Buffalo and Erie Railway

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The Buffalo and Erie Railway is a former interurban railway company in the US states of New York and Pennsylvania .

The Dunkirk and Fredonia Railroad was founded on April 21, 1864 and opened a horse-drawn railway between Dunkirk and Fredonia in September 1866 . The railway was electrified on December 21, 1891. In 1903 the company extended the route beyond Fredonia to Brocton . In 1905, the Buffalo and Lake Erie Traction Company was established to operate the Buffalo –Dunkirk and Brocton– Erie connections, as well as the Buffalo, Dunkirk and Western Railroad in New York and the Lake Erie Traction Company in Pennsylvania for construction. The latter was reorganized in December 1906 as the Lake Erie Electric Traction Company . In the same year the Buffalo – Dunkirk and Westfield –Erie lines were opened. The gap between Brocton and Westfield went into operation in 1909. The company also owned the Erie tram , as well as the Buffalo and Lackawanna Traction Company and the Hamburg Railway , both of which operated trams in the Greater Buffalo area.

The well-developed 148-kilometer standard-gauge line was a losing business , so that the company went bankrupt in 1915. The Hamburg Railway was sold in 1920, and the Erie tram as well in 1925. New, lighter trams brought significant cost savings. On January 1, 1925, Dunkirk & Fredonia, Lake Erie Electric Traction, Buffalo & Lake Erie and Buffalo, Dunkirk & Western merged to form the Buffalo and Erie Railway Company . For a short time the railway could be operated profitably, but the Great Depression in 1929 brought further losses. In December 1932, traffic between Buffalo and Angola and between Ripley and Erie ended. On January 27, 1933, the railway company shut down the Angola – Dunkirk and Fredonia – Ripley sections. The last remaining section, the tram from Dunkirk to Fredonia, was converted to bus operation in 1934 after 68 years of operation. On November 14, 1933, the Buffalo & Lackawanna subsidiary had also ceased its tram operations.

literature

  • Benson W. Rohrbeck (1997): Pennsylvania's Street Railways West Chester PA: Traction Publications. Page 260.
  • Benson W. Rohrbeck (2007): Pennsylvania Street Railway Atlas West Chester PA: Ben Rohrbeck Traction Publications. Page 61.
  • George W. Hilton and John F. Due (1960): The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Page 309ff. ISBN 0-8047-4014-3