Appleton is a hamlet within the town of Newfane in Niagara County north of Lockport. The Hojack Line operated by the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad and later the New York Central Railroad ran through Appleton and the station there was sometimes referred to as “Appleton” and other times as “Hess Road.”

The name appears to have changed around 1895. A March 2, 1895 newspaper notice stated that

The name of the Post Office “Hess Road Station,” in Niagara county, has been changed to “Appleton,” and Dewitt Lindsay has been appointed postmaster.

History

The Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad (RW&O) completed construction of the line from Niagara Falls to Oswego in 1875. The RW&O operated the line until March 1891 when the company was leased to the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. The line was operated by the New York Central (1891 – 1968), the Penn Central Railroad (1968 – 1976) and Conrail (1976 on). The line was redundant with others operated by Conrail and by the late 1970s the entire line between Oswego and Niagara Falls had been abandoned or, in a few cases, sold to smaller railroads to operate small sections.

Trains returned to Appleton in 1983 when the Somerset Railroad was built to haul coal to the the Kintigh Generating Station, also known as the Somerset Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant located in Somerset, New York.  The loaded coal trains came in from the west and the empties went back east. The Somerset plant was closed in 2020 as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to reduce carbon emissions in New York state. Shortly after the plant closure, that October CSX filed for abandonment of the line as the plant was the only customer. In late spring 2022, the line was torn up by CSX. 

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Learn More

• Wikipedia. “Somerset Railroad (New York)“