In 1867 Vanderbilt acquired control of the NYC, with the help of maneuverings related to the Hudson River Bridge in Albany. On November 1, 1869 he merged the NYC with his Hudson River Railroad into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. This extended the system south from Albany along the east bank of the Hudson River to New York City, with the leased Troy and Greenbush Railroad running from Albany north to Troy.
   Vanderbilt's other lines were operated as part of the NYC; these included the New York and Harlem Railroad, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, Canada Southern Railway and Michigan Central Railroad.
   The Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad was chartered in 1869 and opened in 1871, providing a route on the north side of the Harlem River for trains along the Hudson River to head southeast to the New York and Harlem Railroad towards Grand Central Terminal or the freight facilities at Port Morris. From opening it was leased by the NYC.
   The Geneva and Lyons Railroad was organized in 1877 and opened in 1878, leased by the NYC from opening. This was a north-south connection between Syracuse and Rochester, running from the main line at Lyons south to the Auburn Road at Geneva. It was merged into the NYC in 1890. On July 1, 1900, the Boston and Albany Railroad was leased by the NYC, although it retained a separate identity. In 1914 the name was changed again, forming the modern New York Central Railroad.
   The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, also known as the Big Four was formed on June 30, 1889 by the merger of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway, the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago Railway and the Indianapolis and St. Louis Railway. The following year, the company gained control of the former Indiana Bloomington and Western Railway. By 1906, the Big Four was itself acquired by the New York Central Railroad.
   The NYC had a distinctive character; different from its arch rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad's mountainous terrain, the NYC was best known as the Water Level Route; most of its major routes, including New York to Chicago, followed rivers and had no significant grades. This influenced many things, including advertising and most notably locomotive design. Steam locomotives of the NYC were optimized for speed on that flat raceway of a main line, rather than slow mountain lugging. Famous locomotives of the system included the well-known 4-6-4 Hudsons, and the postwar Niagaras, fast 4-8-4 locomotives often considered the epitome of their breed by steam locomotive aficionados.
   Despite having some of the most modern steam locomotives anywhere, the NYC dieselized rapidly, conscious of its by then difficult financial position and the potential relief that more economical diesel-electric power could bring. Very few NYC steam locomotives still exist, due to then-NYC high executive Alfred E. Perlman's total lack of sympathy for historic preservation of NYC's finest steam. All Hudsons and Niagaras were sent to the scrapper's torch by 1956. In 2007, the only surviving big steam locomotives are two 4-8-2 Mohawk locomotives: L-2d Mohawk #2933 (at the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis, Missouri) and dual-purpose, modern L-3a Mohawk #3001 (at the National New York Central Railroad Museum in Elkhart, Indiana). The story of their survival is a fascinating one: L-2d #2933 was somehow overlooked during the 1956-57 scrapping process, and was literally hidden for years after this by sympathetic NYC employees at the NYC's Selkirk Yard, New York roundhouse, behind large boxes. In January 1962, when scrapping her would have been a public-relations disaster, she was donated to the St. Louis museum. Since the last NYC steam locomotive operated in New York State on August 7, 1953, her survival defies credibility. As for the only modern WWII-era NYC steam locomotive to survive, L-3a #3001 (built in 1940), she was sold by the NYC to the City of Dallas, Texas in 1957, to replace a Texas & Pacific locomotive which had been heavily vandalized in a city park. Much later, the National New York Central Railroad Museum traded a Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 electric locomotive for her. She is reportedly in very good condition, and would make a wonderful candidate for restoration to operating condition if suitable trackage existed for her operation.
   The financial situation of northeastern railroading then became so dire that not even the economies of the new diesel-electric locomotives could change things.

Bypasses

A number of bypasses and cutoffs were built around congested areas. The Junction Railroad's Buffalo Belt Line opened in 1871, providing a bypass of Buffalo, New York to the northeast, as well as a loop route for passenger trains via downtown. The West Shore Railroad, acquired in 1885, provided a bypass around Rochester, New York. The Terminal Railway's Gardenville Cutoff, allowing through traffic to bypass Buffalo to the southeast, opened in 1898.
   The Schenectady Detour consisted of two connections to the West Shore Railroad, allowing through trains to bypass the steep grades at Schenectady, New York. The full project opened in 1902. The Cleveland Short Line Railway built a bypass of Cleveland, Ohio, completed in 1912. In 1924, the Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge was constructed as part of the Hudson River Connecting Railroad's Castleton Cut-Off, a 27.5-mile-long freight bypass of the congested Albany terminal area.
   An unrelated realignment was made in the 1910s at Rome, when the Erie Canal was realigned and widened onto a new alignment south of downtown Rome. The NYC main line was shifted south out of downtown to the south bank of the new canal. A bridge was built southeast of downtown, roughly where the old main line crossed the path of the canal, to keep access to Rome from the southeast. West of downtown, the old main line was abandoned, but a brand new railroad line was built, running north from the NYC main line to the NYC's former Watertown and Rome Railroad, allowing all NYC through traffic to bypass Rome.

Trains

For most of the twentieth century the New York Central was known to have some of the most famous train routes in the United States. Its 20th Century Limited, begun in 1902, ran from Grand Central Terminal in New York to LaSalle Street Station Chicago and was its most famous train, known for its red carpet treatment and first class service. The Century, which followed the Water Level Route, could complete the 960.7-mile trip in just 16 hours after its June 15, 1938 streamlining. Also famous was its frequent Empire State Express service through upstate New York to Buffalo and Cleveland, and Ohio State Limited service from New York to Cincinnati. In addition to long distance service, the NYC also provided vital commuter service for residents of Westchester County, New York, along its Hudson, Harlem, and Putnam lines, into Manhattan.

Robert R. Young: 1954-1958

In June 1954, management of the New York Central System, lost a proxy fight in 1954 to Robert Ralph Young and the Alleghany Corporation he led. Alleghany Corporation was a real estate and railroad empire built by the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland in the 1920s and had notably controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Nickel Plate Road, before falling under the control of Young and financier Allan Price Kirby during the Great Depression.
   R.R. Young was considered a railroad visionary, but found the failing New York Central was in worse shape than he'd bargained for. Unable to keep his promises, Young was forced to suspend dividend payments in January 1958. He committed suicide later that month.

Alfred E. Perlman: 1958-1968

After his suicide, Young's role in NYC management was assumed by Alfred E. Perlman, who had been working with the NYC under Young since 1954. Although much had been accomplished to streamline NYC operations, in those tough economic times, mergers with other railroads were seen as the only possible road to financial stability.
   Other mergers combined the Virginian Railway, Wabash Railroad, Nickel Plate Road, and several others into the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) system, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), Western Maryland Railroad (WM), and Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) combined with others to form the Chessie System.
   By the mid-1960s, in the NYC's northeast operating area, the most likely suitor became the NYC's former arch-rival Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR).
   In the mid-1960s, NYC experimented with 'Rocket Trains', building the M-497 Black Beetle (powered by jet engines stripped from an intercontinental bomber) as a potential solution to increasing car and aeroplane competition. While a technical success, the project didn't leave prototype stage.

Penn Central, Conrail, CSX: 1968-present

The NYC became a fallen flag on February 1, 1968 when it joined with its old enemy, the Pennsylvania Railroad, in the ill-fated merger that produced Penn Central, soon saddled by the ICC with the additional burden of the money-losing New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, better known as the "New Haven."
   Slightly over two years later, on June 21, 1970, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed for bankruptcy. The PC's transportation units operated in bankruptcy for over 5 years. Amtrak and local governmental agencies took over commuter, regional, and long-distance passenger operations during this period, eventually assuming ownership of the Northeast Corridor, a mostly-electrified route between Boston and Washington D.C. inherited primarily from the PRR and New Haven systems. Conrail, officially the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was created by the U.S. Government to salvage Penn Central, and several other bankrupt railroads. On April 1, 1976, it began operations. Conrail achieved profitability by the 1990s and was sought by several other large railroads in a continuing trend of mergers.
   On June 6, 1998, most of Conrail was split between Norfolk Southern and CSX. New York Central Lines LLC was formed as a subsidiary of Conrail, containing the lines to be operated by CSX; this included the old Water Level Route and many other lines of the New York Central, as well as various lines from other companies. CSX also assumed the NYC reporting mark.

Further Information

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