January 1944
by Edward Hungerford
They ran higgledy-piggledy over the western part of New York State . . . . When the Towerman was a newspaper reporter in Rochester years ago, he knew them all; the lordly Fall Brook, whose offices and shops were in Corning in the Southern Tier (since come to be one of the great centers in glass-making in America) and whose officers – the Magees, the Gortons and the Browns – were the howling swells and nabobs of the place . . . . The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh he knew far better. George E. Merchant ran it from Rochester there at the turn of the century, and he ran it very well indeed. . . . The Western New York & Pennsylvania was just going into the hands of the Pennsylvania to afford that system a much-needed direct entrance into both Rochester and Buffalo. . . . The Shawmut, well to the south of us, was perennially embarrassed financially. . . while the Buffalo & Susquehanna was just entering upon a brief, spectacular, but totally unhappy career. There were four or five other small railroads in the western part of the state, but they hardly are worth even mentioning, with the possible exception of the eight mile Bath & Hammondsport, which ran its own lines of passenger steamboats upon Keuka Lake and whose president once asked James J. Hill for an annual pass on the Great Northern, inclosing passes for his own small railroad and steamboat company. When Hill replied that he had looked up the Bath & Hammondsport, could walk the line in an hour, and swim the lake, the Yorker countered by saying that the B&H was just as wide, anyhow – a salient fact that the little road still prints upon its annual passes.
It was the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh that most interested the Man in the Tower – perhaps because Mr. Merchant gave him his first long-distance ride in an engine-cab to the Kinzua Viaduct in Pennsylvania, which rose 300 feet above the stream in the valley far below and which in those days was a great place for Sunday excursionists from Rochester and Buffalo. The citizens went traipsing down there in long excursion trains and stuffed themselves unmercifully with frankfurters and Bartholomay beer. The road, which slinked southwesterly from Rochester, originally had been called the Rochester & State Line, and it contented itself with reaching the important town of Salamanca, where it made close connection with the through trains upon the Erie, east and west. One of the earliest and most sought-after of the Currier & Ives railroad lithographs is of Salamanca Station, long since supplanted. In fact: there no longer is even a train connection there. The Baltimore & Ohio, which has operated the BR&P for the past dozen years, has now completely abandoned Salamanca Station, using, instead, the large one at East Salamanca a mile outside of the town.
But to the Man in the Tower, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh always meant Bill Noonan; and, conversely, Bill Noonan always meant the BR&P. The two were interchangeable, but one could not be separated from the other. When the road was leased to a larger system, a necessity, they said that Bill Noonan’s heart was broken. He quit active railroading and retired to his handsome estate at Pittsford, near Rochester – a simple but glorious place with miles of bridle path upon which the president of Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh – he still holds that title and will hold it until he dies – can indulge in his favorite pastime. William T. Noonan, born in Minnesota, went to Rochester through several intermediate steps of railroading, and at 36 was the youngest railroad president in the United States – and the best-looking. He had charm; his was a contagious smile; and he possessed a workable railroad knowledge that at once shot him to the fore and kept him there.
When he went to the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh in 1909, lie found the road already had pushed beyond its Erie connection at Salamanca and on into Bradford and the rich oil and soft-coal country of northwestern Pennsylvania . But it never had earned the right to that “Pittsburgh” in its name. Noonan quickly rectified that. He pushed the line through Punxsatawney to Butler, where it quickly got running-rights over the B&O into the Coal City itself. That done, he began the upbuilding of the property. Money was poured into it (it always enjoyed excellent credit) and the money was poured wisely. Much of the line was rebuilt, much of it double-tracked and rock-ballasted. New station buildings were put up everywhere along the line until the road rivaled and even topped the rich Lackawanna – and that, a quarter of a century ago, was saying something. There were new shops, new roundhouses, everything of most modern and efficient design. Mobile equipment kept pace with the right of way. Noonan bought locomotives and cars until he had more cars per mile than there were on any other railroad in the United States. They were the very best engines and cars that could be bought. Nor did he neglect the passenger – equipment side of the picture. It was as good as the best. There were sleeping cars and the road’s own parlor-observation cars and diners between its three chief cities. They, too, were the very best that money could buy.
Like the earlier Fall Brook to the east, coal always was the chief traffic of the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh. One of the primary outlets for its coal was to Canada, over the remarkable car-ferry that Noonan helped establish from the waterfront at Rochester to Cobourg, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Two huge steamships, miniature ocean liners they were, with tracks for 30 loaded cars on their main decks and fine passenger accommodations as well – were placed in service on this 60-mile run. At times of stress and heavy traffic each has averaged two round trips a day. A fine turning-basin and dock recently has been built in the mouth of the Genesee at Rochester, and in the trying days of the present war the service has been more than a godsend to our neighbor to the north. Like the ships across Lake Michigan, these run the entire year. Noonan fathered all this. But, best of all, he fathered human sympathy and human understanding on the road, which, in the days of its independence, he ran completely by himself. Accustomed to a grand scale of living, his business car probably was the handsomest of any railroad in the east, yet there was not a BR&P employee – no matter what his job – who was not welcome at any time to it or to the president’s office. You can take a road of slightly more than 500 route-miles and maintain an intimate relationship with all its men; and this Bill Noonan succeeded in doing, at the same time keeping close to the road’s patrons as well. No wonder that the road always succeeded. However, in a day of increasingly big things, including big railroads, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh was doomed. It gave way to the inevitable on the last day of December, 1931. Thereafter, Rochester ceased to have its own railroad and there was a good deal of grieving in the town. No one grieved more than Bill Noonan. His pet child had been sold down the river; and yet he realized that it was the only thing that could be done.
The anecdotes about Noonan are innumerable. He was the glamor boy of the railroads, one of the most colorful executives that they have ever known. Warm-heart generous to a fault, immensely capable, in Rochester he always acted the role of a recluse. Rarely was he seen at its clubs, its hotels, its restaurants, its chamber of commerce. He preferred to lunch alone in his office each day. A brisk five-mile walk there each morning, and then five miles home again each night, kept him in the best of condition. He was affable, but a bit aloof. But he never was aloof from the men who worked with him and for him. They were loyal to the core and, much more than that, they shared his enthusiasms. That meant good teamwork, and the BR&P was distinguished for its teamwork. It was a big little road, if you get what I mean.
It is gone now! The old name has been wiped from its cars and engines, and Baltimore & Ohio so substituted. To the eternal credit of the Baltimore road, it must be said that it has not let the Rochester road down. There have been many changes. The handsome parlor cars and diners and observations have gone now, and more recently the sleepers that formerly plied between the three chief cities of the system. Rochester no longer rates even a superintendency and the handsome BR&P headquarters budding there stands well-nigh deserted. Noonan still keeps his office and he goes to it faithfully each day. But no longer does he rate a car of his own; no longer does he ride gaily out in it with his friends and associates. Although still hard at work, still doing good business, the old road is gone. Yet it stands, a real monument to a man who built almost better than he knew. It still is a first-class railroad.
I rode its one through day-train from Rochester to Pittsburgh not long ago, and it was a good train. Luxury facilities upon it were confined to one of those first-class Baltimore & Ohio air-conditioned coaches with a buffet at one end, whose offerings, if not elaborate these war days, were generous in sandwiches, eggs, and coffee. One need not starve on such a train and one did not. As a scenic route, it hardly is to be beaten anywhere in the East. It rides through the mountains and over them easily and majestically. Good track, good power; and even if the handsome station buildings that Noonan put up right and left are not kept in the condition in which he kept them, they, still are far from being down at the heel. . . . A railroad of good history and good antecedents, still a good railroad. And that is something
Source: Trains Magazine. January 1944