Friendship Railroad No. 1, the “A.W. Miner,” built by Mason Locomotive Works, Taunton, Mass. Construction No. 652, delivered at Friendship, N.Y., June 10, 1881. It became Allegany Central No. to and later Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern No. 2. Cylinders 10” x 16” drivers 42.” It was a Bogie engine with a leading pony truck. Sketch based on builder’s photos as there is no photo of this engine.
Friendship Register, Friendship, N.Y.
August 18, 1955
Narrow Gauge Railroad Contributed Much to Our Economy
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This week, Walter F. Stiles tells our readers about the narrow gauge railroad in connection with Friendship’s earlier history:
One cold day, which I recall in June, 1881, my father took me up to the Erie station, where we joined about a hundred “Sidewalk Superintendents” to see them unload the first narrow gauge engine from an Erie flat car. At that time the Erie had a side track on the south side of the main track and the car in question was parked just west of Depot Street.
A track of light rails was laid up to the level of the car floor with an easy grade down to the ground level, then more track was laid over to a side track of the new road. People referred to this road as the Friendship Railroad, but the first corporate name that I remember for it was the Allegany Central Railroad.
[The Andover Express of June 30, 1881 reported:
“Friday last the engine for the Narrow Gauge between Friendship and Richburg arrived and bears the fine name of A. W. Miner.
“The engine of the new Narrow Gauge road was placed on the track Tuesday evening. The train will soon be making daily trips with George Brown, former fireman with Dan Chapman on the Erie line as engineer. Theron Cross is the conductor and Byron C. Laning, Fireman.”]
There are several sizes of narrow gauge railroads, but this one was of three feet gauge, that is it was three feet between the rails, whereas a standard gauge road like the Erie was four feet eight and one-half inches between the rails.
This engine was real fancy in finish. It had a lot of polished brass on it and under the cab windows, in gold letters, was the name, “A. W. Miner.” Being a small boy, the name did not impress me at the time, but any boy who grew up in Friendship in those days and kept his eyes and ears open soon learned that Asher W. Miner, who was president of the first National Bank, and his son-in-law, Col. A. J. Wellman, the cashier of the bank, were the spark-plugs of about all of the first-class activities in the community. The bank was the oldest national bank in that part of the state.
The terminal was rather congested, as the Erie held fast to land on one side and on the order side was the large, brick house of Wesley Lambert, his wife and good looking daughter, Jennie. Like many other dead-end terminals, the Grand Central Station for instance, there was no handy place to turn the little “choo-choo” around. The company built a small car and repair shop, with a wye, up in Dogtown and there is where the engine had to go for a turn around.
The road was of quick and hasty construction, the track was not ballasted and much of it was not properly drained, with the result that the frosts in the winter and the thaws in the spring worked havoc with its alignment. Business was good and the road with all of tis defects, served its primary purpose of furnishing much needed transportation too the new oil field and the thousands of people who had congregated there. It was said that at one time Bolivar had a population of 10,000.
They had little by the way of equipment to start. Narrow gauge cars were hard to come by on short notice, although they did, after awhile, get some fine cars and plenty of people road in them just for the novelty of riding on a different kind of a road. One car I remember, was a flat car with a canopy top and wooden benches running lengthwise.
The road was extended to Olean and this extension drew a lot of business, but was not so good for the Friendship merchants as that hustling city had turned from a tan bark emporium to what was said to be the largest oil gathering point in the world. Large refineries had been established there and oil as shipped by the train load. Later, a pipeline was built from Olean to a point in New Jersey.
Business was so good and money was so easy that the Allegany Central was reorganized as the Lackawanna & Pittsburg and extended first to Angelica, where the people were red hot to have a railroad, and then extended up in the sticks in a northerly direction. The promoters said it would be extended to Rochester and Lake Ontario, but promoters are often mistaken or try to cash in on pipe dreams.
This colorful and memorable “little” railroad was junked in 1890 and a return to the stage coach lines was the sold connection between the above mentioned points and the outside world.
Taken by and large, this road was a flop, but it put a lot of money in circulation in Friendship and helped the local economy. There were some nice people connected with it and I particularly remember Charles Hammond, Philip Coyle, and Horace Corwin. All of these men had families and their children went to the public school.
Railroads that are part in operation and part on construction can get along for awhile, as what they lose in operation they chisel from the construction account, but when the construction account runs out and operation does not pay expenses, they are on the way to the financial cemetery.
