Oswego, New
YorkOswego, New
York
New York Central
Crossing the city from northeast to southwest,
the New York Central captured the bulk of the non-coal business
in Oswego. Created by merging several small roads begun in the
early 1800's, the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad completed
its route from Watertown through Oswego to Suspension Bridge in
Niagara Falls in 1876. In 1891, the RW&O became part of the
New York Central & Hudson River Railroad.
The line from Watertown entered Oswego in the northeast quadrant
near the O&W roundhouse and ran parallel with the O&W
line down East Schuyler Street to the O&W station, through
the courthouse tunnel, across the Oswego River (Photo
1, 2 and 3.) and along the north
side of West Utica Street. Conveniently, the New York Central
passenger station (Photo
4, 5 and 6)
was directly across Utica Street from the Lackawanna station and
is the only station remaining today, albeit masquerading as a
grocery store.
The tracks then passed behind the Lackawanna roundhouse to West
Yard, a 692-car capacity facility with a roundhouse that once
had thirty stalls (but was reduced to ten by the 1940's), a wye
and complete servicing facilities.
On the east side of town, several paper companies, the Fitzgibbons
Boiler Company and a large freighthouse (Photo
7 and 8) provided good revenues, while a candy company and
several smaller industries provided switching on the west side.
The RW&O did try a coal trestle directly on the lakefront
just east of Fort Ontario but with no protection from rough water,
it proved impractical. Coal from southerly Central territory was
interchanged with the Lackawanna and unloaded at their facility.
In 1937, the Niagara-Hudson Power Corporation, now known as Niagara
Mohawk, began construction of a multi-million dollar coal-fired
power plant (Photo 9)
on the lake, west of the city near the state college. It was originally
intended that lake boats would supply the necessary coal during
the navigational season, with trains filling in during inclement
weather when lake shipping ceased. Eventually, a reversing loop
track was built and unit coal trains would bring in 100 cars or
more for unloading by Niagara Mohawk crews onto a huge mountain
of coal in the center of the loop. These trains had a bad habit
of stalling in the courthouse tunnel due to water or ice making
the rails extremely slippery. As a result, several grade crossings
would be blocked for long periods of time, tieing up traffic all
over the east side. More than once the conductor called the yard
for the switcher to help them out before the police would escort
him to court as the railroad's representative and fine him for
obstructing traffic. A change to oil-fired boilers in 1972 saw
the reinstatement of fuel arriving by ship during the navigation
season, supplemented by modern TankTrain unit trains from Canada
on a combined NYC-DL&W trackage routing.
In the winter, the unique New York Central "jet plow" made regular visits to Oswego in supplement the wing plow stationed at West Yard. These strange innovations in snow removal consisted of a flat car with a caboose-type body on one end and a surplus jet engine mounted on the other. As the rising decibels assaulted your ears, the jet exhaust and heat sent snow and debris flying in all directions. It appears this was used mainly to clear the closely-spaced yard tracks and sidings.
Today, trains no longer cross from the east
side to the west side through the courthouse tunnel and the long
bridge. Recently, the tunnel has become part of a walking trail
through the city. Conrail, then CSX, use the old Lackawanna line
to reach the west side of Oswego from Syracuse and the old O&W
line to reach east side industries. The Ontario Midland runs the
old RW&O line west of Oswego and the line to Watertown is
abandoned.
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
