Rochester and State Line Railroad

The Rochester and State Line Railroad was a 19th-century railroad company in New York state.

In the middle of the 19th century, Rochester, New York's need for transportation had not adequately been met by either the Genesee Valley Canal or the small local railroads that had been combined into the two major companies: the New York Central, with the Tonawanda, the Attica and Buffalo, and the Auburn and Rochester, and the Erie, with the Cohocton Valley and the Rochester and Genesee Valley lines.

The actual purpose of the new railroad sought by the Rochester industrial and commercial interests was plain - provision of cheap and reliable transport of Pennsylvania coal to the city of Rochester. During the mid-1860s, the price of coal in Rochester had tripled. However, since the financial support of outlying farm and commercial interests was vital to the project, in one of the lesser deceptions of the railroad building era, it was intimated to the public in the towns and villages of the Genesee Valley that the road would be built through western New York in order to carry agricultural products to city markets. While Rochester came up with $600,000 by means of municipal bonds, rural communities raised nearly as much on their own.

The organization of the new rail line, the Rochester and State Line Railroad, occurred on 8 April 1869.

Energy for industry in western New York at this time came from Pennsylvania coal, and the existing railroads were the sole means of getting it to the Rochester area. The railroads knew this, and their pricing reflected it. In 1863, a ton of coal cost approximately six dollars. Two years later, it was seventeen dollars. Talk of conspiracies between the coal and the railroad companies and calls for a new railroad generated ample enthusiasm. For some ten years, coal customers, and others, from Rochester and villages as far south as the Pennsylvania line sought to raise interest in a new railroad to the level at which something could actually be accomplished.

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