BUFFALO ROCHESTER & PITTSBURGH RAILWAY LANTERN C. T. HAM MFG. Co. BR&P Ry 1893

BUFFALO ROCHESTER & PITTSBURGH RAILWAY. This is a RARE vintage piece of Railroad History made by C. HAM for the BUFFALO ROCHESTER & PITSBURGH RAILWAY. This Bell Bottom lantern is marked C. The Corning Extended clear glass globe is embossed B. Cnx Q, No cracks, some small chips around the rims, several straw marks and air bubble. The Brass burner and drop font is in good working condition.

Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Tone or style may not reflect the. Guide to writing better articles. Learn how and when to remove this template message. System map as of 1903.

Was one of the more than ten thousand. It lasted much longer than most, serving communities from the. The proposed BR&P route in 1907. Share of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway Company, issued 15.

By the middle of the 19th century, American industry had found the means of both utilizing the. Of western Pennsylvania and transporting it economically from the mines to those who needed it. The immediate consequence was the need for a railroad line to haul coal from the hills of Pennsylvania to the cities of.

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. Rochester and State Line Railroad. And the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad had dropped, the coal-hauling market between the. 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. 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.

As the Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad. As well as the Attica and Allegheny Valley. 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. And the near monopoly of the. Intensified the pressure for a new railroad running through to the.

Another failed attempt to resolve this saw the also-never-built Rochester and Pittsburgh. Another line which was partially built but never reached Pennsylvania was the. With the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, the BR&P operated the lake ferry, Ontario I, seen here docked at Charlotte, circa 1907. There's a story that the.

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. The Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company was born on 29 January 1881 from the remains of the R&SL. 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. Into the Beech Tree area between. In a practice typical in the industry, so-called "construction companies" were formed.

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.

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. Were several pending lawsuits against the R&SL and disputes arising from the shady land acquisition practices of the company's forebear. Engines, as well as a number of. Line construction absorbed considerable resources as well.

In 1882, through its subsidiary, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, it extended its trackage south from. 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. New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad and Coal Company. Was more than 300 feet (91 m) above the creek and more than 2,000 feet (610 m) 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. The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh. 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.

The R&P went bankrupt in May 1885 after existing less than four years. On 30 May 1885, the. 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. Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway power. Rochester and Pittsburgh 4-4-0 "American" at the Mumford station. Rochester and Pittsburgh 2-8-0 locomotive, the "Carrollton", on the Salamanca turntable.

Rochester and Pittsburgh Engine 2, the "Salamanca", originally built in 1873 for the Rochester and State Line, photographed in 1881 in Salamanca. The power used by the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway had a broader range than that of most. At the notorious Clarion Hill.

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.

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. 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. Since the BR&P came to an end in 1932, it remained a steam-only railroad, with some of its locomotives serving the B&O through the 1950s. The Rural Valley Railroad, and the Clearfield and Mahoning.

Was the company's trade, and coal cars are heavy. At the time ranged from 2,175 tons to 3,700 tons. Demanded enormous pulling (and pushing) capability, and even the 250-ton 2-6-6-2s were often doubled up.

Although the BR&P was not a passenger line, it put a first-class effort into the passenger service that it provided the public. The locomotives used represented the best available, as did the care given these engines, leading to an enviable record for on-time completion of trips. The first passenger service was hauled by special. Engines acquired in 1898 and dedicated to passenger trains. Brooks, these engines were the pride of the company. In 1901, they were supplanted by the more-capable. The last of these came on board in 1909. The Atlantic class was fast. And capable when coupled to a three-car train.

As train length was increased and heavier steel cars replaced the wood cars, the Atlantics were, in turn, replaced by the heavier. Pacifics, which lasted until the B&O ended passenger service in 1955. The BR&P owned a total of 22 Pacifics, acquisition ranging from 1912 to 1923. Used widely by railroads throughout the country, it proved popular and reliable.

The Pacific was built in several weights, with the lighter numbers 675 to 679 Brooks engines known by the crews as the "sport model". Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway stations. 1874 Rochester and State Line station in Scottsville. The siding in the back served local feed mills and coal yards, including Haxton's.

New BR&P station in Scottsville, 1911. This replaced the older station, seen here north of the new one. Passenger service in Scottsville, prior to 1953. The Rochester terminal of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, located on Main Street West at Oak Street. The Rochester terminal of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, now the home of the Nick Tahou restaurant.

Passes issued by the Rochester and Pittsburgh and its successor, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway. The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway passenger station was south of the railroad tracks.

East Avenue (Rochester) home of BR&P president, William Noonan. The BR&P line crossed Black Creek between Lincoln Park and Scottsville. BR&P trestle crossing Black Creek in Chili, 23 March 1903.

Today, the train station in Mumford is an herb store. The public face of a railroad is its stations, and the BR&P demonstrated its respect for its customers with well-designed, well-built, and well-maintained railway stations, most of which outlasted the company. Some were erected anew, while others, like the terminus in Rochester, were improvements of existing buildings. Station of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh sat at the west end of Maple Street.

Well to the north of the end of the road. Its 1911 replacement was on the curve where Maple turns south to Wyvil and Hanford. The railroad built a new station in Scottsville, formally dedicating it in 1911.

Sitting approximately one hundred meters south of the original building, it was introduced to the public in a modest ceremony featuring. Judge Selden S Brown and businessman David Salyerds. In the summer of 1911, the line started a new station on the west side of Main Street in.

Completing it in October 1912. Over seven hundred people attended the opening, including Judge Brown again.

This station, on the very south side of Wheatland, accommodated both Mumford and. The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh stations in. National Register of Historic Places. In 1991 and 2007, respectively. That part of Oak Street which ended at the station on Main Street disappeared when the.

The track behind the station, however, survives as part of the. The Bradford station saw enormous activity at the end of the 19th century.

The BR&P had a maintenance facility in this oil town, along with their cross-tie and timber factory, which operated its own two-foot-gauge micro-railroad for moving the timbers about. Other railroads active in Bradford at the time included the Bradford, Bordell, and Kinzua, the Olean, Bradford, and Warren, the Kindell and Eldred, and the bizarre little.

Bradford and Foster Brook Monorail. Genesee Coal Dock, looking north along the river toward Lake Ontario. The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway was a company built on and around taking coal north out of Pennsylvania.

The financial backer of the newly founded Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, the banking house of Adrian Iselin. Owned not only an interest in the rail line but coal mines. At the southern end of the BR&P was such that today's maps of the coal mining region show such place names as Adrian, Adrian Furnace, Adrian Mines, and Iselin Heights; moreover, the railroad named one entire branch after him.

Entirely owned by the R&P. Walston H Brown was president of both corporations.

The company town at the southern end of the railroad, in the 11,500 acres 47 km. Acquired by the coal company in the Punxsutawney area, was given the name Walston, Pennsylvania. The initial coal production facilities yielded approximately six hundred tons daily, at a total mine-to-carload cost of seventy-three cents per ton. Of those, perhaps 500 belonged to the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company. By the mid-1880s, the railroad was running forty or more coal trains a day.

Two coal companies accounted for the coal trade carried by the railroad. At first competitors, the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company and the Bell, Lewis, and Yates Coal Mining Company became. Good friends when Frederick Bell, George Lewis, and Arthur Yates took seats on the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway board of directors. In fact, with Iselin's resignation as president of the railway company, Yates took his place.

The two coal companies then negotiated an agreement which eased competitive pressures and allocated access to the railroad's coal-transporting capacity. While Yates concentrated on coal, Merchant ran the railroad.

Part of Yates' contribution to the BR&P's ability to haul coal was the extension of the line north from Lincoln Park through Rochester up to the coal dock it built at the mouth of the Genesee River in 1896. With an initial capacity of 4,000 tons a day, it was expanded in 1909 and 1913. To get coal to Canada, the BR&P arranged a cross-lake ferry service.

This service was highly successful, carrying passengers and coal cars to. By 1913, over a million tons of coal a year passed through the Rochester coal dock.

As the national economy grew, more and more coal mines were developed along the BR&P routes. In fact, the new Indiana Branch soon yielded the greatest traffic volume as mines opened in the area south of Punxsutawney. By the 1920s, coal trains averaged 3,750 tons. Requiring considerably better motive power than the archaic Consolidations of the earlier era. However, long coal drags with one or two Mallets at the head did not last forever.

In the first quarter of the new century, the market share held by the comparatively costly union-made coal of Pennsylvania was driven down by the cheaper coal from the non-union mines of Kentucky and West Virginia. Sought federal regulation of coal industry wages but lost. In a series of moves to protect themselves, the coal companies transferred to the BR&P not only the short-line railroads they'd built themselves but also the Genesee Coal Dock facility. This had the effect of improving the coal companies' fiscal performance, but it effectively hung an anchor on the railroad's neck as it swam in deeper and deeper waters. The headquarters of both the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway and the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company were in the elegant building on Main Street West in Rochester, and the bitter arguments between William Noonan.

The head of the railway, and L W Robinson, the head of the coal company, became the stuff of local legend. In the end, both companies lost. The railroad disappeared into the B&O, and the coal company, which survived at least until 1981. In dramatically reduced size, is today no longer to be found in Rochester. Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Station (Springville, New York). Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway timetable from 4 June 1893. The first passenger run took place on the. On its 15 September 1874 run from. The last was on 15 October 1955, when the. Ended its Buffalo - Pittsburgh service.

At the start of the 20th century, the BR&P inaugurated a through service connecting Rochester and Pittsburgh. The first run of the. Left Rochester at precisely 0900 on 10 October 1899, bound for Pittsburgh, 330 miles (530 km) to the south.

The night departure was called the. The return trips were the.

The company took pride in doing its job properly. In its report for the year ending 30 June 1915, the New York State Public Service Commission observed that the BR&P had operated 13,877 passenger runs. Of these, 12,628 were on time. Commuter rail service on the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania connected outlying towns and villages to Rochester. In some areas, Darwinian competition resulted in the failure of other rail lines, e. The hilly terrain over which the BR&P routes ran posed problems, especially in the days before steel rolling stock. To negotiate these grades, the railroad needed to use helpers and pushers.

If the second (or third) engine were put at the head of the train, then too much weight aft might result in a broken coupler and the lethal problem of a runaway. If the additional power were at the back end, then the soft wood cars tended to buckle under the compression. Occasionally, a compromise would put the helper locomotive at or near the center of the train. Using helpers brought an additional problem. Since these engines were needed only on steeper grades and since the railroad would never countenance the expense of a second engine and crew on the entire run, the helpers had to return to the bottom of the grade for the next heavy train needing a push.

At first, this meant running backward after uncoupling from the rear of the train. The BR&P discouraged backward running as bad practice.

A problem that eventually was solved with the construction of. Additionally, care had to be exercised to avoid placing a caboose between a pusher and a train, as this crushed the soft cabooses. One practice not encouraged by management was disconnecting helper locomotives. The engineer of the helper would back off on the throttle to unload the coupler, and the fireman would pull the pin to separate the two engines. The helper would then sprint ahead to the siding, throw the switch, pull off the line, and reset the switch, preferably all before the train arrived at the.

The BR&P had four divisions, and helpers/pushers were used on all of them. The real difference arose because of the preponderance of heavy loads running northbound. For instance, coal trains were loaded northbound and empty southbound, as were the oil tankers. However, prior to World War I, the BR&P ran ore trains from Buffalo south to the iron mills in. The steepest grades were in the Buffalo Division, but they were uphill southbound and thus not a problem for the coal trains northbound. The ore trains had to negotiate these grades uphill, and, in the days before the Mallets, the ore trains out of Buffalo Creek had two Consolidations at the front and three at the rear. The Clarion Hill grade of the Middle Division, while not the steepest, did pose the greatest challenges. The worst grades on the BR&P were in the 84 to 89 feet (27 m) per mile range. The BR&P operated two 700 series. The comparatively light 700 through 741 and the heavier 742 through 754. Since they differed in frame design, this meant that the weaker 8th century were never doubled together. Instead, a light 700 would be coupled ahead of the heavier one for a double. When two 700 series Mallets were pushing, the same constraint was applied. If the run utilized two light Mallets, then the second one was placed at the rear, ahead of the caboose, and pushed. One more issue with doubled Mallets was whether or not all the bridges on the run were strong enough for two of the 9th century or the heavy 8th century running together. With the mass and power of locomotives like the Mallets, care had to be exercised in their operation.

A light Mallet used as a pusher naturally connected to the train with its front coupler, and the strength of this. While the engine could not push hard enough to break the drawhead, the engineer needed to avoid slack.

On the downhill part of one run one day on the Buffalo Division from Beaver to Hoyts, the pusher engineer did not keep up with the train ahead and saw it pull away from him with his drawhead hanging from the last car. Sometimes, the problems with pushers and helpers arose not from the hardware but the politics and the economics. In the 1880s, the BR&P and the Erie shared locomotive facilities at Clarion Junction. They had an agreement that each company would provide helper service to each other on the basis of whose engine was first up at the. When a train came along needing a push.

After some years of this, the BR&P management realized that their engines were doing most of the work. The Erie crews had acquired the knack of finding something wrong with their engines, keeping them conveniently immobilized when it was time for work. A Mikado locomotive of the Baltimore and Ohio. Both roads faced the same problems at Clarion Junction: how best to get heavy trains over Clarion Hill.

By the end of the 19th century, the Erie kept two engines there, while the BR&P had up to five. Consolidations, but the limitations of these antiquated locomotives forced adoption of specialized engines, such as the. This did not suffice, leading to the heavier Y Class. The increased traffic of WW I led to the solution, the XX Class.

The BR&P bought these engines in 1918 essentially for one purpose, to "push Clarion Hill off the map". These locomotives were well suited to the task, as they were slow and capable of massive drawbar traction. The cooperation between the BR&P and the Erie ended in 1928, when the Erie made sweeping improvements, including introduction of.

Mikados, making the BR&P helpers/pushers superfluous to requirements. On some runs, the Erie put two engines at the head of the train and a third at the rear. This saved as much as ten to twelve minutes on the hill and enabled longer consists. Since the third engine, the pusher, was lighter than the BR&P Mallet, it could push against the caboose rather than needing to be placed ahead of it, making it much easier and faster to detach from the train. In the days before radio, dispatching locomotives involved using whatever means of communication were available.

The BR&P maintained a helper station at a siding between Dellwood and Lanes Mills, south of Brockwayville. The 700 series Mallets stationed here were required to assist coal trains up to McMinn Summit. A loud bell generally sufficed to wake up the engine crew. On those occasions when it did not, the dispatcher would call the McMinn farm nearby, and one of the McMinn children would run over to the siding to awaken the engineer and fireman. Imposed enormous maintenance burdens on the railroads.

Primitive in design, they contained numerous self-destructive moving parts which were manufactured using, by contemporary standards, exceptionally primitive techniques. In fact, a number of railroads were capable of making their own. When the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad took over the facilities of the.

It acquired little in the way of usable maintenance assets. To remedy this deficiency, the R&P bought land in the Lincoln Park section of Rochester and, in 1881, built a machine shop for repair work. In 1882, they erected a roundhouse, today at the corner of West Avenue and Buffalo Road. The turntable has been preserved by the Rochester chapter of the. While the building itself has been converted for use by a scrap company. This facility, with its fourteen-stall enginehouse, was the central shop for the entire line. The other end of the line (at the time) was in Salamanca, where the company built a smaller facility, including a two-stall enginehouse, a turntable, and the.

Needed for interchange with the Erie. Additional facilities were installed at.

In the 1880s, along with more at. Since railroad shops meant employment, small towns vied aggressively to convince the railroads to build facilities in their taxing jurisdictions. For instance, gave the R&P 8 acres 32,000 m. Of land and an eight thousand dollar grant for construction. The investment by the town paid off: the R&P set up a.

A car repair shop, as well as coaling and watering facilities. In the 1880s, the line to Buffalo was built, terminating at Buffalo Creek.

A more modest shop was established here, including a seventy-foot turntable that had to be enlarged to one hundred five feet to accommodate the Mallets. There were only two ways to turn a locomotive around, and the. Alternative was very costly in terms of land area. Thus, Buffalo Creek had one of only two BR&P turntables.

Capable of swinging a Mallet engine. On the rare occasion of a Mallet reaching Rochester, it had to be turned on a wye. The Mallet would fit into only a single stall of the Lincoln Park roundhouse; even then, it stuck out considerably in the back, so the railroad built an extension to the stall to enable the doors to be closed. The Buffalo Creek roundhouse lacked this refinement. When two Mallets were parked in it, their tenders not only stuck out but very nearly touched. To deal with this, the BR&P built the "Malley House" near the roundhouse; it accommodated two of the ninety-two-foot wheelbase engines. The BR&P, having grown considerably, needed still more. The mine branches in the. Area imposed their own burden on the BR&P repair capabilities, and shops were built at Elk Run, just to the north. However, the company needed a major facility at which the biggest repairs could be done; at the time (1880s), the most serious work on locomotives required sending the engines back to their. To resolve this, the BR&P selected. As the location of their primary maintenance plant. The archetypal railroad town, DuBois had its first BR&P facility in 1886, with the car repair shop. The locomotive repair shop grew from a six-stall roundhouse at Valley and Jared Streets. By the early 20th century, the railroad had sufficient capability at DuBois to handle everything, including building a locomotive from scratch. The BR&P could now cycle engines through the shop on a regular basis, thus keeping their motive power available and reliable. This expansion did not occur at the expense of other sites. East Salamanca was chosen in 1906 for a new roundhouse, enginehouse, and classification yard, thanks to a location convenient to the Buffalo, Middle, and Rochester Divisions. The introduction of the huge Class XX. Mallets in 1918 necessitated construction of appropriate shop facilities at East Salamanca. This included electric jacks that could lift the Mallet off the ground. Among the other annoyances that management had to face, one peculiar to steam locomotive operation plagued the BR&P.

In addition to the accidents resulting from employee carelessness, in which doors and walls were destroyed by the impacts of engines that weren't stopped in time, the engines themselves were prone to go walkabout if left idling with a head of steam. A worn valve might pass sufficient steam to enable the locomotive to go through a roundhouse wall or door, drive into a turntable pit, or amble down the rail line, all on its own.

In April 1930, sparks from a crane ignited the roof of the older roundhouse at DuBois; the fire put the building out of operation'til autumn, and the eleven locomotives inside suffered considerable damage. Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway accidents. This train hit an improperly set switch in the East Salamanca yard on the evening of 16 Oct 1917. The toll was one locomotive on its side, thirteen cars tumbled into a mess, of which two were destroyed, and one engineer in the hospital with a wrenched back. On 8 June 1906, a severe storm felled an 80-foot-tall (24 m) elm tree, dropping it on the BR&P tracks one mile (1.6 km) north of.

Both locomotives were thrown from the track, and several crew were killed. The explosion of a car carrying dynamite in. The estimated cost was a quarter of a million dollars, in the days when the typical wreck's cost was a few thousand. Minor injuries and nineteen wrecked cars resulted from this rear-end collision at. When the south abutment of the East Salamanca yard's bridge across the Great Valley Creek failed on 20 September 1912, half of the bridge dropped, and so did the train on it. Two 700-series Mallets shared improper intimacies on 12 September 1920 in East Bradford when one engineer somehow failed to see and hear emergency signals and flares. The collision caused very minor injuries to two of the crew of number 716.

Mallet locomotives 716 and 729 on the southbound track after the twenty mile per hour collision. A passing train was just barely caught before it would have hit the wreckage. Railroads are required not to have. But the historical record shows that they occasionally do.

Most accidents are deadly serious, with mere destruction of property if those involved are fortunate and death and injury if they are not. The R&P operated in the days of looser and more tolerant labor practices.

In the winter of 1881, the engineer of a southbound oil train approaching the. Stopped upon observing the "settled and bent condition". Of the bridge ahead of him. From Rochester slowed to a stop behind him as he awaited instructions. Of the second train ordered the first engineer to take his engine across to "test" the bridge. The engineer and his locomotive survived the transit, but the bridge settled several inches. The conductor walked across the bridge and rode the first engine into. Where he picked up a.

They walked across the bridge and arrived in. In time to make their connections.

It was less amusing one Sunday morning in July 1883 when an R&P coal train broke in two. On a grade of 57 feet (17 m) per mile at Rasselas, twenty-five miles south of Bradford. A not altogether atypical occurrence in the days before reliable.

This resulted in seven loaded coal cars and a single passenger car with fifteen to twenty people aboard accelerating back down the grade out of control. The investigation that followed alleged that the conductor and brakeman were both asleep. The runaway string of cars smashed into a train proceeding in the same direction.

The engineer of this train saw the cars coming and, with his fireman, leapt off the locomotive after reversing it, surviving with serious bruising. Since the passenger car was the last on the first train, it hit the locomotive at full speed and was split in half.

The destroyed passenger car was immediately struck by the coal cars; seven people died, and eight were injured. Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh locomotive number 801 after falling off the tracks in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania, on 19 April 1918. Fatal car accident in Spencerport, New York, involving the BR&P; from the Rochester.

And the BR&P had its share. In the final analysis, all accidents result from someone's failure, whether in design, manufacture, construction, operation, or maintenance. The company set its standards higher than most did. Still took a painful toll. Some wrecks damaged locomotives and cars, tracks and buildings, and careers, but without the loss of life or the injuries that were common in the period.

Pennsylvania, tried to occupy one space, with predictable results: both locomotives and both trains were totally destroyed. The newspaper accounts, more graphic than is customary today, gave a blood-chilling picture of what happens to a man crushed in the wreckage and exposed to a continuous blast of. In these harrowing stories, two themes emerge.

The trains ran at speeds low enough to allow the crews to leap off when disaster was imminent; and more than one engineer or brakeman remained at his position on the doomed train to the very end, often with fatal consequences. In other incidents, less noble working behavior led to accidents. In April 1908, an engineer disregarded signals at. Leading to a high-speed head-on collision on a curve with another locomotive one mile (1.6 km) north of the station.

While no passengers died, the fireman succumbed to steam scalding, dying half an hour after the crash. Criminal charges brought the engineer's arrest for. In a more poignant incident in June 1900, engineer William Kation died in a head-on collision between two passenger trains that occurred right in front of his own home, on what was to have been his very last run before retiring. The crash resulted from a simple clerical error in the train orders for that day. Train crews are forever at the mercy of what others do.

In February 1927, a Bradford yard employee left a switch in the wrong position, derailing a passenger train. The fireman was injured but survived; the engineer, who had worked for the line for forty-five years, was close to retirement, and had a reputation as a meticulous and careful worker, was crushed, scalded, and dismembered when the locomotive overturned. Some disasters are the fruit of errors made years before, as in bridges not built or maintained properly.

The engineer saw the rails tipping slowly and yelled to the fireman to jump. He and the brakeman survived the plunge into the water, but the fireman did not. In the news reports, railroad officials expressed gratitude that the next train on the line, a passenger run, had not been the one to encounter the collapsing bridge. They also claimed that the bridge had been in good working order all along and that the high water in.

Sometimes it was bad judgment, other times it was just bad luck: When the line acquired its. In 1917, they naturally gave thought to how the weight of these machines would affect the existing trackage. Some work was done strengthening bridges and railworks, but it proved not wholly adequate. On 19 April 1918, the BR&P ran a very heavy Mallet over a light track north of Clarion Junction near. The result of the rails spreading apart under the weight of the 280 ton engine was an upside-down locomotive (see photo above).

This was not a rare occurrence, as these 800-series Mallets were not only the heaviest that the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway operated, they were the heaviest ever used in normal service in the entire area. Less than two weeks earlier, number 806 had suffered the same ignominy when the railbed beneath her gave way on Clarion Hill. The crew sent to retrieve the engine simply tied a set of rails onto the locomotive's 57-inch (1,400 mm). And then rolled it upright onto a temporary roadbed, using three.

This temporary rail was then tied into the. Enabling the number 806 to slink back home for repairs. Officially, the end came in 1932, when the line was absorbed into the. Giving the B&O increased access to New York State (they already had a toe-hold with their acquisition of the Staten Island Rapid Transit at the other end of the state).

The acquisition exemplified the endless machinations of the railroad era. Wanted the BR&P, and Iselin was pleased to make the divestiture in 1928. The sale value of the company had been inflated by the contention between the. For the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, making its sale a compelling decision for Iselin.

The Pennsylvania coalfields were waning, thanks to non- union. Mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, and the revenues from the railroad had fallen correspondingly.

The D&H wanted westward routes, and the BR&P figured in their plans. The B&O had routes that the Van Sweringens.

Making a swap attractive to both companies. Now regulated the railroads with a tight grip. Getting ICC approval in February of the following year. The deal yielded the B&O the BR&P, the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad, and the Mt Jewett, Kinzua, and Riterville. It gave the Van Sweringens the.

The formal hand-over occurred on 1 January 1932, forever ending the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway. The item "BUFFALO ROCHESTER & PITTSBURGH RAILWAY LANTERN C. BR&P Ry 1893" is in sale since Monday, May 6, 2019.

This item is in the category "Collectibles\Transportation\Railroadiana & Trains\Hardware\Lanterns & Lamps". The seller is "railcarhobbies" and is located in Warsaw, Missouri.

This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Brand: C.
  
  

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