Dutchess County Railroads

DUTCHESS COUNTY RAILROADS

Edmund Van Wyck

Probably few of the present generation remember even hearing about the early railroads of Dutchess County. It was the era of the late 1850's, and from then on for twenty or more years there was almost an epidemic of railroad building, or perhaps I should say, an epidemic of buying and selling railroad stocks. Railroads just had to prosper, no two ways about it. It was no different here in Dutchess.

The earliest railroad which I can remember discussed was the "Poughkeepsie, Hartford and Boston". I doubt that this one ever got off the drawing boards. Other than memories of the earlier days of conversations among my elders, I can find no reference to it; Platt does not mention it in his "Poughkeepsie History." With such an inviting set of initials, P. H. St B., it became known as the "Push Hard and Bust." It did.

Next came the "Poughkeepsie and Eastern", the P. & E., and this one was more often called the "Pleasant and Easy", or in a slightly critical vein, "The Perverse and Eccentric". There was often a derogatory reference to the P. & E. as the "Tr -weekly" (Try-weakly) railroad. The train that went up one week and tried to get back the next.

The passenger service on the Central New England Railroad, the C. N. E., was referred to as "Certainly Not Elegant"; not very clever or very critical.

Up through the middle of the County ran the Newburgh, Dutchess and Connecticut Railroad, the N. D. & C. R. R. It had at least two variations on its title, equally venomous and vitriolic: "Never Did and Can't Run Right", and "Nasty, Dirty and Crooked". Both, I think, were slight overstatements.

Over on the east side of Dutchess County was and still is the Harlem Railroad. This road started out as a convenient connection between lower New York City and Harlem, then a high class residential area on the north end of Manhattan Island. It was gradually extended northward through White Plains, Brewster and Pawling to Boston Corners and Stateline. The whole line became known as "The Harlem" and the valley took on the same name. The people who ride the line may have other names for it but I have never happened to hear them. The "Harlem" became part of the Hudson River Railroad, then the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad and now in 1969, the Penn Central Railroad.

The story of railroading in Dutchess County parallelled that of the rest of the county, "Boom and Bust". Imagine the need for two railroads from Poughkeepsie to Pine Plains? There they were, side by side, crossing over or under one another at intervals and dividing up business that really was insufficient to sustain either of them. Both gradually ceased operation and the rails were torn up and sold for scrap in 1938.