New York Central & Hudson River RR

The New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, known simply as the New York Central (here, "NYC"), served most of the Northeast, including extensive trackage in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts and much of New England and in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.   Its primary connections included Chicago and Boston.   The NYCs Grand Central Terminal in New York City is still one of its best known extant landmarks in the world.   The headquarters were in New York City.

The New York Central was known as the "Water Level Route" because its main line from New York City ran along the Hudson River, the Mohawk River, and the flat lands south of Lakes Ontario and Erie.   This flat route was heavily advertised by the NYC.   At the time of its initial completion, it was the first four-track long-distance railroad in the world.   The oldest part of the original NYC was the first permanent railroad in the state of New York and one of the first railroads in the United States, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad.   Chartered in 1826 to connect the Mohawk River at Schenectady to the Hudson River at Albany, the M&W provided a way for cargo on Hudson River steamboats to replace Erie Canal transport.   The M&(W opened on September 24, 1831, and changed its name to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad on April 19, 1847.

Albany industrialist and Mohawk Valley Railroad owner Erastus Corning was instrumental in merging 10 railroads into one system on March 17, 1853.   The merger was approved by the state legislature on April 2 to form the New York Central Railroad on May 17, 1853.   The following companies were consolidated into this system to form the main line from Albany to Buffalo:

1. Albany and Schenectady Railroad
2. Utica and Schenectady Railroad
3. Syracuse and Utica Railroad
4. Rochester and Syracuse Railroad
5. Buffalo and Rochester Railroad
6. The Rochester and Syracuse, which also owned the old alignment via Auburn, Geneva and Canandaigua, known as the "Auburn Road".
7. The Buffalo and Rochester, which included a branch from Batavia to Attica until 1852.
8. Schenectady and Troy Railroad, a branch from Schenectady east to Troy
9. Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad, a major branch from Rochester west to Niagara Falls
10. Buffalo and Lockport Railroad, a branch from the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls at Lockport south to Buffalo via trackage rights on the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad from Tonawanda.

Also merged were two railroads that had not built any road and never would: The Mohawk Valley Railroad and the Syracuse and Utica Direct Railroad

Soon the Buffalo and State Line Railroad and Erie and North East Railroad converted to standard gauge of 4' 8" from 6 foot broad gauge, thus enabling to connect directly with the NYC in Buffalo to provide a through route to Erie, Pennsylvania.

Later additions to the NYC:

The Rochester and Lake Ontario Railroad was organized in 1852 and opened in Fall 1853; it was leased to the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad, which became part of the NYC, before opening.   In 1855 it was merged into the NYC, providing a branch from Rochester north to Charlotte on Lake Ontario.

The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad was also merged into the NYC in 1855.   It had been chartered in 1834 and opened in 1837, providing a line between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.   It was leased to the NYC in 1853.   In 1855 came the merger with the Lewiston Railroad, running from Niagara Falls north to Lewiston.   It was chartered in 1836 and opened in 1837 without connections to other railroads.   In 1854 a southern extension opened to the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad and the line was leased to the NYC.

The Canandaigua and Niagara Falls Railroad was chartered in 1851.   The first stage opened in 1853 from Canandaigua on the Auburn Road west to Batavia on the main line.   A continuation west to North Tonawanda opened later that year, and in 1854 a section opened in Niagara Falls connecting it to the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge.   The NYC bought the company at bankruptcy in 1858 and reorganized it as the Niagara Bridge and Canandaigua Railroad, merging it into itself in 1890.

The Saratoga and Hudson River Railroad was chartered in 1864 and opened in 1866 as a branch of the NYC from Athens Junction, southeast of Schenectady, southeast and south to Athens on the west side of the Hudson River.   On September 9, 1867 the company was merged into the NYC, but in 1867 the terminal at Athens burned down and the line was abandoned.   In the 1880s the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway leased the line and incorporated it into their main line, taken over by the NYC in 1885 as the West Shore Railroad.

Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired control of the NYC with the help of maneuverings related to the Hudson River Bridge in Albany.   On November 1, 1869, he merged the NYC with his Hudson River Railroad and named it the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad.   This extended the system south from Albany along the east bank of the Hudson River to New York City, with the leased Troy and Greenbush Railroad running from Albany north to Troy.   Vanderbilt's other lines were operated as part of the NYC.   These included the New York and Harlem Railroad, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, Canada Southern Railway and Michigan Central Railroad.

The Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad was chartered in 1869 and opened in 1871, providing a route on the north side of the Harlem River for trains along the Hudson River to head southeast to the New York and Harlem Railroad towards Grand Central Terminal or the freight facilities at Port Morris.   From opening it was leased by the NYC.

The Geneva and Lyons Railroad was organized in 1877 and opened in 1878, leased by the NYC from opening.   This was a north-south connection between Syracuse and Rochester, running from the main line at Lyons south to the Auburn Road at Geneva.   It was merged into the NYC in 1890.

On July 1, 1900, the Boston and Albany Railroad was leased by the NYC, although it retained a separate identity.   In 1914 the name was changed again, forming the modern New York Central Railroad.

The NYCs distinctive character, its Water Level Route made it competitive with its arch rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad, with its mountainous Appalachian terrain, although the Pennsy was a more direct route to the midwest.   This flat route influenced many technical features, including locomotive design.   Steam locomotives of the NYC were optimized for speed on that flat raceway of a main line, rather than for slow mountain lugging.   Famous locomotives of the system included the well-known 4-6-4 Hudsons, and the postwar Niagaras, which were fast 4-8-4 locomotives often considered the epitome of their breed by steam locomotive aficionados.

Despite having some of the most modern steam locomotives anywhere, the NYC dieselized rapidly, conscious of its by then difficult financial position and the potential relief that more economical diesel-electric power could bring.   Except for a very few NYC steam locomotives that still exist in museums, all Hudsons and Niagaras were sent to the scrapper's torch.   In 2004, the only surviving big modern steam locomotives are two 4-8-2 Mohawk dual-purpose locomotives.   The financial situation of northeastern railroading soon became so dire that not even the economies of the new diesel-electric locomotives could change things.

The Junction Railroad's Buffalo Belt Line opened in 1871, providing a bypass of Buffalo, New York to the northeast, as well as a loop route for passenger trains via downtown.   The West Shore Railroad, acquired in 1885, provided a bypass around Rochester, New York.   The Terminal Railway's Gardenville Cutoff, allowing through traffic to bypass Buffalo to the southeast, opened in 1898.

The Schenectady Detour consisted of two connections to the West Shore Railroad, allowing through trains to bypass the steep grades at Schenectady, New York.   The full project opened in 1902.   The Cleveland Short Line Railway built a bypass of Cleveland, Ohio, completed in 1912.   In 1924, the Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge was constructed as part of the Hudson River Connecting Railroad's Castleton Cut-Off, a 27.5-mile-long freight bypass of the congested Albany terminal area.

An unrelated realignment was made in the 1910s at Rome, when the Erie Canal was realigned and widened onto a new alignment south of downtown Rome.   The NYC main line was shifted south out of downtown to the south bank of the new canal.   A bridge was built southeast of downtown, roughly where the old main line crossed the path of the canal, to keep access to Rome from the southeast.   West of downtown, the old main line was abandoned, but a brand new railroad line was built, running north from the NYC main line to the NYC's former Watertown and Rome Railroad, allowing all NYC through traffic to bypass Rome.

Like all railroads, the NYC replaced the less efficient canals, barges and steamboats.   Railroads, in turn, began to decline in importance with the invention of the internal combustion engine and its application in the more efficient trucks and cars.

The Vanderbilt interests, having steadily reduced their shareholdings, lost a proxy fight in 1954 to Robert Ralph Young and his Alleghany Corporation.   Unable to keep his promises, Young was forced to suspend dividend payments in January 1958 and committed suicide that month.   After his death, Young's role in NYC management was assumed by Alfred E. Perlman, who had been working with the NYC under Young since 1954.   Although much had been accomplished to streamline NYC operations, in those tough economic times, mergers with other railroads were seen as the only possible road to financial stability.   The most likely suitor became the NYC's former arch-rival Pennsylvania Railroad.   The NYC became a fallen flag on February 1, 1968 when it joined with its old enemy, the Pennsylvania Railroad, in the ill-fated merger that produced Penn Central.   Slightly over two years later, on June 21, 1970, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed for bankruptcy and was taken over by the federal government and merged into Conrail in 1976.   Conrail was broken up in 1998, and much of its system was transferred to the newly-formed New York Central Lines LLC, a subsidiary of CSX.   That company's lines include the original New York Central main line, but outside that area it includes lines that were never part of the NYC system.

Conrail, officially the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was created by the U.S. Government to salvage Penn Central, and several other bankrupt railroads.   On April 1, 1976, it began operations.   On June 6, 1998, most of Conrail was split between Norfolk Southern and CSX.   New York Central Lines LLC was formed as a subsidiary of Conrail, containing the lines to be operated by CSX; this included the old Water Level Route and many other lines of the New York Central, as well as various lines from other companies.   CSX also assumed the NYC reporting mark.