Penn Central’s 1972 refusal to keep leasing some 300 wooden cars, after per-diem rules aged them out, ended that cushion.

Spare locomotives were rented out on scrap trains—New York, Ontario & Western, Lehigh & New England—because seven Ford GEs were more engines than two local freights needed.

Official 1958 timetable. Author’s collection.

Cutbacks, 1956–1973

1956. Burrows stub abandoned.

1959–60. A bridge between Elkland and Addison was unsafe. There were no online customers on that stretch, and the Erie interchange at Addison duplicated Wellsville. The ICC allowed abandonment. #1700 pulled the scrap train in 1960. The Addison Branch thereafter ended at Elkland.

1964. Two expansions, both modest. When the New York Central abandoned Westfield–Elkland, the WAG bought short pieces at Westfield and Knoxville to keep local customers. The same year Salzberg took over the Coudersport & Port Allegany, which crossed at Newfield Junction. The C&PA kept its name and two GE 44-tonners, D-1 and D-2. It was already a remnant (Roulette to Newfield Junction, about 16 miles in the sale talk; service maybe once or twice a week). Coudersport–Roulette came off when the WAG took over.

1970. ICC approval to abandon the Wellsville Branch and the C&PA, May 1970. Erie Lackawanna and shippers objected on Wellsville. The C&PA’s last run was December 1970. Wellsville trains kept running, thinner, while the case dragged.

January 1971. Fire destroyed the 1894 Galeton carshops. Loss reported over $500,000: five freight cars, engine parts, tools. A new enginehouse/carshop opened across from headquarters that December.

June 1972. Tropical Storm Agnes. A Wellsville crew got as far as Pusher Siding, hit a washout, and came home. The ICC let the railroad detour remaining Wellsville business through Ansonia.

1972–73. Elkland Leather Company told the union in August 1972 it was getting out of sole leather and liquidated that October. The plant itself burned on June 23, 1973. Westfield was then the last large tannery customer. In April 1973 the ICC finally let the Wellsville Branch go—on traffic, not on Agnes. C&PA D-2 started tearing up C&PA rail in 1973; D-1 later went to Mexico, D-2 to the Stewartstown Railroad. #1700, last centercab still running, led the Wellsville scrap train. Sisters 1500 and 1800 sat dead at Galeton as parts sources.

F7A #2200 with three boxcars and a caboose eastbound near Gaines Junction, November 24, 1976. The railroad was under 10 mph slow orders almost everywhere. Doug Kroll photo.

Agnes leftovers to the last train

By Agnes the WAG was about 40 miles: Galeton–Elkland, plus Ansonia. Hurricane Eloise washed out track below Westfield in September 1975; service resumed in October. More water in 1976 below Westfield was not repaired. Westfield and Knoxville cars sat stranded until they were trucked to Gaines Junction in 1979.

April 1976: petition to abandon the rest, claiming fewer than 34 carloads per mile. The ICC said yes in September 1977. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission objected, arguing the books were painted bleak on purpose. The ICC said yes again in March 1978. Union employees asked for protection; the ICC said no, because the whole railroad was going, not a segment.

Wellsville, Addison & Galeton F7A #2000 - just recently acquired by the railroad - is northbound from Galeton, Pennsylvania to Wellsville, New York in April, 1969. Ed Lewis photo.

Last revenue freight: March 13, 1979. Three days later the stranded Westfield/Knoxville cars were gathered at Ansonia. Boxcars still in interchange kept coming home to be cut up at Galeton. Steel cabooses C103 and C104 were painted for the Louisiana & North West. On November 7, 1979, about thirty people stood in the rain at Galeton and watched F7As 2200 and 2300, nose to nose, leave for Ansonia with #1700 on the rear, bound for the Lake Shore Railway Historical Society. The Fs were billed to GE at Hornell for rebuild and resale. Twenty-four years.

F7A #2200 eastbound through a rural crossing near Galeton, November 24, 1976, bound for Ansonia. Doug Kroll photo.

Motive power

Steam was a six-engine dowry, not a fleet. The railroad was designed around diesels. The first diesels were too light. The Ford GEs were the answer until they were thirty years old and failing on two daily hills. In 1968 Salzberg bought F-units that other railroads had traded to GE. They were not “late-model” covered wagons. They were 1950–53 F7s and one FP7, already through a Class I career, sold cheap.

The 1968 batch put #2000 in service quickly; an F7B (ex-Western Pacific 921C) was a parts donor and never ran. #2100 came out of Galeton shops in June 1969 and almost immediately went south: the Louisiana & North West needed power for Vietnam-era ammunition traffic. Four more Fs arrived from GE in November 1969. #2200 left the shop in March 1970; #2300 later that year. FP7 805A, still in Western Pacific identity on paper, spent time on the WAG without a 2000-series number and followed the others to Louisiana in 1976.

Only two F7As, 2200 and 2300, stayed to the end. That is the pair in Doug Kroll’s November 1976 Ansonia photographs. There was no wye on the east end, so a single unit ran backward one way. The centercabs, except 1700, were dead or gone by then.

Complete diesel roster

All-time WAG diesels, including leased units that actually ran and the Coudersport & Port Allegany 44-tonners taken with that railroad in 1964. Serials and dispositions follow John Komanesky’s Diesel Shop roster (Extra 2200 South issue 90) with C&PA notes from the Bigham / Lewis shortline histories. The table is the unit-by-unit list.

Leased and first-season power (did not stay)

Ford GE centercabs (the roster that defined the 1950s–60s)

Ford Motor Company plant switchers. 1200–1300 are 125-ton, 1937. 1400–1800 are 132-ton, 1939–40, the units whose grilles are usually compared to a 1939 Ford. All came to Galeton 1955–57.

EMD F-units (via GE, 1968–72)

Every F came as a GE trade-in, not from EMD. #2400 is listed in parentheses on the Diesel Shop sheet: assigned, then moved to the L&NW as 48 in May 1970, possibly never lettered WAG 2400. FP7 805A kept its Western Pacific number on the WAG.

Coudersport & Port Allegany (subsidiary, 1964–70)

Not lettered WAG. On the property because Salzberg bought the C&PA.

Caboose now on the rear, the same November 24, 1976 job shoves three boxcars onto the Conrail interchange at Ansonia. Doug Kroll photo.

What survives

Almost none of the railroad is on the ground. What you can still see:

• GE 132-ton #1700 (Ford 1006, GE 12569, March 1940)—Lake Shore Railway Museum, North East, Pennsylvania, about ten miles from the Erie plant that built it. The only Ford centercab left.
• F7A 2200 and 2300—later PAT / ConnDOT 6690–6691, stored on the Naugatuck Railroad (Railroad Museum of New England).
• F7A 2000 and 2100—back in Southern Pacific numbers 6380 and 6378 at the Golden Gate Railroad Museum, Schellville, California, awaiting restoration.
• FP7 805A—Western Pacific Railroad Museum, Portola, restored as WP 805-A, the last intact WP California Zephyr locomotive. Confirm operating status with the museum before you plan a visit around it.
• Wooden cabooses in private hands; steel C103/C104 went to the L&NW in 1978. Snowplow X-3710 has been stored at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum.

The Sole Leather Line lasted 24 years. That is long enough to be a classic and short enough that almost everyone who photographed it is still arguing about the F-units versus the Ford GEs. Both were secondhand. Both were the right engines for a railroad the B&O had already given up on.

Related Reading on American-Rails.com

• Buffalo & Susquehanna
• Baltimore & Ohio
• Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh
• Erie Railroad
• New York Central
• Louisiana & North West (Salzberg sister; destination of most WAG Fs)
• EMD F7
• General Electric locomotives
• Whitcomb
• Stewartstown Railroad (C&PA D-2)
• Naugatuck Railroad (2200 / 2300)
• Short lines
• Pennsylvania railroads
• New York railroads
• Railroad museums

Sources

• Edward A. Lewis, Wellsville, Addison & Galeton Railroad: The Sole Leather Line
• Chris Bigham, “The History of the Wellsville, Addison and Galeton Railroad,” WAG plow / TrainWeb notes (incorporation 1954, $250,000 sale, grades, F-unit cascade to L&NW, March 13 / November 7, 1979 split)
• John Komanesky, Wellsville Addison & Galeton all-time diesel roster, The Diesel Shop (Extra 2200 South issue 90): serials, Ford numbers, F-unit prior identities and dispositions
• Ronald Taylor, Allegany County Historical Society WAG summary (E-60s, 3127 lettered, two daily trains, C&PA 1964)
• U.S. Tariff Commission / USITC leather investigation: Elkland Leather Co. close notice August 1972, liquidation October 1972
• Wellsboro Gazette / Tioga Publishing local notes: Elkland tannery fire June 23, 1973
• Golden Gate Railroad Museum collection list (SP 6378 / 6380, ex-WAG 2100 / 2000)
• Western Pacific Railroad Museum / Feather River Rail Society notes on WP 805-A (EMD 9004; WAG; L&NW 49; to FRRS 1987)
• John F. Stover and standard B&O corporate histories (1932 B&S / BR&P acquisitions; Willard)

The railroad is gone. #1700 is at North East, Pennsylvania; the F-units are in Connecticut and California; 805-A is in Portola. Confirm hours and whether a given locomotive is accessible before you travel. American-Rails.com does not operate those museums.

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50. Massachusetts Breaks Ground for the Berkshire Flyer

    Nov 03, 26 10:07 AM

    Massachusetts broke ground October 29 in Pittsfield on track work meant to support permanent seasonal Berkshire Flyer service. MassDOT has $31 million for the project in its 2027-2031 capital plan.

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