Hey, there! Log in / Register

Like you needed another reason to visit Elmira Heights, NY

Sign advertising an Elmira Heights factory that will soon be making Green Line trolleys

Imagine if they extended the Riverside Line to the suburbs of Elmira, NY.

Besides being located in the town of Horseheads, NY, which is worth a detour just to say you've been to Horseheads, NY, the village of Elmira Heights is also home to the US factory for Spanish train maker CAF, where the MBTA's next-gen, Type 10 Green Line trolleys will be built - 100 or so of them, 40 feet longer than the current trolleys and with multiple bendi-spots and all handicap accessible doors.

UHub photographer Steven Davidson, roving way, way westa Worcester, spotted this billboard outside the CAF plant the other day. Hard to read in the shrunken version of his photo posted above, but the destination of this train on the D Line is "Reservoir Yard."

The T signed an $811-million contract for the trolleys in 2022.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Sox used to have a minor league team in Elmira!

up
11

IIRC they played at Dunn Field.

…is “beautiful Dunn Field”

Elmira Heights is a suburb of Elmira, where that bank examiner in "It's a Wonderful Life" was headed to after assessing Bailey Building & Loan, so that he could have dinner with his family.

up
11

Will all the platforms be raised? Hydraulic lifts at every door?

This is a great idea and much needed.

Yes, they are raising platforms and will also have bridge plates as needed.

I spent most of my childhood in the Southern Tier of upstate New York. Elmira Heights is a suburb of Elmira, which is the burial place of one Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.

I am glad to see someone manufacturing something in the Southern Tier; ever since IBM pulled out of Endicott and Owego after the end of the Cold War, the region has become depressed.

up
18

...that your heart's on fire for Elmira?

(I'll show myself out)

up
22

Giddyap

Corning is in the area and they're still a major player in glass manufacturing, especially as the maker of Gorilla Glass. But yes, overall the area is not in the best shape economically.

In fact, we once stayed in a motel in Horseheads on a visit to the museum.

Also fun, in a completely dorky way, is there's an interstate there that has (or at least did when we were there) a "Welcome to Pennsylvania" sign for the roughly tenth of a mile the road dips into that state before it puts you back into New York (there's not even an exit so you can partake of the wonders of the Commonwealth, just that sign that alerts you you're now in Pennsylvania before you take another breath and you're back in New York).

Corning Museum of Glass - I visited there years ago on one of my cross-country trips. It's wonderful.

Don't forget the "ENTERING (LEAVING) GREENWICH CT" signs on I-684.

And IIRC this is located where US Steel used to be. One of the many manufacturers who left the area.

up
12

What are the odds so many people who spent their childhood in the vicinity of Elmira would end up in Boston or the comments section of a Boston-focused blog? Is it random chance or is there some kind of Chemung River-to-Charles River pipeline?

(In my case it was the opposite; in a fit of madness and delusion my family moved from Boston to a town near Horseheads so small and bucolic we would head to Elmira when we were desperate for a taste of city life.)

Pine City? Big Flats? Montour Falls? Painted Post?

Hmm. Maybe that's how that company got the contract!

hah nah.. CAF just makes decent gear with a proven track record. Just so happens that Charlie is from there.

Hi from another Horseheads and Elmira Heights native! I can't believe there's so many of us on this site!

It never recovered from Hurricane Agnes, and that was back in the early 1970s.

I was there. Couldn't go to my grandfathers funeral in Sayre PA because the roads were all flooded. Chemung River overflowed and took out a major part of downtown Elmira. For years the Corning Glass Museum displayed a "flood line" on the walls, probably eight feet high.

Back then Elmira was larger than Ithaca, and that's no longer true.

Agnes gave Ithaca "only" seven inches of rain, but it pulverized Elmira. That area so rarely gets hurricanes that even a Cat 1 causes massive damage (mostly in flooding). An aunt and uncle of mine were stranded there for several days during a trip from Massachusetts (grandparents house) to Ohio (their house).