Experience: I have had two experiences at the Buffalo Central Terminal.  I had no real ambition to go there but I was convinced by one of my good friends (I will call him Jon not reflecting his real name at all) to go there with his brother (Who I will call Johnny again not reflecting his real name).  Jon had been there only once before that and Johnny had been there many times.

    The outside of the building shows signs of aging and looks horrible.  Yet you still get the feeling that there is something special inside.  If you come up the main driveway to the building the pavement and is ripped up and the statue looks like its about to fall.  All of the windows and the doors are boarded up.  There is a street that ran right under the terminal but now is fenced off.  At the back of the building there is still one working railroad track.  The back of the building is the part that shows the most aging with windows busted out and just looks like it's going to fall down.  Also on the back of the building there is what looks to be new cement.  That is where the walkway to the trains was tore down.

    As we started to walk through the building I realized how bad the terminal was.  You found things on the ground that seeming didn't belong there.  Anything from 10 coffee cups to a VHS video.  As we walked along we looked for a way to get to the floors above.  What we didn't know was that there was a couple of staircase we passed.  We finally located a stairway that led to the basement.  The basement was 40 feet down a scary looking staircase.  We didn't venture down but just by looking you could see everything was all over and was under what looked to be 3-4 feet of water.

    Right next to that were stairs leading up.  The stairs didn't look the greatest and they went up and over the stairs to the basement.  In the middle of the stairs there was a hole about a foot wide by six inches high.  I got quite scared and didn't want to go first, so Johnny went for it.  He made it up safely so that gave me more confidence and we all went up.  On the second floor, Johnny told us there wasn't anything good to see so we went up more.  We weren't sure which floor took us to the main concourse.  At the third floor we still didn't know where to go so we looked around and found nothing.

    We went back down a floor and looked more.  Little did we know that it was an office that was one floor above the main floor of the concourse and there was no way down.  Johnny collected all the pictures that he could and we left disappointed.

    That spearheaded my interest with the building.  I became obsessed with the terminal.  I went online and searched for the Buffalo Central Terminal.  I found some things about it and read all about it.  I couldn't wait for the next time I would go.

    This time I had a better idea of what was going on but it was only my friend (again calling him Jon) and I.  We took a different staircase that we had discovered on the way down the last time we went.  We had a little trouble finding which floor we wanted.  Walking on the one floor we found an elevator shaft which was one scary thing, it went all the way to the basement.  Looking down it scared the living shit out of you pardon my french but it was the only way to accurately describe the feeling you got.

    Walking around on the floor of the concourse was truly breathtaking.  You have no idea what it was like with the eerie quiet and just staring up at the massive structure.  The architecture is so stunning it will leave your mouth hanging wide open.  After a few quick pictures we went looking around.  We went all over the main floor then ventured up the stairs in the main tower.  We were rather confident of the stairs because of all the footprints and the fact that the clocks in the tower had been fixed recently.  The floors were all gutted and there wasn't that much to see but I was still loving it.  At about the fifth floor or so we turned around due to the diminishing light.

   My two visits have sparked something inside of me.  I can't describe it but it's awesome.  I am now looking into all the ways that I can get involved in the BCT.  In the spring of 2004 I plan on attending the volunteer clean up and later hopefully I will be able to attend the summer tours.  Everyone should look at the links and events page there are many links to restoration pages.

Update:I was unable to attend any of the official tours that were given in the summmer because I was too busy. It is a shame that i didn't go, I was looking forward to it. There is hope for the clock that use to stand in the middle of the main concourse. It has been found in chicago at dealers shop. So hopefully someday the CTRC will be able to buy back that great symbol of the Central Terminal.

Sources