History
In 1866, the Rondout & Oswego Railroad was chartered to build west from Rondout, New York, now part of the city of Kingston. At that time, Rondout was a separate town and, more important, the east terminal and headquarters of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. The railroad's goal was not Oswego, on Lake Ontario, but a connection with the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad (later Delaware and Hudson Railroad ) near Oneonta. Construction began in 1866. By late 1870, 32 miles of line were in service.
The rails continued to push westward — over the Catskills and into the valley of the East Branch of the Delaware River, then up and over into the valley of thw West Branch at Stamford. In 1872, the company was reorganizaed as the New York, Kingston & Syracuse Railroad, and in 1875 it was sold and reorganized again as the Ulster & Delaware Railroad (U&D).
The Catskill Mountains were rapidly developing into a summer resort area. The Stony Clove & Catskill Mountain Railroad (SC&CM) was organized in 1881 by U&D management to build a 3-foot narrow gauge line from Phoenicia on the U&D to Hunter, with a branch, the Kaaterskill Railroad, to serve the Hotel Kaaterskill and the Catskill Mountain House. Service on the SC&CM began in mid-1882, and the Kaaterskill line opened in June 1883. That same month the West Shore Railroad opened betweem Jersey City and Kingston, giving the U&D a direct rail connection to New York.
In the mid-1880s work resumed to extend the U&D over another divide and into the valley of the Susquehanna River. While that was in progress, the U&D merged its two narrow gauge subsidiaries in 1893, and standardize-gauged them in 1899. In July 1900, the U&S finally arrived in Oneonta, where it connected with the D&H. The Delaware and Hudson Canal had ceased operation only two years before, and the U&D acquired some of its coal traffic. Coal traffic soon came to provide the bulk of U&D frieght revenue.
U&D's peak passenger year was 1913. Paved highways began to penetrate the Catskills, and the huge mountain hotels closed one by one as tastes in vacationing changed. U&D management approached the New York Central Railroad (NYC), asking if they would like to buy a railroad through the Catskills; NYC replied they would not. Then the Interstate Commerce Commission added NYC takeover of the U&D (which entered receivership in 1931) to the conditions under which it would approve absorption of the Michigan Central Railroad and Big Four (the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway) by NYC. On February 1, 1932, the U&D became the Catskill Mountain Branch of the NYC.
In 1940, the Hunter and Kaaterskill branches, the former narrow gauge lines, were abandoned. Passenger service was discontinued in early 1954. Coal traffic from the D&H disappeared, and in 1965 the NYC cut back the west end of the line from Oneonta to Bloomville. Conrail completed abandonment of the line in September 1976, with the final train operating between Kingston and Stamford on September 28, 1976; all remaining rolling stock returned to Kingston on October 2, 1976. Three short portions survive at heritage railways:
- Kingston-Kingston Point: Trolley Museum of New York
- Phoenicia-Mount Pleasant: Catskill Mountain Railroad
- Kelly's Corner-Arkville-Highmount: Delaware and Ulster Railroad
The lines remained out of service, but was not abandoned. Conservationists, spearheaded by transportation lawyer and New York native Donald L. Pevsner, campaigned to preserve the railroad and enlisted the help of author William F. Buckley, Jr., who toured the in 1977 and helped draw publicity to the tug-of-war between the communities and the Conrail over sale price. Residents along the line succeeded in convincing local governments to purchase the line in 1979 for $1.5 million. Ulster County bought the 38.6-mile segment from Kingston to the county line near Highmount who leased the line to the Catskill Mountain Railroad in 1983.
Seven Towns in Delaware County (via the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O'Connor Foundation, of Delhi, New York) purchased the railroad from the county line to the end of track in Bloomville in 1980, which would become the Delaware and Ulster Railroad.
Read more about this topic: Ulster And Delaware Railroad
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