Jeff,

Perhaps New York wine no longer moves by rail today (or even much
California wine for that matter, except perhaps from mega-producers like
Gallo), but at one time Taylor and Great Western did a lot of business
by rail. The Bath & Hammondsport wasn't known as "The Champagne Trail"
for nothing. Long ago MODEL RAILROADER did a feature on the B&H for one
of their "railroads you can model" books. It makes interesting reading,
and has some data that would be useful in understanding how wineries in
general used railroads to make and ship their products in the past. And
after all, this group is largely about the past, isn't it?

We're getting pretty far afield here, but at one time Brookside Winery
(in Southern California's Cucamonga area) had an extensive rail system
between their vineyards and the winery. They owned a really charming
Baldwin 0-4-0T in the 10-ton range. The locomotive is long gone, as is
the railroad, but they used to proudly display a photo of it in their
tasting room.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff


Jeff English wrote: