The Northern Tier is a geographic region consisting of five rural counties in north-central Pennsylvania. The Northern Tier is home to roughly 180,000 people distributed among many small towns and the countryside. The region's largest town is Sayre, Pennsylvania on the left-east bank North Branch Susquehanna River and is on Interstate 86 where it dips just south of the Pennsylvania state line). Sayre Yard is a large railyard currently operated by Norfolk Southern that extends across the stateline into Waverly, New York and connects rail transport centers via Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to freight yards in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Baltimore to Buffalo and other Upstate New York cities as well as the Great Lakes basin cities. The Endless Mountains are a major geographic feature. U.S. Ro