Rochester and State Line Railroad - Demise

Demise

The entertaining fictions that the railroad had been built to serve the rural communities along its route and existed to carry coals to Rochester could not hide the fact that it was a pawn of the Vanderbilts. By 1879, William H Vanderbilt owned most of its stock, and several other Vanderbilts served on its board. Thus, it was a de facto if not a de jure branch of the New York Central Railroad. In a painful irony, the shipment of coal never amounted to much, and even the temporarily lucrative transportation of oil soon ended, due to competition by the Erie.

The company was not financially successful. Revenue was inadequate; even debt service could not be maintained. The Vanderbilts no longer found the R & S L particularly attractive, their attention being occupied elsewhere. It went into oblivion when it defaulted on its bonds. Foreclosure proceedings began on 6 February 1880, with receivership on 21 February. In November, the entire equity of the railroad, including the stock owned by the Vanderbilts, was acquired by a syndicate in New York City. Headed by Walston H Brown, it paid $600,000 on 20 January 1881.

One commentator has attributed the failure of this company not to a bad idea or an inadequate market demand for its services but to insufficient capitalization and backers who did not greatly care. If anything, he has characterized the R & S L as the seed for a much better attempt, one which, with a false start, eventually succeeded.

On 29 January 1881, the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad was created from the remains of the Rochester and State Line Railroad. Four years later, that line succumbed to bankruptcy and was acquired by Adrian Iselin, at one time a director of the Rochester and Pittsburgh. He broke the company into two, the Pennsylvania operations as the Pittsburgh and State Line Railroad Company, and the New York part as the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad. The BR&P would go on to be one of the more successful and useful of the region's railroads.