AFTON – The Afton Historical Society is pleased to present a special program with local author and rail enthusiast John Taibi. Earlier in 2014, Taibi introduced volume two of “Roads, Rivers, and Rails,” which chronicles the various modes and means of transportation evolution though rural upstate New York. Taibi is an author of 12 books and has penned more than 120 short stories that shed light on varying aspects of railroad history.

In “Roads, Rivers and Rails,” Taibi provides readers with a ride in his automobile and drives them through Route 7 communities that had at one time been richly served by the railroad. In volume one—published in 2012—the Albany-Schenectady to Oneonta portion of this highway corridor was explored. Volume two highlights the westward journey picking up in Oneonta and progressing south-westerly from Otego and Wells Bridge, Unadilla, Sidney, Bainbridge, Afton, Nineveh, Harpursville, Tunnel, Sanitaria Springs, and Port Crane before ending at Binghamton – the Parlor City.

The auto tour in book form gives readers a unique perspective of the region that the railroad had served to develop, how the railroad interacts with its neighboring roadways – with an emphasis on the modern-day NYS Route 7 and its ancestral origins – and water-borne “highways” that were serving the region since before the coming of the railroad itself.