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The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway 〔Railway Equipment and Publication Company, (The Official Railway Equipment Register ), June 1917, p. 404〕 was one of the more than ten thousand railroad companies founded in North America, most of which came and went. It lasted much longer than most, serving communities from the shore of Lake Ontario to the center of western Pennsylvania. One of the minor ironies of its existence is its having never actually reached Pittsburgh. Walston〔A company town named for the president of the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, Walston H Brown.〕 was as far south as it got. ==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 Railroad〔This 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〔http://wnyrails.org/railroads/erie/rgv_home.htm〕 was another scheme, although this one was actually built, to a degree. In Rochester, both the seasonality of the Erie Canal〔In winter, coal prices would rise significantly.〕 and the near monopoly of the Erie Railroad〔This 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 Pittsburgh〔Not 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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