Youngstown & Austintown

Company History: This line has a pretty similar story to that of their sister road Warren & Trumbull. In 1985 local officials invited the Ohio Central System to operate a short branch abandoned by Conrail. This time, it was less than five miles of line on the west side of Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown & Austintown is the result. The paint scheme on their GP7 is the result of cleverly patching an ex-Pittsburgh & Lake Erie unit. The geep’s P&LE ancestry means that it is set up with the long hood as the front. YARR joined the Genesee & Wyoming shortline family along with the rest of the Ohio Central System in 2008.

Youngstown and Austintown Railroad (reporting mark YARR) is a short-line railroad that exists just west of Youngstown, Ohio, United States. It is owned by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. It connects with the Youngstown Belt Railroad which is owned by the same company and CSX at Yanda. The YARR is essentially two former Erie branch Lines. The line come together at M&T Jct. (near Meridian Road). The lines are very short and they service the steel industry in Youngstown. For years the largest customer on the YARR was Youngstown Steel Door and United Freezer Storage. The first operator of the YARR was Jerry Jacobson. The original YARR rostered an Alco switcher and former P&LE GP7 1501. The one-stall enginehouse still stands today in Austintown on Oakwood Ave. A small section of the structure was constructed by the Erie railroad.

The bridge over the Mahoning River, which connected the sections from the ex-Erie mainline to the B&O at YANDA has been demolished and shows no signs of reconstruction. The end-of-track in Austintown has since been cut back to within the Austintown Industrial Park, north of RT 18.

From Wikipedia

Successor/Parent History: Known today as the largest of the shortline holding companies, Genesee & Wyoming began as a shortline by that name in 1899 with a 15 mile line between Retsof and Caledonia, New York, just south of Rochester. In 1982, they extended southward to Greigsville by buying a former Lackawanna line from Conrail. In 1985, another purchase extended their reach north to Rochester and southwest to Silver Springs. This brought the mileage up to about 90. The Wyoming in the name is a reference to the Wyoming Valley.

In 1977, the railroad set up Genesee & Wyoming Inc. as a parent company. In 1985, they began to buy other shortlines and launch new ones as various Class One routes came up for sale or lease. Each of these lines operates under their own names but share the orange, yellow and black GNWR paint scheme, variations of which have been used by GNWR for decades. The logos of these related lines also use the GNWR style but with different wording and the occasional personalized element.

As of this writing, the Genesee & Wyoming family includes 121 shortline and regional railroads spread across North America, Europe and Australia. As of 2019, G&W became a subsidiary of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. G&W has also bought other shortline groups, notably Rail Link in 1996, Summit View (the Ohio Central System) in 2008, Rail Management in 2005,.CAGY Industries in 2008, and largest of all RailAmerica in 2012.

Ironically, the Genesee & Wyoming Railroad was merged into the Rochester & Southern in 2003. The GNWR exists as a paper railroad but the logos on the diesels patrolling the old GNWR now say Rochester & Southern or the neighboring Buffalo & Pittsburgh.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.