Business on the New York Central
Daily Courier of Syracuse, New York, on November 14, 1861
The New York Central Railroad Company can load and send off from Buffalo from 250 to 300 cars of ten tons each per day, or from 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of flour, or its equal in rolling freight. From Suspension Bridge it can send off 50 cars per day, making from the two points 3,000 to 3,600 tons per day. In addition to this, the road requires 100 cars for its east-bound local business, making a total of 400 to 450 cars per day to arrive at Albany, of 4,000 to 4,500 tons. A freight train is generally made up of about twenty-five cars, which would make from sixteen to eighteen freight trains a day.
The difficulty the New York Central labors under is not loading up and starting its trains, but in so arranging its many trains as to pass each other without interruption. There are now twelve passenger trains running over the road every day, and with, say sixteen freight trains going east and four west, making a total of thirty-two trains a day on a road of three hundred miles, and with forty miles of the road with only a single track, some idea of the difficulties in the way may be imagined.
The difficulty will soon be met, for we understand that the managers of the road have determined to lay these forty miles at once, and thus secure a double track throughout the entire length from Buffalo to Albany. We learn, further, that the New York Central has contracted for ten new additional locomotives and several hundred new freight cars, to be put upon the road during the coming winter.
To give some idea of the business which the New York Central is drawing from the Northwest, we can state that the week ending Saturday, November 2, nineteen propellers, loaded with an average of 4,000 barrels of flour each, clear from the port of Toledo alone for the New York Central at Buffalo; that the Central is under obligations to the Michigan Southern to take away from Toledo 5,000 barrels of flour or its equivalent daily, for this fall. This, it must be remembered, is but a drop in the bucket.
Besides this fleet of Toledo boats, the Central has a line to Cleveland, one to Sandusky, one to Detroit, one to Milwaukee, and one to Chicago. It has the Great Western of Canada, which takes all the Michigan Central and Detroit and Milwaukee Railroads bring to it at Detroit, delivers it to the Central at Suspension Bridge. It has the Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway, which drains a large portion of the most fertile section of Canada West.
Then it has the Michigan Southern, Toledo & Wabash, Cleveland & Toledo, Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago, Bellfontaine, Dayton & Cincinnati, and Cleveland & Columbus pouring through the Lake Shore Road to Buffalo a constant stream of all rail freights. The freight trains that pass daily through this city, east and west, are ponderous, and go to show that the business of the Central is very great. The road is well managed in all its departments, which of itself is sufficient to guarantee its gratifying success to the Directors.
