There was, for a brief period of time, an era of transportation in Port Byron and Weedsport that will never again be recreated. That time was from 1908 to 1931 when the Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern Electric Railway operated a fast trolley car service between Rochester, Syracuse and many points in-between.
The Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern was a eighty-three mile interurban electric railroad that was just a part of a much larger 165 mile long system of city trolleys and interurban lines owned by what was called the “Beebe Syndicate”. When put together with the other fast trolleys, one would travel from Albany to Buffalo by electric railroad, with the exception of a small area in-between Little Falls and Amsterdam. In Cayuga County, the Syndicate owned the main line as well as the Auburn and Northern, an eight mile line from Port Byron to Auburn, and the Auburn and Syracuse, a twenty-seven mile line that ran from Auburn to Syracuse through Skaneateles and Marcellus. Much of these routes, the embankments and culverts, can still be seen today if one looks around.
Trolley service was different from railroad service as the cars were operated by electricity rather then steam. On the New York Central, the West Shore and the Lehigh Valley Railroads, steam engines pulled cars of freight and passengers. Each engine needed a source of water and coal (or oil) to create the steam that powered the train. Trains needed to stop every so often to reload their fuel supplies. Electric trolleys used electricity that was provided by over head wires that was constant and never ending. Each car had its own electric motors so they could operate individually or in pairs.
Power by electricity is instantaneous and powerful, so cars could stop and go very quickly. This is the big difference between trolleys and trains and why trolleys became so popular. Trains needed a distance to slow down and speed up, so they could only reasonably stop at stations set a fair distance apart. Trolleys could stop very quickly and thus stop when “flagged down” by passengers and then get back to speed quickly. Trolleys are great for passengers over short distances; trains are great for freight and long distance passenger service.
Power for the trolleys was made at a large power generating station in Lyons, NY. The power, rated at 33,000 volts AC, was fed into larger power lines that ran to smaller power houses along the line. The trolley cars used DC power, so the AC power was transformed into 600 volts DC at these power houses and then fed into the overhead lines. But DC power does not transmit well and weakens the further it goes from the power source. So every ten miles, another small power station was needed to transform the AC to DC. The brick “power house” on Dock Street in Port Byron is one of six of these transforming power stations located along the Rochester to Syracuse line. The “house” never made power, it just converted it. Another power house used on the Auburn and Northern can be seen near the Cayuga County Highway complex in Auburn. Plus, the power plant in Lyons generated excess electricity that could be sold to villages along the line. By 1910, Port Byron had applied to the company and for the first time, power was available in the village. Many other villages did the same.
The Legion Building in Port Byron, the old Grange Building in Weedsport, and the service station in Jordan are three fine examples of the nineteen stations that served the villages and cities along the line. These stations had passenger waiting rooms and freight docks, as well as offices for the workers. All three examples have been greatly changed on the inside, but the outside is basically the same. Located at cross roads along the line were “flag stops”. If you wanted to ride the trolley, you signaled (flagged) the trolley which stopped only if it needed to. These stops were numbered from 1 to 97, from west to east. Stop 69 was north of Montezuma on what is today called Loop Road, then others were located at; Purser Rd, Wilsey Rd, Thompson Rd, Centerport, Ball Rd, Brutus St, by Weller Rd, near Gates Rd, Bonta Bridge Rd, and Stop 83 was at Cold Spring Pump. The larger flag stops, of which there were forty from Rochester to Syraucse, were served by a small building that had lights and electric heat. But the heaters were stolen and pot belly stoves soon replaced the electric heat. (A fine example of these buildings, stop 80, can be seen along Route 5 in Elbridge.) Nineteen smaller flag stops only had a small platform. On the Auburn and Northern line, there were six flag stops along the eight mile route.
The beginning of service began along the line at different times. The Auburn and Northern was opened for business in June of 1908. Service from Port Byron to Rochester began on July 23, 1908. If you wanted to go to Syracuse, you had to take the trolley to Auburn and then switch over to the Syracuse and Auburn line. It wasn’t until December 18, 1909 that direct service opened from Port Byron to Syracuse. It took a local car three hours and fifteen minutes to go from Syracuse to Rochester. The limited, stopping only at the major stations, took two hours, thirty minutes. The trip from Auburn to Port Byron took thirty-seven minutes.
The trolley had to be a life changing event for some of our fore fathers and mothers. Now, by walking to a near by stop, they could flag the trolley and go off to work in Syracuse, Rochester or Auburn. And using one of the hourly trolleys, they could return home at night. Shopping in the city could now become a common thing instead of a yearly event. This is made so evident by a newspaper article describing the opening of service between Port Byron and Auburn where the Auburn paper uses many columns to describe Port Byron to Auburnians who had never before seen the pretty little village located seven miles away.
“The village of Port Byron is situated in the beautiful valley of the Owasco…The business section is composed of stores of various kinds which do a thriving business for a country town and are up to date in their business methods. There are many beautiful residences in the town, with fine lawns and buildings of modern architecture.”
It sounds as though the writer has stumbled across the village for the first time and is amazed that our grand parents were not living in log cabins and wearing coon skin caps.
If you have ever ridden on a trolley, you know that they are fairly quiet when in motion. This was a problem for many people who misjudged the trolleys and walked or drove in front of them. So many people were being hurt or killed that the Company put up warning posters and had the newspapers run stories about being safe around the rails. Apparently, some felt that they needed to step in front of the cars in order to make them stop because some of the posters read,
“Danger! Do not attempt to cross the tracks ahead of any approaching car. All local cars running in either direction can be signaled in the day time from the shelter platform by waving the arm.”
Those who attempted to drive across the tracks often found that a horse and wagon was no match for a car that weighed in at 40 tons.
The Beebe Syndicate was unusual in that it “over built” the entire line. Most trolley lines of the time tended to slap down tracks in or along established roads and get the cars moving. But this was not good enough for Beebe and his lines. Every detail of the construction was built to last a long time at a minimum of maintenance. The entire main line was double tracked, often on property purchased by the company. It had a system of signals to control traffic. The line had to cross many established railroads with substantial bridges many hundreds of feet long. It was often compared to the much heavier railroad type of construction that was designed to handle long, heavy trains. It is this reason that we can still find evidence of the trolley around the county. Just east of Weedsport, the abutments for a very large bridge that carried the trolley over the West Shore RR can be seen along Clinton Road. Other abutments can be found along Towpath Road west of Port Byron where the line had to cross the Erie Canal. The embankment can be seen in many places along Route 31, Clinton Road, Route 38, and in the back roads of Montezuma. Look close and often you will spot one of the thirty small concrete bridge or culverts located along the line. And the next time you visit Emerson Park in Auburn, think of the trolley line as the two had a very close connection. Trolley lines often operated amusement parks as an attraction for summer tourists and Emerson, then known as Lakeside Park, was the Beebe syndicate’s largest park.
All the heavy construction placed a considerable burden on the finances of the company from the start and it was difficult to pay for capital construction costs as well as pay the hundreds of employees needed to run and maintain the line. Add to this that the line paralleled two successful train routes and the Erie Canal and as such the trolley based freight business never really took off. And further add to this the growing popularity of the automobile and it was in the cards that the company was going to have a short life. By 1914, Beebe had retired from the company and much reorganization took place to try to pare down operating costs. From 1914 to 1930, the various lines were consolidated and then spun off as management tried to make the system pay. But by 1931, the company was broke and the line was sold and dismantled. The era of the interurban was over.
Above photo shows three cars on the main line, and an open car on the Auburn and Northern being loaded for a trip to the park in Auburn.
Authors note: This article is a very simplistic history of a very complex topic. The best history of the line was written in the late 1950’s in a book titled “The Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern” by McFarland and Gordon. I found a copy on an internet book store. Additional newspaper articles of the period were used.