BATH, N.Y. (WENY) -- Community efforts are underway to help preserve a historic 75-year-old diesel locomotive from the Bath and Hammondsport Railroad. The Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, the Steuben County Industrial Development Agency, and the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad have teamed up to save the locomotive.

The Bath and Hammondsport Railroad, really an instrument part of history in the Finger Lakes Region, serving Keuka Lake there in Hammondsport, and also how the wine industry grew in that region, and the railroad was instrumental in helping that industry grow, because you would have packed wine and Champaign being produced there, and then being shipped all around the country, starting its trip on the Bath and Hammondsport Railroad. And that's actually why if you look at the locomotive, on the cab, the nickname for the railroad is the Champaign Trail," said Otto Vondrak, Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum president. 

Built in 1950 for the New York Central Railroad by the American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, the locomotive was sold in 1970 to Steuben County for operation on the Bath and Hammondsport Railroad. The railroad museum negotiated with the Steuben County IDA to purchase the locomotive in February 2025.
 
Soon the real hard work will begin to help ensure train enthusiasts in the future can enjoy this blast from the past. Plans are to move the locomotive to the museum later this year, and the museum is soliciting donations.  
 
Once funding is in place and the work is done -- the locomotive will be moved to the Railroad Museum located near Rochester.