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 A former Rochester and Eastern station, once located in Canandaigua, now on the property of the New York Museum of Transportation. | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Canandaigua, New York |
| Dates of operation | 1901–1930 |
| Successor | New York State Railways |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) |
| Electrification | 650v DC |
| Length | 44 miles |
The Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway (R&ER) was an electric interurban railway in New York State, USA, connecting Rochester, Canandaigua, and Geneva.
The company was chartered in 1901, the investors being mostly from Rochester. [1] Service between that city and Canandaigua began in 1903, the power house and car barn being erected in the latter place. Completion to Geneva was in 1904. [2] A spur line to Fairport was begun, but abandoned unfinished. [3]
In 1905 the line came under control of the New York Central Railroad (NYC) through its Mohawk Valley Company subsidiary. [4] In this period, Canandaigua was provided with a limited local streetcar service using one car. [5]
The R&E was consolidated with the Rochester Railway Company and the Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway in 1909 to form New York State Railways which was wholly owned by New York Central. One change was that the power house was shut down, and electricity purchased from the local public utility company owing to economies of scale. [6]
In its early years, the line attracted a heavy leisure traffic of people wishing to visit the Finger Lakes, but this was especially vulnerable to automobile competition. Ridership declined sharply through the 1920s, but nevertheless the interurban was re-routed to link up to the Rochester Subway at Rowlands in 1928, providing a faster and more direct route to serve downtown Rochester. [7]
The effort was wasted, as New York State Railways petitioned to abandon the R&E in 1929. Months later, legal permission was granted to end all service on July 31, 1930. The line was dismantled soon after, and there was no successor. [8]
Before 1928, the R&ER used the Rochester Railway Company streetcar tracks, and left the city on Monroe Avenue. In that year, it briefly connected with the Rochester Subway at Rowlands, at the south-east end of Monroe, before shutting down for good. The terminus in this short period was the City Hall subway stop. [9]
The first major stop after Rochester city limits was Pittsford, whence the R&ER closely paralleled the NYC line to Canandaigua on the latter's north side. Stops were at Bushnell's Basin, Fishers, Victor, Mertensia (actually at Hathaway Corners) and Paddleford. In Canandaigua the line ran down Main Street, and the car barn was at the end of a stub line left when the main line turned east to Geneva.
The location of the car barn at the end of this stub line at the south end of Canandagua's Main Street meant that the city's local trolley service could shuttle from there to the city limits at the north end of Main Street and back again, without getting in the way of the interurban cars.
The main line then ran due east, with main stops at Hopewell, Seneca Castle, Gates and Pre-emption. It terminated in Geneva next to the City Hall on the north side of the Castle Street, halfway between Geneva and Exchange Streets. [10] [11]
At Geneva, the line connected with the Geneva, Seneca Falls and Auburn Railroad which took folk to Seneca Falls and to a terminus on the Cayuga Lake shore where there was an amusement park (it never got to Auburn). This little company also ran the Geneva streetcars. [12]
In 1905, the R&ER was proposing a loop line from Mertensia through Shortsville, Clifton Springs and Phelps to Geneva, but this was abortive -although it appeared on its publicity maps.
The line had interchanges with the NYC, and also with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Canandagua and the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Geneva. However it was never able to develop any substantial carload freight traffic although, like most interurbans, it handled LCL (less-than-carload) freight in the baggage compartments of its cars. [13]
The Pacific Electric Railway Company, nicknamed the Red Cars, was a privately owned mass transit system in Southern California consisting of electrically powered streetcars, interurban cars, and buses and was the largest electric railway system in the world in the 1920s. Organized around the city centers of Los Angeles and San Bernardino, it connected cities in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest, along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Syracuse. New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building, adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal.
The Interurban is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 and 1925 and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. The concept spread to countries such as Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Poland. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution. Most roads between towns and many town streets were unpaved. Transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts. The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between the town and countryside. In 1915, 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interurban railways were operating in the United States and, for a few years, interurban railways, including the numerous manufacturers of cars and equipment, were the fifth-largest industry in the country. By 1930, most interurbans in North America were gone with a few surviving into the 1950s.
The St. Louis Car Company was a major United States manufacturer of railroad passenger cars, streetcars, trolleybuses and locomotives that existed from 1887 to 1974, based in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Rochester Industrial and Rapid Transit Railway, more commonly known as the Rochester subway was a light rail rapid transit line in the city of Rochester, New York, from 1927 to 1956. The subway was constructed in the bed of the old Erie Canal, which allowed the route to be grade-separated for its entire length. Two miles (3.2 km) of the route through downtown were constructed in a cut-and-cover tunnel that became Broad Street, and the only underground portion of the subway. The Rochester Subway was designed to reduce interurban traffic on city streets, and to facilitate freight interchange between the railroads. The line was operated on a contract basis by New York State Railways until Rochester Transit Corporation (RTC) took over in 1938. The last day of passenger service was June 30, 1956. Portions of the right-of-way were used for expressway construction, while the rest was abandoned and filled in over the years. The largest remaining section is a stretch of tunnel under Broad Street from Exchange Street to the intersection of Court Street and South Avenue.
New York State Railways was a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad that controlled several large city streetcar and electric interurban systems in upstate New York. It included the city transit lines in Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Oneida and Rome, plus various interurban lines connecting those cities. New York State Railways also held a 50% interest in the Schenectady Railway Company, but it remained a separate independent operation. The New York Central took control of the Rochester Railway Company, the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway and the Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway in 1905, and the Mohawk Valley Company was formed by the railroad to manage these new acquisitions. New York State Railways was formed in 1909 when the properties controlled by the Mohawk Valley Company were merged. In 1912 it added the Rochester and Suburban Railway, the Syracuse Rapid Transit Railway, the Oneida Railway, and the Utica and Mohawk Valley Railway. The New York Central Railroad was interested in acquiring these lines in an effort to control the competition and to gain control of the lucrative electric utility companies that were behind many of these streetcar and interurban railways. Ridership across the system dropped through the 1920s as operating costs continued to rise, coupled with competition from better highways and private automobile use. New York Central sold New York State Railways in 1928 to a consortium led by investor E. L. Phillips, who was looking to gain control of the upstate utilities. Phillips sold his stake to Associated Gas & Electric in 1929, and the new owners allowed the railway bonds to default. New York State Railways entered receivership on December 30, 1929. The company emerged from receivership in 1934, and local operations were sold off to new private operators between 1938 and 1948.
The Chicago – New York Electric Air Line Railroad (CNY) was a proposed high-speed electric air-line railroad between Chicago and New York City. At roughly 750 miles (1,210 km) it would have been over 150 miles (240 km) shorter than the two primary steam railroads on that route, the New York Central Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad. The promoters' vision proved wildly optimistic and, in the end, only a short interurban route in the vicinity of Gary, Indiana was built and operated. It was the most ambitious of several such proposals at the dawn of electric railroading, all of which ended in failure.
The Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Railway was an interurban electrified railway system serving northwestern Ohio's Marblehead Peninsula.
The International Railway Company (IRC) was a transportation company formed in a 1902 merger between several Buffalo-area interurban and street railways. The city railways that merged were the West Side Street Railway, the Crosstown Street Railway and the Buffalo Traction Company. The suburban railroads that merged included the Buffalo & Niagara Electric Street Railway, and its subsidiary the Buffalo, Lockport & Olcott Beach Railway; the Buffalo, Depew & Lancaster Railway; and the Niagara Falls Park & River Railway. Later the IRC acquired the Niagara Gorge Railroad (NGRR) as a subsidiary, which was sold in 1924 to the Niagara Falls Power Company. The NGRR also leased the Lewiston & Youngstown Frontier Railroad.
The Arkansas Valley Interurban Railway (AVI) was an interurban railway that operated in Kansas USA from 1910 to 1938 for passengers and to 1942 for freight, running between Wichita, Newton, and Hutchinson. It operated a small fleet of electrically powered passenger and freight equipment. Service was suspended during World War II and never resumed, except on a small portion owned the Hutchinson and Northern Railroad which is still in operation. (2020)
The Lansing, St. Johns and St. Louis Railway was an electric interurban railway which briefly operated independently in central Michigan during the early 20th century. It was the site of a failed attempt to introduce alternating current to the interurban scene.
The New York Museum of Transportation (NYMT), founded in 1975, is a non-profit organization located at 6393 East River Road, in the Rochester suburb of Rush. A private rail line built by volunteers connects NYMT with the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, over a distance of two miles. This demonstration railway allows both museums to offer train rides with their collections of vintage railroad equipment. NYMT operates the only electric trolley ride in New York State, not to be confused with the similarly named Trolley Museum of New York located in Kingston, New York.
The Rochester and Syracuse Railroad was a double-track, high-speed line 87 miles (140 km) long that ran between Rochester and Syracuse, New York. The tracks paralleled the New York Central Railroad and the Erie Canal and had only one grade crossing with another railroad its entire length.
The Auburn Trail is a multi-use rail trail located principally in the towns of Victor and Farmington, Ontario County, New York (USA). It is approximately 11 miles (18 km) long and maintained by the Towns of Victor and Farmington and Victor Hiking Trails. The trail mostly follows the alignment of the Auburn and Rochester Railroad. Additional disconnected portions of the Auburn trail are found in the Towns of Pittsford and Brighton, Monroe County, NY. A detailed description and map of the Auburn Trail are available from Victor Hiking Trails.
City Hall is a former Rochester Industrial and Rapid Transit Railway station located in Rochester, New York. It was closed in 1956 along with the rest of the line.
The Rochester, Lockport and Buffalo Railroad was an electric interurban railway that was constructed between Rochester, New York, and Lockport, New York, connecting to the International Railway Co. at Lockport for service into Buffalo. Opened in 1909 as the Buffalo, Lockport and Rochester Railway, the route followed the Erie Canal and the New York Central Railroad's Falls Road branch for most of its length. For a brief period of time, the railway was part of the Beebe Syndicate of affiliated interurban railways stretching from Syracuse to Buffalo. Entering receivership in 1917, it was reorganized as the Rochester, Lockport and Buffalo Railroad in 1919. After years of struggling with declining revenue during the Depression years, the railway's last day of service was April 30, 1931.
The Rochester Railway Company operated a streetcar transit system throughout the city of Rochester from 1890 until its acquisition by Rochester Transit Corp. in 1938. Formed by a group of Pittsburgh investors, the Rochester Railway Company purchased the Rochester City & Brighton Railroad in 1890, followed by a lease of the Rochester Electric Railway in 1894. The Rochester and Suburban Railway was leased in 1905, extending the system's reach to Irondequoit and Sea Breeze. Rochester Railways was acquired by the Mohawk Valley Company, a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad set up to take control of electric railways in its territory. In 1909 the holdings of the Mohawk Valley Company were consolidated as the New York State Railways.
Chartered in 1886, the Canandaigua Street Railroad was a local streetcar line serving the lakeside city of Canandaigua, New York beginning in 1887. The railroad was sold to the Canandaigua Electric Light and Railroad which rebuilt and electrified the line in 1892. The Ontario Light and Traction Company purchased it in 1900, and leased the line to the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway in 1903. In 1905, the line came under the control of the Mohawk Valley Company, and in turn, New York State Railways in 1909. Operation was converted to bus operation some time in the 1920s, but this service ended when the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway shut down on July 31, 1930. The lease of the former Canandaiua lines was allowed to lapse.
The Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway was an electric interurban railway connecting Rochester with the shores of Lake Ontario at Sodus Point. The line was leased to the Rochester Railway Company in 1902 and later merged into New York State Railways in 1909. Ridership dropped off in the 1920s, and the railway east of Glen Haven was abandoned in 1929. The remaining local streetcar service ended in 1933.
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