Black Rock’s Lost Railway - Walking 8km of Buffalo’s abandoned railroad

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:05]Nestled in the woods of suburban North Buffalo is an old railroad hidden out of sight. A part of the DLNW railroad, some of the tracks are still there, but much of this old line has since been developed by housing, body shops, big box stores, and apartment. Yet, a lot of it has simply been reclaimed by nature.

[00:00:22]And today, as I set out to follow this old rail line, I would have a run-in with nature.

[00:00:29]We got to move >> today. I am going to follow the entire line. My plan was to start here at the rails to trails bike path in Kenmore.

[00:00:37]Here there are two concrete abupments where a train bridge would have crossed back in the day. Back in the day, some 30 years ago. Used to be a bridge across from this abupment to that one over there. I would then walk west following where the tracks would have gone towards the neighborhood of Black Rockck until I eventually reached the west side just before Unity Island. Along the way, there's going to be plenty of obstacles.

[00:00:58]There's going to be bridges, urban development, active railroads, and we're going through the west side, which isn't exactly the greatest area in Buffalo.

[00:01:06]So, let's hope we don't run into trouble. But without further ado, let's get this adventure started.

[00:01:16]All right, here we go. DLNW line. Been wanting to do this one for a while. Just haven't got around to it. In total, this line is about 5 mi long. So, this first section of the line is going to take us through this old wood here. Uh, until it spits us out at Starin A, at which point it turns into a new development. Not even 6 years ago, it was completely different from how it is now.

[00:01:39]It's kind of funny being here as an adult. These woods are really a relic of my childhood, and we spent so much time here building forts and exploring, but to come back here 10 years later to see that it hasn't really changed is kind of interesting. And as you can see here, we have our first tie. Tie from when the railroad used to be here. We have another tie. I have a feeling we're going to see a lot more of these.

[00:02:04]What the [ __ ] this is kind of concerning.

[00:02:08]Somebody's wallet. Okay, tweakers.

[00:02:18]All right, that there is Stanav. I'm opting to avoid the tweakers over there.

[00:02:23]It's always a little scary seeing tweakers in the woods, especially when there's a young woman's wallet lying near them.

[00:02:37]We're out of the first stretch of woods.

[00:02:39]Now, we're entering the Kulvin Estates.

[00:02:41]So, let's go.

[00:02:44]So, right here where I'm standing is the entrance to Kovven Estates. This is a new development that just got built in the last few years. But right where I'm standing used to be what me and my friends called the quarry, which was basically a big pit in the ground with a decrepit algae fililled pool of water at the bottom and uh these rocky cliffs all around. And we thought it was the coolest thing. We spent so much time exploring there. Of course, they bulldozed it and now it's the Coben Estates.

[00:03:18]Right where we're walking right now is where the line would have gone. Straight down here. And it's going to be like this for another mile or so until it lets out at Kulvin a and then we're going to have to navigate through some urban sprawl.

[00:03:36]In other news, it is starting to rain.

[00:03:38]Let's hope it doesn't get too bad.

[00:03:42]All right, right behind me is Coven. We now have to cross this and continue that way into the urban sprawl of Kenmore/North North Buffalo. Yeah, let's get going. Leaving the Coven estates behind. We're heading this way now into the auto detailing place.

[00:04:12]All right, it looks like there's some activity going on up here and I don't know if we're going to be able to get past.

[00:04:20]Looks like the type of place where I could be told to [ __ ] off. We won't let through. Let's just hope that doesn't happen.

[00:04:31]That guy let me through. All right, I'm starting to feel better about this spot because I'm looking ahead. There's no fence. Should be able to just get onto that dirt mound and get out of here. I do look really out of place here though.

[00:04:44]My camera backpack Guatemala shirt.

[00:04:55]Looks like we made it through that. No one asked any questions, which is good for me. Here we go.

[00:05:15]All right. You can kind of see where we've come from. That was a straight shot here. And now we're going to head in this direction.

[00:05:36]See in the distance there the big radio antenna behind the channel 4 station.

[00:05:41]It's always a good landmark to get your bearings around here.

[00:05:48]Here we have another bridge. It looks like bridge or a wall of sorts. Although this railing looks pretty new for these stones here. I feel like those were definitely there back in the day when the railroad was here. As you look ahead, I know it's windy. See, it starts to slope down and head into the Target parking lot, which means we still have a long way to go.

[00:06:14]Here we have some old concrete structures from what might have been a bridge. I don't really know.

[00:06:29]All right, we are here at Delaware A.

[00:06:31]Super busy road, but the tracks that we're following would have gone straight across there. I don't know if there was a bridge here or what, but judging by these concrete structures, I'm going to guess there was something. This is actually right where the turkey chop starts from there. But yeah, let's continue on.

[00:07:09]shopping carts everywhere. No one knows how to put them back.

[00:07:14]I can't seem to find any remnants of the tracks anywhere. I know we're on them, but I just can't. There's nothing. They They've destroyed it all. They've left no stone unturned when it comes to erasing the history of the railroad in this area. Cuz unless you do your research, there's no way you'd think there was a a track here.

[00:07:44]There's the big tower.

[00:07:46]All right, made it through the Target parking lot. As you can see, we got the big radio antennas behind me for channel 4 and we made it to Elwood A. Yeah, we got through the Tops parking lot, got through the Target parking lot. Very busy, a lot of cars, a lot of people.

[00:08:02]Now we're going to cross Elwood and we are leaving Kemmore behind and we are now entering Black Rock. So, let's go.

[00:08:15]All right, we've got a little bit of an issue. I just crossed Elwood and that building is where we need to go. This this protective industries place and there's a security guard right there and he just locked the gate. So, I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to go around. And I think he just heard me say that because he gave me a dirty look.

[00:08:35]But what is he going to do besides arrest us in order to continue along the mission? We're just going to go around.

[00:08:41]This is uh what? Henman A. And if we follow this for quarter of a mile, it'll actually take us to a crossroad. And if we turn left there, we should meet up with actual physical tracks. So, we're finally going to see some real tracks remaining on this line. And if I'm not mistaken, if it's still there, there's an old abandoned train car. So, we're going to go see that. Ooh, that doesn't look good. That looks like rainbands coming down. Hopefully, it's not too bad if it hits us. Uh, one thing about the area that we're about to be entering is it's kind of a sketchy area, so we're just going to have to be extra cautious with, you know, having our cameras out and whatnot. But got my trusty pocket knife. They're never going to know what hit them.

[00:09:32]All right, here's Grove Street. If we go left here, we should come to Yes, there it is.

[00:09:40]I hope that security guard doesn't come.

[00:09:42]running after me. I have to go this way through the sod.

[00:09:51]And there we go.

[00:09:53]We're through. But take a look at this thing. Why is it here? No clue.

[00:10:04]And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. We have found tracks. Should be smooth sailing from here on out. At least when it comes to figuring out where the line is. Well, here we go.

[00:10:14]It's still here. I mean, I only know about it from looking on Google Earth, but here it is. Yeah, I have no clue why it's fenced off and why it's here, but it's pretty cool. And what's even cooler is if you look behind us, there's the tracks. Found them.

[00:10:30]>> But real quick, these tracks are not our line. This is our line. You can see just up there our first well real bridge that we're going to cross. Let's get there.

[00:10:44]Starting to see lots of remnants of stuff. There's a bunch of old ties over here.

[00:10:54]Here we have an old spike. Pretty rusty.

[00:11:06]You can see up in the sky there. It looks like rain's coming down.

[00:11:24]All right. Coming up, we have the bridge over Military Road.

[00:11:32]All right, we just crossed over Military Road. Uh, our two lines are going to split. So, this one here with the tracks, it's going to go that way, and we're going to follow the one that goes this way. Unfortunately, I would much rather be following that one, but that's not our line. As you can see, this line here just connects to the active main line, which uh the Amtrak's going to be coming down soon, so we don't really want to be on that one. But our line, which is this red line here, continues along this abandoned path.

[00:12:00]Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to follow the tracks there, and we're going to have to bush whack our way through this forest here.

[00:12:11]And soon we should be crossing over what is now the active tracks. And uh it's really bad tick season, so I'm going to be checking my legs every once in a while.

[00:12:28]Uh, so far it's been pretty quiet activity-wise. Haven't really seen any other humans, and I hope it stays that way. And, uh, this here is the CSX mainline, the Niagara branch, if you will. Well, I just caught my first two ticks on my legs. I have a feeling there's going to be more. But here we have the active CSX mainline. Our line's going to continue across that way where that abandoned burnt out car is, which is kind of weird. Oh, there's another one. Get the [ __ ] off me. Uh, yeah.

[00:13:00]Let's get out of here before more attached to me.

[00:13:15]Heard thunder. In other news, National Weather Service just issued a severe thunderstorm for 6:00 and it's 6:09.

[00:13:24]So, I don't really like the sound of that, but what are we going to do at this point? We got a mission to complete.

[00:13:32]I can feel the wind. It's getting colder. It's definitely going to storm, isn't it? [ __ ] hell. Anyway, let's cross these tracks. Look both ways.

[00:13:43]And there we go.

[00:14:04]What a nightmare.

[00:14:09]>> All right, enough dillydallying. We got to get a move on. Little tree fort some kids made. At least I hope they were kids.

[00:14:17]All right, now that we made it through that turn, it's going to straighten out up here and it's just going to be a straight shot to the end, which is going to be another two miles. That's 2 miles to get to the end before this storm downpours on me. I'm I'm not worried about the rain. I'm not worried about the lightning or anything. I'm worried about my gear getting destroyed from the water. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And I think we're going to be crossing some literal bridges, too, coming up very shortly.

[00:14:46]I don't like the look of that.

[00:14:50]Oh boy, sky is so dark. Here we go.

[00:14:56]My fear on this mission has shifted from evil drug addicts to now mother nature as this storm is rolling in pretty quickly.

[00:15:14]In terms of railroad history, you can see over there would have been another line. Possibly a few more lines here.

[00:15:21]This may have been like a little yard or something. Yeah, this could have fit like five or six lines, but they're not there anymore.

[00:15:31]Luckily, so far it hasn't been too bad.

[00:15:32]It's just been sprinkling.

[00:15:35]But I keep hearing this thunder. So any moment it could really start pouring. Uh we're in kind of an industrial wasteland right now. Over here we've got an active factory over here. Don't know if that one's active. And then uh the west side black rocks over there. And in the middle of it all is me and this stupid line stuck in this stupid storm. It always kind of interests me how these old lines just cut through civilization like this. Granted, some of this might have been built after the line was abandoned. Hardly anybody knows it's here. Oh god, here it comes. Yeah, we're standing in the middle of an open field with a um metal pole in the form of my tripod sticking out of my bag. That's wonderful.

[00:16:23]I've never had this happen on a railroad mission.

[00:16:30]Oh god.

[00:16:32]Looks like we're coming up to another bridge.

[00:16:35]Trying to think of the roads. Hurdle Amherst Austin. Let's make a hurdle. We are coming up to the bridge over Hurdle A. All right. The rain is dying down a little bit, but it still looks still looks pretty eerie behind me. Oh god.

[00:16:51]Dear God. I didn't really tell anyone where I was going either. So, if I get struck by lightning, uh it's probably going to be over. But here we go. Here's some old ties. Hey, here's the bridges.

[00:17:16]I'm kind of scared. I'm not going to lie. Just got to get this done. But yeah, here we have Hurdle A.

[00:17:25]And there's the bridge over it.

[00:17:33]I wonder if uh we're going to get a tornado today in New York. Probably down in Machias for a third time.

[00:17:43]There's some old ruins there. Old concrete ruins.

[00:17:52]And then we have bamboo. I didn't even know this grew around here. That's bamboo, right?

[00:17:58]interesting and kind of weird. And then uh the leaning tower of tires cuz why not? Wouldn't expect anything less from you, Black Rockck.

[00:18:10]I believe on the other side of this metal wall is a junkyard.

[00:18:14]I'm glad we don't have to go through there.

[00:18:18]Look at this sky, though. It's It's going to get bad. I just saw lightning.

[00:18:29]And we're walking straight into that [ __ ] We are We are right out in the open here.

[00:18:45][ __ ] hell.

[00:18:49]There's a bunch of ties over there kind of laid out like there used to be a track there. I'm guessing this was a yard at some point. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:58]This This absolutely looks like it would have been a yard. A little freight yard.

[00:19:03]Black Rock Yard maybe right here.

[00:19:07]Wouldn't be surprised. Let's take a look. Let's go. Let's do a little walk through.

[00:19:12]Oh my god. Lightning. Hey, Mr. Snail.

[00:19:22]What am I doing?

[00:19:26]Never mind. We're not looking at the yard. [ __ ] that.

[00:19:31]We got to move.

[00:19:34]Oh my god. What is happening?

[00:19:37]Holy [ __ ] I don't want to go back out in the open field, but I know it's not safe to stand under trees either. What the hell am I doing?

[00:20:00]Shelter of some sort.

[00:20:02]Just like a concrete structure of something. Can I get under there? Oh, I really don't want to walk in the open field. What do I do? How much further do we have to go? I'll hide under the next bridge. That's what I'll do if I can get there. Oh, wait. This is the next [ __ ] What the [ __ ] am I doing?

[00:20:34]I had to get out of this bridge. I'm guessing this is Austin Street.

[00:20:40]Yes.

[00:20:42]Hooray.

[00:20:44]All right. We found shelter. I just got to sit here and wait for the storm to pass or at least until I work up the nerve to go back out and face the lightning.

[00:20:57]This is a pretty bad storm though. Oh no. I'm [ __ ] 20 ft inside this bridge and I'm still being pelted with water.

[00:21:06]It's created such a wind tunnel.

[00:21:09]All right, I'm at the other end of the tunnel and then I guess I'm just going to get back up there. We have one more bridge after this. Amherst Street and then we're done. I really, really wish it wasn't raining so we can spend more time exploring, but it's raining pretty hard.

[00:21:26]All right, it's died down a little bit, so I think I'm going to try and use this window to get to the end. We're about.5 miles away.

[00:21:36]All right, we're back out. We're doing this. We're finishing this up. See you later, Austin Street.

[00:21:43]Thank you, bridge, for keeping me dry for a little bit.

[00:21:47]We got half a mile more to go. Let's get this done before the next wave of torrential rain comes.

[00:21:54]As I'm walking here on this big bridge, super wide bridge, by the way, probably a football field wide. Uh I can see where all the different lines would have been. Like look at this. See, this would have been a track. This would have been a track. Every couple feet there'd be another track. So, this here was definitely some sort of yard. I'm going to try and find pictures to compare to what it looks like now. Here we go.

[00:22:18]Here's another angle of some of the lines that were part of the yard straight down there. Black Rock Yard.

[00:22:29]All right, leave the deer alone. We got to finish this mission.

[00:22:35]A crap, rain's coming down again.

[00:22:43]There's the tower from the top of what was St. Francis Xavier Church, I believe. And uh this is what it used to look like back in the day.

[00:22:54]It's quite different. Mother Nature's completely reclaimed the land.

[00:23:00]A lot of garbage here. All right, we are coming up to our last bridge of the mission. We are about to cross over Amherst Street.

[00:23:14]like it was over here.

[00:23:17]You've probably seen this bridge at some point if you've driven in the west side or Black Rock.

[00:23:22]There's the church that was in that picture.

[00:23:27]And yeah, that's the last bridge. And with that, we only have a little bit more to go and we're at the end.

[00:23:36]People driving by probably like, "What the hell is that guy doing?" Or they think I'm homeless.

[00:23:51]I got to say, this is not how I thought this day was going to go. It said at 6:00 it was going to lightly rain 30%.

[00:23:58]Did not say that I was going to have to walk through [ __ ] Hurricane Katrina, but it's whatever. I can see over there the uh active line, the CSX line over the next couple hundred feet that's going to get closer and closer to us because the end is near and this line we're walking along is going to merge with that one where it is then going to cross over the international bridge into Canada.

[00:24:26]All right, we're exiting the woods here.

[00:24:29]So there's our line right there. And there's flat two flat screen TVs to send us on our way. But let's finish this up.

[00:24:38]The track would have come this way.

[00:24:41]Gone this way.

[00:24:43]Let's finish this shoot. Radiation area.

[00:24:47]Awesome.

[00:24:52]And there it is. There's the end.

[00:25:01]There's the end. It is an international border, so I'm not going to spend longer than I need to right here. But that's it, guys. We did it. Rain, ticks, and everything. Skunks, deer, whatnot. And there's my ride. Perfect timing.

[00:25:17]>> I have the towel for you.

[00:25:19]>> Thank you.

[00:25:20]>> A Shayla, let me hold this. Oh, it's soaking wet.

[00:25:24]>> Completed the mission. Did you actually?

[00:25:26]>> Yeah.

[00:25:27]>> Thank you all for watching this railroad mission. Weather was horrible, but it was a fun time and we got it done.

[00:25:36]>> And that's about it. I managed to follow the entire DLNW Black Rockck line despite Mother Nature's best efforts to stop me. We got to see the town of Black Rockck from a new perspective. I managed to go on a little tour through an area of Buffalo that doesn't get a lot of love. Had it not rained, I would have spent more time exploring and showing the ruins at the end of the line. But finishing the mission was the priority in the moment. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you all on the next adventure.