I’ll take a leaf from Andy Rooney’s book, and tell you what bugs me.
*It bugs me that when I want to take the train to Rhode Island, I have to start out by driving from Bath to Rochester – 75 miles in the wrong direction. Which, even once I finally board, makes a trip longer, costlier, and much more tiresome than it need be.
*If I could start out by going to Binghamton… let alone Elmira, Corning, or even (wonder of wonders!) Bath, the trip would be a LOT nicer.
*The glory days of rail are not coming back anytime soon, but railways were vital to development of the Southern Tier. The Conhocton-Chemung-Susquehanna chain used to be a key transportation route, and the Southern Tier was the growth region.
*The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, crashed that growth. DeWitt Clinton, rounding up support for his “big ditch,” promised a future major transportation project for the Southern Tier. Over time that morphed into the Erie Railroad, which opened in 1851. The economy started growing again.
*At Steuben County Historical Society we have a set of diaries in which an Avoca person describes going to Painted Post to get the train… then to Bath… and finally being able to board right in Avoca itself.
*Going from Dansville to Bath on foot would be a hard two-day struggle… about the time it takes now to drive to Omaha. Once the railroad came in, Bath and Dansville were practically next-door neighbors.
*Soon after the Erie opened, the Steuben County sheriff was ordered to take two vagrants to New London, Connecticut, and sign them on board a whaling vessel – a project practical only thanks to the railroad.
*Steuben County has two cities and 14 incorporated villages. Apart from the Village of Hammondsport, every one lies along what was once the route of the Erie Railroad… and even Hammondsport was at the end of a short line eventually taken over by the Erie.
*The grape-and-wine businesses on Seneca and Keuka Lakes probably would have existed without railroads (in Penn Yan, Hammondsport, Watkins, Geneva) to haul out product, but on a much smaller scale.
*Those same lines turned Keuka and Seneca into tourist destinations, as families of the growing middle class rode out from the big cities for summer fun.
*Glenn Curtiss couldn’t have developed his airplane and motorcycle businesses… or at least, he couldn’t have done it in Hammondpsort… without the rail connections.
*Brooklyn Flint Glass Works moved to Corning (150 years ago this summer) to take advantage of its rail connections (though they moved their equipment by canal).
*Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Charles Evans Hughes all campaigned in Steuben County, delivered to the spot by rail.
*Aggressive use of rail was key to Union victory in the Civil War. Local men went by rail to Elmira or Rochester, where they were mustered into regiments and given what passed for basic training, then shipped out by rail.
*World War I draft contingents left home by rail. On November 11, 1918, a group that had just left Bath was stopped at Addison. After a few tense hours they got the good word: Go home – the war is over.
*Monthly draft contingents for World War II were sworn in at Steuben County courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W station, whence they were taken off to begin their military life. Joe Paddock was sent to Buffalo, and from there forwarded on via a train that took him – right back through Bath. He gathered some of his new friends on the platform of the observation car, and gave them a “tour” of his home town as the train chugged slowly through.
*Rails have been vital to the life of the Southern Tier. Ian Mackenzie, author of “Railroads Remembered: The History of Railroads in Western New York and Western Pennsylvania,” will give a presentation on the topic at 4 PM Friday, Feb. 2, in Bath Fire Hall, and books will be available for purchase. This is part of the Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series, and is free and open to the public. We hope we’ll see you!