Joe Scaglione captures Lansing’s past, present with photos

Ithaca resident Joe Scaglione has been interested in trains since he was a young child, when he lived along the Lehigh Valley Railroad and his grandfather would take him down to see the trains at the railroad yard.

“I had a great childhood with these trains,” he said. “In fact, I used to ride the train in high school. I would take the Ithaca transit bus, pay a quarter, get on [at] the bus station, get off the bus at 7 o’clock in the morning, walk down to the railroad yard [and] get the locomotives ready. And my one cousin was an engineer, and his brother was a brakeman, but they would drop me off in front of Ithaca High School.”

While Scaglione went to school and lived in Ithaca, he developed a strong attachment to Lansing.

“[The railroad] had two major clients; we had the power plant, and we had the [Cargill] salt plant,” he said. “So, we would go to Cargill, and then, we would go with back to what then was called Milliken Station before they remodeled it heading to Cayuga Power. So, probably at least a few hundred times I had been on that run. So, I know a lot of people that were along the line. I know people that own cottages down there by the power plant. When I was in high school, I spent many weekends down there with my friends because all their parents own the cottages down there.”

Scaglione even helped Watco, which took over as operator of the railroad’s Ithaca branch from previous operator, Norfolk Southern, in 2018 (tinyurl.com/y9u3zvpq), understand the ropes of operating in the area.

“Watco owns 43 small railroads, and this is one of them now,” he said. “And when the guys came up here, they had no idea where things were. They didn’t realize that we had a pit that had been covered up for 40 years where you can actually go down into it and work on the locomotives and everything else. So, I showed them all of that stuff. They needed to make some adjustments politically with a city forester and the trees blocking the tracks and stuff, so I helped them out any way I could.”

Scaglione’s railroad connection was commemorated just last year when Watco named a railroad control point after him, adding a mile post 1 mile north of Salt Point labeled “SCAGG” for all operators to see.

“They actually put it in their timetable,” Scaglione said with a laugh. “So, instead of the Ludlowville station back in the 1800s, now we have SCAGG.”

And trains aren’t the only way Scaglione has stayed connected to the town that meant so much to him growing up. Scaglione is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, and another of his interests is photography.

“That started when I was in high school, taking pictures of trains,” he said. “And it was a Kodak 110 Instamatic pocket camera. … At one point, I had almost 25 cameras and 30 lenses and everything. I work with three cameras now. I had the videography part of it. I had the big Discovery Channel cameras that took two people to carry them. Now, everything I shoot is on a camera the size of a book of matches.”

Around the end of last November, Scaglione was asked by the administrator of the Lansing, New York, Facebook group (tinyurl.com/ybor5k9e) if he would take over as the new admin, and he decided to say yes.

“It started to get out of control,” Scaglione said. “People were trying to post ads on there. People were trying to spam it with everything. And I had a reputation going from a site I started six years ago called Icons of Ithaca, which is almost 1,000 people.”

Now, Scaglione has added Lansing, New York, to his repertoire of pages and websites he manages, including Icons of Ithaca (tinyurl.com/ydglfddj), North 40 Memories (tinyurl.com/yah3walh) and Ithaca High School — The best of the Baby Boomer Generation and beyond (tinyurl.com/y7kogakd).

“I’m like a power content provider between the 12 sites that I have, and probably there’s another 50 groups I belong to,” he said. “I probably post actively to at least 15 of those a day. … Everywhere I go, I’m always putting stuff on there. And my mantra on the whole thing is, ‘Put something good up that makes people happy. Don’t get them all upset. There’s enough of that out there. And give them something they appreciate.’”

Scaglione has grown quite the following over his years of content management and creation, with almost half a million members among the many pages he manages.

Those who frequent any of the pages Scaglione administers will likely notice some other elements of his history in his content, such as fireworks, radio and drones. In the 1980s, Scaglione began working for a fireworks company that frequently did shows at Cornell University.

“I went to work for these guys, and I said, ‘Don’t pay me anything until I get you some business.’ I got him some business,” he said. “[The] 10th anniversary of Pyramid Mall was the first show [I booked] for them. But eventually, over the years, it worked into becoming the vice president of marketing for the company. And I built several crews in Ithaca that could go out and handle multiple shows. … I worked from 1984 to 2012. And when I got out in 2012, we were doing over 320 shows a year.”

Scaglione’s history in radio began at his high school graduation party at Hillendale Golf Course, where he had the privilege of meeting DJ Tommy Joseph, whom Scaglione called “legendary.” That connection led to Scaglione being “enamored” with Joseph, so much so that he came to most of his shows and even rented Joseph his equipment.

Scaglione also rented equipment to radio operators at Ithaca College’s WICB and WHCU, where he later became a DJ himself. He left radio at the end of 1994 and soon started his own production company, which he’s operated ever since.

As far as his interest in drones, Scaglione said that started about 16 years ago, and he’s honed his craft as the technology has evolved. He’s even used his drones to document the ongoing construction on the Route 34B bridge and take many, many photos of Lansing’s picturesque views. 

“Everybody gets to know you after a while — ‘Oh, you’re the fireworks guy’ or ‘Oh, you’re the railroad guy’ or, now, ‘You’re the drone guy,’” Scaglione said. “So yeah, basically, in a nutshell, that’s me. I just kind of get up in the morning. I don’t know what direction I’m going in yet. I get up happy. I go to sleep happy.”

While Scaglione’s history and interests stretch about as long as the railroad he grew up on, he said he couldn’t be happier with where his life has ended up. He continues to love Lansing no matter how often he goes there and loves sharing that with others in the community online.

“I consider myself very fortunate to enjoy life,” he said. “And I like sharing what I know about the area with everybody else, and everybody else seems to appreciate it. So yeah, I found my niche after 59 years.”

To check out Scaglione’s photography, visit the previously listed Facebook pages or his website, joescaglione.com.

Lansing at Large appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com.

In brief:

Join the Lansing Community Library on April 6 at 7 p.m. via Zoom for a presentation by Carrie Koplinka-Loehr discussing “Our Changing Menu,” a book she co-authored with Danielle L. Eiseman and Michael P. Hoffmann. 

The book explores how climate change impacts items on our menu: avocados, wine, coffee and much more. It furthers the conversation by examining how farmers are trying to save our food. It is eye-opening. Bring your curiosity about food and its connection to our changing climate.

Please register to receive the Zoom link by calling (607) 533-4939 or emailing info@lansinglibrary.org.