Rochester and State Line Railroad

[2] However, since the financial support of the outlying farm and commercial interests was vital to the project, in one of the lesser deceptions of the railroad building era, it was intimated to the public in the towns and villages of the Genesee Valley that the road would be built through western New York to carry agricultural products to city markets.

Energy for the industry in Western New York at this time came from Pennsylvania coal, and the existing railroads were the sole means of getting it to the Rochester area.

For some ten years, coal customers, and others, from Rochester and villages as far south as the Pennsylvania line sought to raise interest in a new railroad to the level at which something could be accomplished.

Oliver Allen II[note 2] and Donald McNaughton, both of Mumford, as well as Rochester attorney, D D S Brown, led a group of both business and government officials in promoting the project.

Although the initial state charter set the southern terminus at Wellsville, new coalfield discoveries in Pennsylvania spurred the organizers to move the route west, running through Warsaw and Ellicottville to Salamanca.

The anxiety with which small communities (in the days before a reliable highway network) sought rail connections may be inferred from the actions of Perry.

Since interests along the original eastern route were now irate, yet another line, the Rochester and Pine Creek Railroad, was proposed to run from Caledonia to Castile through Perry.

Barely a few years later, the Silver Lake Railroad merged into the Rochester and Pine Creek and, on 1 February 1872, opened a short line between East Gainesville and Perry.

Vanderbilt and the New York Central and Hudson River contended, often in dramatic terms, against Fisk, Gould, and Drew's Erie Railroad.

Schmidt says of the line (referring to Scottsville):[5] "Soon after the war, promoters proposed a railroad to extend south of Rochester to the coal fields in Pennsylvania.

Work on the railroad was begun in 1873 and progressed rapidly since there were no great engineering difficulties to overcome until the foothills of the Alleghany Mountains near Warsaw were reached.

The first locomotive[note 6] was built by Brooks of Dunkirk, N. Y., it was named "Oliver Allen" after the man who had worked zealously in the interest of the railroad.

In the fine tradition of economizing on capital investment, the R&SL chose to use existing railbeds wherever practicable, such as the never-built Cattaraugus Railroad between Machias and Salamanca.

7 October 1873 saw the first rail spiked to the cross-ties in a ceremony at Lincoln Park, the line reaching Scottsville by November, Garbuttsville shortly thereafter, and Le Roy by year's end.

Now a respectable 108 miles long, the Rochester and State Line Railroad began revenue service along its full length on 16 May 1878.

When the RS&L construction crew needed to cross Erie's tracks in Le Roy, they simply built a level junction and kept going.

The Salamanca Republican wrote: "It is with feelings of no little gratification that we are enabled to announce that the last rail of the Rochester and State Line Railway has been laid and that another important artery of trade and commerce has been completed through Cattaraugus county.

Initially, farm produce and lumber comprised the revenue loads, and this did not materially change until the line reached Salamanca.

The Ramsey car transfer device solved the problem, although it did little for the inconvenience until the A&GW saw the light of reason and adopted the 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge.

They sold the rolling stock to themselves, removing it from the tax collectors' reach, and eventually selling the equipment back to the railroad when the pressure eased.

When the R&SL was folded up and sold off, it had eleven deteriorated locomotives, two hundred sixty-eight tired cars, and shops that were barely usable.

[8] Some of the accident accounts surviving to this day leave much unsaid, such as the 13 June 1878 report that Locomotive No 7 ran over two cows between Salamanca and Gainesville on its very first trip.

Case in point: on or about 29 January 1879, Train number two departed Salamanca headed for Ellicottville when its encounter with a washout tossed the locomotive into the water.

1879 proved a costly year for three carriage riders in Mumford who strayed in front of an on-coming train at the Brown Cut, west of the hamlet.

He suffered a serious injury; one young woman was caught on the pilot and carried halfway to the Spring Creek bridge before the train stopped.

The heavy fogs of Cattaraugus Valley frequently overcame the feeble lights on cabooses, and faster trains ran into slower ones.

The entertaining fiction that the railroad had been built to serve the rural communities along its route and existed to carry coals to Rochester could not hide the fact that it was a pawn of the Vanderbilts.

In a painful irony, the shipment of coal never amounted to much, and even the temporarily lucrative transportation of oil soon ended due to competition by the Erie.

In November, the entire equity of the railroad, including the stock owned by the Vanderbilts, was acquired by a syndicate in New York City.

One commentator[9] has attributed the failure of this company not to a bad idea or an inadequate market demand for its services but to insufficient capitalization and backers who did not greatly care.