After 84 years of operation, the Olean-Rochester branch of the Pennsylvania, forced into retirement by high overhead and low rates, made its last run March 8, 1963.
Few people were aware of it. Fewer yet were at the station to see the last train depart. Those who were there consisted of pensioned railroad men, passengers waiting for the train and employees of the road.
In this last category is Louis Belli, 1118 W. Connell St., Olean. Mr. Belli, gatekeeper at the N. Union St. crossing, has worked for the railroad 40 years. As a railroad man he was saddened to se yet another part of the Pennsy grind to a stop.
As a member of a section gang for 28 years and a gatekeeper for the last 12, he remembers when the Pennsy in Western New York was the backbone of transportation.
Mr. Belli was born in Italy in 1900, the same year the Olean station was built. Coming to the United States in 1922 he got a job with the PRR and has been with the road ever since.
After an injury in 1950, he was transferred from a section gang to his present job as gate keeper. "This used to be the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad until 1900 when the Pennsylvania bought it," he recalled today. "Around that time we had about 580 miles of track. Olean itself was a big manufacturing city...the Olean-Rochester run of the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad."
Mr. Belli spends eight hours a day in solitude in the little shanty perched 30 feet above the street level. Company rules forbid him to read or even have company while he is working. His main duty is to lower the gates when a train arrives.
He has plenty of time to think. He observed, "See those tracks on each side of the trackbed? Well, the one going east used to carry passengers to Rochester; the westbound track at one time went to Oil City and Bradford. They didn't show a profit, so they were discontinued."
He was waving to a friend passing below when the warning bells started to ring. He immediately started to lower the gates even though the train was a half-mile away. His job was over until the next train.
What will he do when he retires three years from now? Mr. Belli said he would probably spend most of his time at home but you can be sure he will never be far from the railroad.
"Sure I'll come back once in awhile to see the boys," he said. The Olean-Rochester run is dead but railroad men like Louis Belli will not forget it. "They might bring it back," he said, "you can never tell about these railroads."