The Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh Railway was one of the more than ten thousand railroad companies founded in North America. It lasted much longer than most, serving communities from the shore of Lake Ontario to the center of western Pennsylvania.
Purpose
By the middle of the 19th century, American industry had found the means of both utilizing the bituminous coal of western Pennsylvania and transporting it economically from the mines to those who needed it.That is to say, the technology had been proved. It had not yet been implemented. Initially, this meant steam power, in both the railroad locomotives and the factories. The immediate consequence was the need for a railroad line to haul coal from the hills of Pennsylvania to the cities of Rochester and Buffalo as well as the smaller towns and villages. The needs of the latter motivated them to invest, both individually and municipally, in the new rail companies that arose almost as profusely as spring flowers.
In the simplest terms, the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh Railway was required to pick up precisely what the Rochester and State Line Railroad and the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad had dropped, the coal-hauling market between the coalfields of western Pennsylvania and the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. The mines produced steam coal, and the factories and the railroads of the Northeast needed it, in vast amounts. The reality, however, was far less simple. The great need of the coal-transportation market attracted aggressive competitors, and the laissez-faire environment of the day encouraged tactics that included paper railroads, buying and selling of corporations as though they were used cars, and financial manipulation by syndicates of investors.
For Buffalo, existing coal transportation was limited to lake boats; for Rochester, the canals and the east-west railroads. These bottlenecks caused fuel shortages which, in turn, led to the development of such paper railroads as the Buffalo and Pittsburgh RailroadThis road was organized in 1852 and is not related to the present company of the same name. as well as the Attica and Allegheny Valley,Along with many other planned railroads, this one was not built. The Arcade and Attica Railroad now occupies the northern part of the proposed route. in the same year. The Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad was another scheme, although this one was actually built, to a degree.
In Rochester, both the seasonality of the Erie CanalIn winter, coal prices would rise significantly. and the near monopoly of the Erie RailroadThis was blamed for the price of coal tripling during the mid-1860s. intensified the pressure for a new railroad running through to the coalfields. Another failed attempt to resolve this saw the also-never-built Rochester and PittsburghNot the company of the same name which was organized in 1881. in 1853. Another line which was partially built but never reached Pennsylvania was the three-foot-gauge Rochester, Nunda, and Pennsylvania.This line operated between Mt Morris and Swain, with at least a graded railbed as far as Angelica.The name of this town is pronounced "nun-day".
By 1869, much money had been spent, most of it to no good purpose, and many words had been uttered and printed, but there was still no efficient, reliable, all-weather route for the coal.
Genesis
Although probably mythical, there's a story that the Mumford merchant, Oliver Allen, arose from a dinner with some fellow businessmen at which the need for a new railroad had been the topic of a spirited discussion and exclaimed, "Let's build a railroad." Allen did not build the road himself, but his was the drive that led to the Rochester and State Line Railroad.
The Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company was born on 29 January 1881 from the remains of the R&SL. The latter had been sold on 20 January for $600,000 to a New York syndicate of investors led by Walston H Brown. Brown, of Brown, Howard, and Company, had experience in railroad building; his company typified the many financial speculators and investment organizations which dealt in railroad companies and their securities. Another investment company to figure prominently in the BR&P history was that of Adrian Iselin. Ab initio, these investors planned expansion into the lucrative coal-haulage market. The source of the coal had by this time expanded south through western Pennsylvania into the Beech Tree area between Brockwayville and DuBois.
In a practice typical in the industry, so-called "construction companies" were formed. They were paper railroadsWhile some of them never got off the paper, as it were, others did actual building before their intentionally brief lives ended. intended for the actual building of new lines and branches but not permanent existence operating them. Thus, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, the Great Valley and Bradford Railroad, the Bradford and State Line Railroad, and the Pittsburgh and New York Railroad built their respective lines, and then the latter three companies were folded back into the Rochester and Pittsburgh in November 1881.
The R&P purchased the Pitkin Building on Main Street West and Oak Street in Rochester and added a two-story Gothic structure to it. The board then hired a highly qualified manager in George E Merchant, who had excelled as a division superintendent for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul, and Pacific. Among the issues he faced upon beginning work in the head office in Rochester were several pending lawsuits against the R&SL and disputes arising from the shady land acquisition practices of the company's forebear.The Rochester and State Line Railroad had, in some instances, built their tracks across land that they did not yet own. Resolving these, he proceeded to improve the capital plant, including refurbishing the older locomotives and buying new ones. He bought more 4-4-0 Brooks engines, as well as a number of 2-8-0 Consolidations. Line construction absorbed considerable resources as well.In an incident in 1882, the R&P built a line across the narrow-gauge Olean, Bradford, and Warren without first asking permission. When the OB&W declined the R&P's terms for an agreement, the R&P went ahead with the construction anyway. The irate OB&W crew then hooked a locomotive to the trestle works and started to pull it down. Intervention by the local police kept the resulting brawl from becoming serious. The two companies eventually came to an agreement at least non-violent if not altogether amicable.
In 1882, through its subsidiary, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, it extended its trackage south from Salamanca to reach the coal fields of Pennsylvania. To accomplish this required bridging the Kinzua Creek Gorge. The R&P used what was, for the time, the world's highest railroad bridge. Built by the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad and Coal Company, the structure was more than above the creek and more than long. Construction took only ninety-four days. The single track over the bridge was shared by the Erie and the R&P; this proved to be a bottleneck, and the company which succeeded the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, built a forty-mile detour, opening it in 1893.
While the R&P was expanding on its south side, it also built on the north end. Using the Rochester and Charlotte,Technically, this company never built anything. Organized on 21 April 1881 for the purpose of constructing a line from the R&P at Lincoln Park to the lake at Charlotte (the mouth of the Genesee River), it instead abandoned its proposed route in a deal struck with the New York Central and Hudson River on 1 May 1882 and extended to May 1886, by which time, of course, the R&P had disappeared. The BR&P did build this route, using the Lincoln Park and Charlotte Railroad. the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh,Its point of departure from the R&P main line was a spot in the town of Ashford. It was created on 18 August 1881 by the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad for the purpose of extending its line north from Machias to Buffalo. In the event, this route started not at Machias but at Ashford, the result of which was Ashford Junction. On 28 September 1881, this company and the paper-only Rochester and Charlotte Railroad were merged into the Rochester and Pittsburgh. and the Perry RailroadA modest undertaking organized on 9 May 1882 to build a one mile (1.6 km) long connection between the existing short line at Silver Springs and the R&P main line at Silver Lake Junction, the Perry Railroad was taken back into the R&P on 17 November 1883. as construction companies, it brought much greater capability to the old RS&L yard at Lincoln Park and extended its line to the coal pier on the Genesee River at Lake Ontario (Charlotte).
Succumbing to over-expansion,The railroad historian, Paul Pietrak, suggests(page 35) that the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company was, in essence, nothing more than a vast construction company for the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway. the R&P went bankrupt in May 1885 after existing less than four years.20 January 1881 through 16 October 1885.
The vigorous expansion of the railroad, including land acquisition, the employment of literally thousands of laborers, and the purchase of locomotives and freight and passenger cars, placed upon the Rochester and Pittsburgh a burden that its revenue and capitalization could not sustain. On 30 May 1885, the Supreme Court appointed a referee to whom it gave the authority to sell off the company's assets. The foreclosure had been forced by the Union Trust Company of New York City. On 16 October 1885, Adrian Iselin bought the remains of the R&P.
That October, it emerged in the form of a new company called the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, a name which accurately reflected the physical reality of its route structure. One of the forces at work in the reorganization which engendered the BR&P was a Rochester coal merchant named Arthur Yates. Not coincidentally, Yates was the line's biggest coal shipper.
Locomotives
The power used by the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway had a broader range than that of most Eastern roads of the steam era. From a tiny two-foot-gauge 0-4-0 switcher used in their cross-tie factoryThis plant, in Bradford, impregnated ties and bridge timbers with preservative. and the eleven Brooks-built "American" style 4-4-0 engines inherited from the Rochester and State Line Railroad to the massive Alco 2-6-6-2 and 2-8-8-2 Mallets used as pushers at the notorious Clarion Hill,This is a grade on the south side of the Big Level near Kinzua on Clarion Hill. Eleven miles long between Clarion Junction and J&B Junction (at 2,216 ft), it rises northbound at to the mile. the BR&P ran engines that were well maintained and in which crews took justifiable pride. By the time the Rochester and Pittsburgh had inherited the R&SL motive power, the original eleven had aged quickly, the RS&L having spent little on maintenance. The R&P had to send the locomotives back to Brooks for rebuilding in 1881. By the end of 1881, the company had a total of sixteen locomotives, all of them Brooks 4-4-0s.
With the advent of the R&P came expansion into the hills of Pennsylvania, and that meant heavier and more powerful engines. In 1881, five Consolidation 2-8-0s were added to the roster, with another fifteen early in 1882. In 1883, another fifteen were acquired, along with four more 4-4-0s. The next type procured was the 0-6-0 switcher, as well as more Consolidations. By 1884, the R&P was operating 60 engines, and this represented the extent of the R&P's locomotive inventory.