Mayville Extension Railroad

Detail of a 1904 topographic map showing the route of the Mayville Extension Railroad (in blue) from Mayville to the Chautauqua Institution. It connected at Mayville with the Buffalo, Pittsburg and Western Railroad, later the Buffalo, New York and Philadelphia Railroad. Author’s illustration.

The Mayville Extension Railroad ran from Mayville to the Chautauqua Assembly Grounds, a distance of about three miles. It was chartered on June 4, 1881 and began operation on July 20 of the same year.

This was a “paper railroad” that was built by the Buffalo, Pittsburg and Western Railroad who immediately leased and operated it for an annual rental of 35 percent of the gross receipts of the company. The Mayville Extension used the rental income it received from the BP&W to pay the BP&W back for the cost of constructing the line.

The line was not very profitable and an 1886 inspection of the Buffalo, New York and Philadelphia Railway, a successor of the Buffalo, Pittsburg and Western, noted that:

The Mayville extension, three and one-half miles in length, between Mayville and the grounds of the Chautauqua association, is very little used, as the railroad company own and operate the steamboats on Chautauqua lake, and they perform the summer travel service.

On October 13, 1887 the railroad was sold to the Chautauqua Lake Railway.

The line was operated as the Chautauqua branch of the Chautauqua Lake Railway and its successors, including the Jamestown and Lake Erie Railway, the Jamestown and Chautauqua Railway, and the Jamestown, Chautauqua and Lake Erie Railway (JC&LE). Sometime between 1908 and 1913 the JC&LE leased, and later sold, the branch to the Pennsylvania Railroad which operated it as a freight-only line until abandonment in 1926.

Timetable of trains on the Mayville Extension Branch of the Buffalo, Pittsburg and Western Railroad for July 1881. Travelers’ Official Railway Guide for the United States and Canada, July 1881. Google Books.