When the Railroads Went to the Beach by John Taibi and A Bruce Tracy
Hard cover with Dust Jacket 1999
222 Pages The role of the New York Ontario & Western Railway and the Lehigh Valley Railraod in the development of Sylvan Beach, New York
In Railroading in the Stockbridge Valley, my previous book dealing with the New York, Ontario & Western Railway, I maintained that this area was a microcosm of the entire railway's operations. If it happened in the Stockbridge Valley, then similar incidents probably happened at other locations on the road. In part, the Stockbridge Valley represented the whole.
This premise, however, cannot be applied to When the Railroads Went to the Beach. While the portion of the O&W's Northern Division covered here-Oneida Castle to North Bay, NY-could be compared to the entire railway in some respects, it is not the similarity but the dissimilarity of operations that made this part of the Ontario & Western unique. It is this uniqueness that will be developed and explored in this volume.
The Stockbridge Valley book presented an account of the overall history of the O&W and of its predecessor, the New York & Oswego Midland Railroad. It explained how their existence affected the valley. That information will not be repeated within these pages. Instead, you will read specifics dealing with the aforementioned Oneida Castle-to-North Bay corridor of the New York, Ontario & Western Railway, along with the Lehigh Valley Railroad's route between Canastota and Camden. It is how the history of these two railroads changed the future of the land they traversed in this region that will be explored in When the Railroads Went to the Beach. As will be seen, both lines played pivotal roles in the development of the eastern shore of Oneida Lake-and of the locale that serves as the primary setting of this story, a beach called Sylvan.
Finally, as was the case with Railroading in the Stockbridge Valley, this book was written entirely within the old Ontario & Western depot I own in Munnsville, NY.
Table of contents:
Oneida Lake and early Fish Creek
Joppa and the Midland Railroad
Geographic terminology
Owen W takes the throttle
A loop and a lasting name
Competition the EC&N
The Gay nation
Feeders
A new century and than you New York State
Heyday and horay! A trip to the beach
Depots Tickets Dots and dashes
The Bad news
Leftovers
Chronology of travel to Sylvan Beach
Less than carload lots
Bibliography
Index
