Railroads
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Dutchess and Ulster counties shared in the railroad building
boom of the nineteenth century. Railroad buffs can describe
in detail the construction of lines during the later half of the
century. However, the Marist College land history is most
interested in the Poughkeepsie
&
Eastern RR, rights of way
which still course through or adjacent to College land and
the Hudson River Railroad Company, which arrived at the
Dutchess area along the shoreline of the Hudson 1848-1850.
The Harlem Line
The first north/south line to run through Dutchess county
was the Harlem line along the Connecticut border, running
parallel to state road 22. Completed around 1840, it was the
first line to connect New York City to the Albany area. Its
northern terminus was Chatham, a town which still has
tracks for train storage. Besides passenger traffic, the line
became known for its milk run each day. When I was a
youngster (1930s) we bought our milk from Sheffield Farms.
This was a milk producer located in the south Bronx below
Fordham Road near the tracks of the Harlem Line. Sheffield
Farm was along the Harlem line. Early morning each day a
train would make stops along the line to pick up milk from
the local farmers and bring it to New York City for
process, ng.
The Harlem line also carried other passengers and freight. It
connected at Chatham with an east/west railroad which
brought it to the Albany/Troy area.
The Hudson River Line



The Poughkeepsie Improvement Committee, of whom
Matthew Vassar was an important member worried that
Poughkeepsie would lose its importance as a trading center
if business shifted to the Harlem line. They successfully
campaigned to have the railroad run along the Hudson River.
The railroad reached Poughkeepsie in the mid 1840s, and by
1849 the railroad purchased land from the owners of the
properties now owned by Marist College. These deeds are
stored with the other deeds relating to the property parcels.
The map filed with the county and available in the Dutchess
County records office, constitutes a benchmark of who
owned the lots in 1848 as well as the length of the lots
north-too-south.
The West Shore Line
The West Shore line was a late development dating to 1880.
It was started by the Pennsylvania Railroad to compete
against Cornelius Vanderbilt who had led the construction of
the Hudson River line. It ran to Albany, then westward (often
within sight of the Vanderbilt line) to Buffalo. To challenge
the Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt began construction of a railroad
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Eventually J P Morgan
stepped into the picture and engineered a truce. The West
Shore was purchased by Vanderbilt and the Philadelphia to
Pittsburgh line was abandoned. (It later became the route of
the Pennsylvania Turnpike!). West Shore line carried
passengers and freight for many years, but discontinued its
passenger traffic about 1960. It has grown important to
carry goods from the midwest to the shipping areas in New
Jersey. By 2010 it carried 24 long freights per diem to
Hoboken and Newark.
Poughkeepsie & Eastern Railroad




A primary mover behind the Poughkeepsie & Eastern
Railroad was
John Flack Winslow
, who moved to
Poughkeepsie from Troy New York in 1867. Winslow is
remembered mainly as the man who managed the building
of the Monitor during the Civil War. He and Erastus Cornell
owned the largest foundry on the Hudson River in Troy.
When Winslow was active in the Troy foundry operation, he
obtained much of his iron ore from the Millerton / Dover
Plains area in northeast Dutchess County. At that time the
foundries operated by Edwin Bech obtained most of their ore
from the Beekman/ East Fishkill area. The ore was
transported to Poughkeepsie by oxcart along plank roads
that made transportation possible in rainy times.
Winslow developed the plan to organize a railroad from
Millerton to Poughkeepsie. At this time most railroad
development was private, so the money had to be raised
from private individuals, but government approval to secure
the right of way, using eminent domain if need be.
The bulk of this undertaking was achieved in the 1868 to
1971 period.
Land Qurchases
take up lots of space in the
county records. They show the path of the railroad to be
westward from Millerton and Boston Corners (in Columbia
County) then moving southwest through Stanford and
Pleasant Valley. The route ran behind the St. Peter's Catholic
Cemetery along the road currently at the back of the
cemetery with the Fallkill Creek just beyond. The path then
moved into Smith Street where a large space still remains
which stored trains and engines.
How could the P&E hook up with the Hudson River Railroad?
Smith Street is about 100 feet above river level; a direct
path down to the railroad was impossible. To create a gentle
slope to the river, the path took a 180 degree turn north


moving into what would later become the Hudson River
State Hospital. There the engineers created another 180
degree turn southward down a gentle slope to reach the
Hudson River Railroad. This slope is an important element in
the College east of 9 property; now devoid of tracks, it is
still owned by the CSX. The county is negotiating with the
CSX to acquire ownership and make it into a walking path.
Marist College did secure permission to build a pedestrian
bridge over the culvert. This pedestrian bridge looms large
in future plans for an underpass for pedestrian crossing of
route 9 leading to a field just north of the Kieran Gatehouse.
The P&E route passes under route 9 and runs along the edge
of the Marist College property behind the Mccann Baseball
Field and the Mccann Athletic Center, when it finally
achieves the grade of the Hudson River Railroad tracks. The
major foundry operated by Bech and Tower was immediately
north of Hoffman Street, close to the intersection of the
railroads.
The Poughkeepsie & Eastern Railroad failed during the panic
of 1873 but was reorganized several times in the next
decades. Meanwhile spurs were built to service the
industries in the Fairview sector, notable of which Western
Publishing Co and Shatz/Federal Bearings company.
The P&E was designed to meet the Connecticut & Western
RR near Millerton. Several connecting railroads were built,
one of which led to Rhinebeck where freight cars could be
ferried across to Kingston and the West Shore RR.
The route of the P&E was overshadowed by the route from
Danbury through Hopewell Junction which brought New
England traffic to the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge by 1891.
But the P&E still carried passengers until 1937. A recent
article by Anthony Musso in the Poughkeepsie Journey






relates the status of the Pleasant Valley station on the P&E,
which stands on public school property. The Dutchess
County Fairgrounds has asked that it be transported to the
fairgrounds as part of its Dutchess History project.
Certain bits and pieces of the P&E were incorporated into the
Danbury line by the Central New England railroad.
When I was a student at Marist in 1947-1950, we did not
know the history of the P&E. We understood it to be a spur
which carried coal to the Hudson River State Hospital which
had central heating for all it buildings. We also know it
delivered paper to Western Publishing.
But this is meant to concentrate on the P&E rather than all
the railroad history for Dutchess County.
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Drafted 9 February 2011
Most recent revision October 7, 2012