As owner of the Pierce Arrow Transportation Museum, Jim Sandoro, puts the finishing touches on the Frank Lloyd Wright filling station, his lofty aspirations begin to extend outside of his museum complex. It is Jim’s intention to bring to Buffalo, a transportation-based tourist attraction that would be a working full scale, authentic scenario of life on the rails, as they pertain to the infamous Galloping Goose and fellow Pierce Arrow flock.
If Jim gets his way, the idea would be to use an existing CSX circus track (next to the main track) that extends for one mile from Canalside to Larkinville. That is where he hopes to run a Pierce Arrow Galloping Goose (lead image – Wikipedia) that would essentially take people back and forth between the two destinations. If Jim can figure out how to get the car to turn around at the end of the ride, then the future looks bright for a working demonstration of a legendary railcar that was once built in Buffalo NY.
In an effort to enhance the showmanship of the unique Galloping Goose, Jim is also looking into what it would take to clear a defunct cobble-brick road that is located alongside the circus track. This appears to be an easier lift for the Pierce Arrow aficionado who would then take his circa 1919 Pierce Arrow bus (already in the museum), outfit it with a cow catcher, an additional passenger car (like the ones that you would see at a fair) and run it in tandem with the Galloping Goose.
While Jim is still in negotiations with CSX, his dream is alive and well at this moment. Knowing Jim, if it were not possible, he never would have let the Goose out of the bag to begin with.
These are the sorts of enterprising ideas that help to make Buffalo believers out of people far and wide. It’s all about reviving and reliving our history while having fun at the same time. Can you imagine the impressions that all of this would make on people as they travel between two revived urban districts on antique cars (rail and road) that were made right here in Buffalo? To me, that’s an attraction that speaks wonders as to the direction that we, as a city, are heading.