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THE STORY OF ERIE 3"
"Snow very seldom lies to the depth of two feet eight
inches. A small snow plough would readily clear the rails of
snow. The accumulation of snow in the space between tinrails
would be of no importance where horse-power was not
made use of. It might be difficult to fasten rails of the
depth of 12 inches so firmly in chairs as to prevent leverage.
In that event they may be rendered firm by transverse beams,
connecting the opposite and parallel rails, midway between
the cones."
This plan, on which it appears Philip Church, himself an
engineer and a man of scientific attainments, proposed that
the original Erie should be built, was based on the report of
William Strickland, who hatl been sent abroad in 1825 by the
Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements,
to study the subject of English railroads. Although
his report was made in 1826, before a foot of railroad had
been put down in America, the Erie projectors, eight years
later, had heard of no better or newer plans of railroad building.
"Where blocks of stone can be easily ami cheaply
obtained of various lengths on the line of the road" (thus
the Strickland report), " they ought to be used in the following
manner, viz. : Dig out shallow holes about a foot or
eighteen inches in depth, at four feet apart from centre to
centre, and fill them in with small broken stone or gravel,
flush with the surface of the road, upon which the foundation
props may be laid and bedded securely from the action of
the frost. Where stone is not to be had, or but at expensive
rate, I would recommend the use of scantling pieces of oak
or locust, six inches by eight inches, cut of various lengths,
not less than two feet, which may be sawed out of one another
lengthwise in the shape of a long wedge. These should be
driven into the bottom of a square or round pit, dug out
about two feet in width, and from two to three feet in depth,
and the pit afterwards filled up with broken stone, rammed
in on all sides. The effect of the stone will be to keep the
post or prop firm in its place, and to prevent its rising up by
action of the frost, which can have no piower to move it
laterally. When the posts have been secured in this manner,
the heads of them throughout any section of the line may be
sawed off to the proper level. The iron chairs or standards
must in this case be cast with a flange on the bottom, of three
inches in depth, and a corresponding mortise cut into the
head of the post to receive the flange of the chair, which
may be pinned through in the usual manner of mortise and
tenon."
In the severe climate of the region through which the proposed
Southern Tier railroad was to pass, the foundation
stones of the railroad, it was agreed, should be made in the
form of an upright quadrilateral cone, about twenty-four region."
inches square at bottom, eight inches at top, and thirty inches
high.
The New York Legislature authorized the making of the
survey for the route at the expense of the State, and the
work was completed in the fall of 1834. (Chapter IV,
pages 24 to 31.) The survey gave a choice of three eastern
termini lor the route : Tappan, Nyack, and Slaughter's
Landing, " opposite Sing Sing,'' all on the Hudson River. In
putting forward the possibilities of Slaughter's Landing as the
terminus of the Erie at the Hudson, Engineer Seymour reported
that the point was " about seven and a half miles above
Tappan Landing (Piermont), and as< ends the ridge between
the Hudson and the Hackensack rivers, through a gap near
Rockland Pond, which discharges into the Hackensack River.
In passing the ridge,&. stationary power will be required on
the east side between the Hudson and the summit. The
length of the plane proposed is 1,200 feet, the vertical height
190 feet, requiring a stationary steam engine of sixty horsepower.
It may be well here to remark that the waters of
Rockland Pond may be turned into the Hudson River by
means of a tunnel between eighty and ninety feet below the
summit, and the water used to operate upon the machinery
for the inclined plane, instead of the stationary steam engine,
and still afford a valuable water power for other purposes."
(From Engineer Ellett's Report of His Survey, 1S34.)
The railroad to Ithaca, which is already open to the public, and
designed to effect a communication between the Susquehanna and
Cayuga Lake, and the great country traversed by the Erie Canal,
cannot but be regarded as a valuable accession to the resources of
Owego, even supposing the improvement to terminate here. But this
will not be permitted. A company is already formed and the construction
of a steamboat commenced, which is intended to ply between
this village and the termination of the Pennsylvania Canal, at
the mouth of the Lackawanna ; which,it is believed, will be able to
bear the salt and plaster of the North to a Southern market, and return
with the anthracite coal of that region, thus creating an important
source of revenue to the railroad, and supplying, reciprocally,
wide districts of country with the mineral wealth which nature has
denied them. And, from my personal knowledge of the character of
the Susquehanna, I have little doubt of the successful result of the
experiment.
"The railroad to Ithaca" was the Ithaca and Owego Railroad,
the second railroad chartered in the State of New York.
It extended from Ithaca to Owego, twenty-nine miles, and
the motive power was horses and inclined planes. The
steamboat that was to " bear the salt and plaster of the North
to a Southern market, and return with the anthracite coal of
that region, thus creating an important source of revenue to
the railroad, and supplying, reciprocally, wide districts of
country with the mineral wealth which nature has denied
them," must have exhausted, before the boat could be finished,
the capital of the company that had set out to build it, for it
never called for " the salt and plaster of the North," and
consequently never returned with the anthracite coal " of that
The " salt and plaster of the North," at that time,
were the yield of the Syracuse salt springs, and the bed of
plaster at the foot of Cayuga 'Lake, long since exhausted.
Plaster is no longer a local item of traffic, but the " salt of the
North " now comes chiefly from the great wells of Livingston
and Wyoming counties, N. Y., and it is transported largely by
the Erie Railroad, as the principal wells are along the line of
the Buffalo Division.