Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway: "Safety and Service"

Last revised: September 16, 2026

The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh was a coal conveyor with two Great Lakes ports and a name that promised a third city it never owned. Rochester and Buffalo it reached. Pittsburgh it used on someone else’s rails—first the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Valley, later the Baltimore & Ohio from Butler into Smithfield Street Station. The oldest piece is the Rochester & State Line, organized April 8, 1869. The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway itself dates from March 12, 1887. Slogan: Safety and Service. Reporting mark BRP. Daniel Willard bought control in 1929 and took the property on January 1, 1932, the same morning he took the neighboring Buffalo & Susquehanna. The last passenger train on the old BR&P ran October 15, 1955. Much of the iron still works as Genesee & Wyoming’s Buffalo & Pittsburgh.

An all-time steam roster sits below. The post-1900 class grid with B&O renumbers also sits on BR&P steam. Parent B&O steam is B&O steam.

Buffalo Rochester and Pittsburgh 4-6-2 479 Class WW2 at Rochester New York August 1933 George Votava

Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh 4-6-2 #479 (Class WW2) at Rochester, New York, August 1933. George Votava photo.

On this page: At a glance · Rochester & State Line · Rochester & Pittsburgh · March 12, 1887 · Coal, DuBois, Punxsutawney · Ontario Car Ferry · Steam · All-time steam roster · Baltimore & Ohio · Buffalo & Pittsburgh

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal name	Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway
Slogan	Safety and Service
Reporting mark	BRP
Headquarters	155 Main Street West, Rochester, New York
States served	New York, Pennsylvania. Ontario via car ferry to Cobourg
Genesis	Rochester & State Line Railroad, organized April 8, 1869
Rochester & Pittsburgh	Reorganization January 17, 1881. Walston H. Brown
BR&P formed	March 12, 1887, after the 1885 foreclosure sale to Adrian Iselin
Dates of operation	First R&SL trains 1878 through B&O takeover January 1, 1932
Route miles (1930)	603
Principal lines	Rochester–Salamanca; Buffalo–Ashford–Punxsutawney (and B&O/PRR into Pittsburgh); Clearfield, Indiana, Silver Lake, Ridge, Jacksonville, Rural Valley branches
Pittsburgh	Never on its own rails. Allegheny Valley (PRR) rights, later B&O from Butler to Smithfield Street Station
Car ferry	Ontario Car Ferry Company, Ltd., with Grand Trunk. Genesee Dock (Charlotte)–Cobourg, 1907–1950
Successor	Baltimore & Ohio (stock 1929; operations January 1, 1932). CSX. Buffalo & Pittsburgh (G&W) from 1988

1930 mileage is the Official Guide figure. Formation date is March 12, 1887. Information compiled September 16, 2026.

The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway logo. Author’s work.

Rochester & State Line, 1869

Western New York heated with anthracite the Erie Railway brought in. In the 1860s the price kept rising. Rochester businessmen answered with their own railroad. The Rochester & State Line was organized April 8, 1869, to reach the Pennsylvania state line and, they hoped, cheap coal. Robert L. Rothfus, in Coal Trains North, is the book for that anger and for the company that came of it.

What they actually built was 107 miles from Rochester toward Salamanca, finished in 1878. It never got into the coal fields. Agriculture, merchandise, and whatever else would load a car kept it alive until it did not. The State Line was a Rochester road with a Pennsylvania ambition and no coal.

Walston Brown and the Rochester & Pittsburgh

Foreclosure produced the Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad on January 17, 1881. Walston H. Brown of New York had the money and the map: north from Rochester to Charlotte on Lake Ontario, south from Salamanca into the bituminous, and a way toward Pittsburgh where every important road already sat. The New York Central and the Pennsylvania sat on both flanks and did not want him.

He built anyway. Construction south of Salamanca started in June 1881 and reached Punxsutawney in 1883 by Bradford, Ridgway, and DuBois. DuBois became the heavy shop town. Punxsutawney gave an Allegheny Valley (PRR) interchange. A Buffalo branch left the main at Ashford, about sixteen miles north of Salamanca, and opened through Springville and Orchard Park the same year. First passenger trains used it on November 19, 1883. East Salamanca later got a second big shop, in the World War I years.

Trackage rights on the Allegheny Valley put R&P cars into Pittsburgh. An Erie subsidiary, the New York, Lake Erie & Western Coal & Railroad, was another door. Between DuBois and Punxsutawney the coal and coke business came on fast. Gross income rose nearly ten-fold from 1881 to 1885. Neighbors cut rates. The R&P defaulted on interest in the summer of 1884 and went into bankruptcy.

Adrian Iselin and March 12, 1887

The road sold on October 16, 1885, to Adrian Iselin. New York and Pennsylvania courts took their time. For a stretch the two states ran as separate companies: the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad Company in New York, the Pittsburgh & State Line Railroad Company in Pennsylvania. They came back together on March 12, 1887, as the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. That is the corporate birthday. The slogan and the coal conveyor are what people remember.

It was never a rich passenger road. It was never a New York–Chicago trunk. It was a mine-to-lake machine that punched above its mileage because the lakes wanted steam coal and the Pittsburgh district wanted another outlet that was not only the Pennsylvania.

Coal, shops, and a Pittsburgh that was not theirs

DuBois and Punxsutawney remained the heart. Branches filled in the Clearfield and Indiana County fields: Falls Creek–Clearfield; Punxsutawney–Indiana; Creekside–Iselin (Ridge); J.M. Junction–Aultman (Jacksonville); Echo–Yatesboro (Rural Valley). Silver Lake Junction–Perry runs to Perry in Wyoming County, New York. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company mines sat on the map as a family business.

Pittsburgh on the timetable was a rights deal. The BR&P never laid a main of its own into the Golden Triangle. After the B&O years the connection was B&O from Butler into Smithfield Street Station. The name still said Pittsburgh. The deed did not.

Official 1910 system map of the Buffalo Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway

Official 1910 system map of the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh. Rochester and Buffalo at the lakes, the coal counties in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh off the company’s own iron. Author’s collection.

Ontario Car Ferry, 1907–1950

Two-thirds of BR&P freight was coal. The Grand Trunk wanted a shorter path than Niagara for locomotive coal into central Ontario and Montreal. In 1905 the two roads formed the Ontario Car Ferry Company, Ltd. Rochester (Genesee Dock on the Charlotte extension, about two and a half miles up the Genesee) was the south slip. Cobourg, Ontario, was the north. The run was about sixty statute miles.

Ontario No. 1 made the first Cobourg–Rochester voyage in November 1907, Canadian Shipbuilding, Toronto. Passenger cabins sat idle more than a year, then ran summers from 1909. Ontario No. 2 came from Polson Iron Works in October 1915. Coal hoppers were the business. In 1927 automobiles went across on flats, $10 a car. After Grand Trunk became Canadian National, CN stayed the partner. The ferries outlasted the independent BR&P. Service ended in 1950.

Brooks, Mallets, Clarion Hill

Brooks Locomotive Works at Dunkirk, later Alco-Brooks, built most of the engines. That is a neighborhood shop for a western New York coal road. Early power was 4-4-0s inherited from the State Line, then 2-8-0s from 1881. By 1884 the Rochester & Pittsburgh had about sixty locomotives, almost all Brooks or Baldwin. The 1890s and 1900s added Moguls, Ten-Wheelers, 4-8-0 Mastodons, Atlantics, Decapods, and finally Pacifics for the modest varnish.

World War I tonnage brought the engines the BR&P is remembered for. Class LL, 2-6-6-2 Prairie Mallets, fifty-five of them, 700–754, Alco Schenectady and Brooks, 1914–1923. Slide valves on the low-pressure cylinders, piston valves on the high. They stayed on the Buffalo Division into the 1950s as B&O KK-4s 7500–7554. Class XX, nine 2-8-8-2s, 800–808, Alco-Brooks 1918 and 1923, were bought to shove Clarion Hill. David Mainey, in Baltimore & Ohio Steam In Color, is the color book for what they looked like after the oval came off. B&O classed them EE-2, 7316–7324. Retired about 1950–51.

Pacifics WW 600–616 and WW-2 675–679 handled passenger trains. The Votava photograph at the top of this page is WW-2 #479 at Rochester in 1933, already a B&O year with BR&P still on the tank. Mikados Z 400–447, forty-eight of them, were the later road freight. One BR&P steamer is known to survive: an 0-6-0 from class F3 (152–156), later B&O D-44, on display at Bellevue, Ohio.

All-time steam roster

Pre-1900 power is the State Line and Rochester & Pittsburgh fleet: 4-4-0s (eleven from the State Line, most rebuilt 1881; sixteen on the roster by year-end), 2-8-0s in 1881–83 batches, 0-6-0 switchers, then 1890s Moguls (G, L), Ten-Wheelers (E, T), Consolidations (P, V), and 4-8-0s (S-2 / S-3, 200–245). Serial-by-serial cards for those early Brooks and Baldwin engines are thin. The table below is the post-1900 roster this site has carried on the steam roster page—class, numbers, quantity, builder, dates, and B&O identity. Together with the 1880s count, that is the all-time picture. B&O numbers in the last column are identities after 1932. The messier X-class subclass splits stay on the dedicated steam page.

Whyte	BR&P class	Numbers	Qty	Builder / years	B&O class / numbers
0-6-0	F3	152–156	5	Alco-Brooks, 1904	D-44 / 390–394. Survivor from this class at Bellevue, Ohio
4-4-2	W, W2–W5	160–174	15	Baldwin and Brooks, 1901–09	A-6 / A-7 / A-8 series on engines that lasted
4-6-0	T3	186–189	4	Alco-Brooks, 1900	A-8a
4-8-0	S-2, S-3	200–245	46	Alco-Brooks, 1898–1901	—
2-8-0	X, X2–X6	250–269, 300–396	~117	Alco-Brooks, 1903–09	E-52 through E-57 / 3010–3081 group
2-8-0	V2, V3, VR	270–285	16	Baldwin, 1901–03	E-58 / E-58a / E-58b
2-8-2	Z	400–447	48	Alco-Brooks, 1912–17	Q-10 / 4700–4747
2-10-0	Y	501–508	8	Alco-Brooks, 1907, 1909	Y / 6500–6507. Retired 1951
0-8-0	F4	520–537	18	Alco-Brooks, 1918, 1923	L-4 / L-4a / 772–789. Retired 1956–58
4-6-2	WW	600–616	17	Alco-Brooks, 1912–18	P-17 / P-18 / 5140–5148, 5185–5192. Retired 1953
4-6-2	WW-2	675–679	5	Alco-Brooks, 1923	P-19 / 5260–5264. Retired 1953. Photo: #479 at Rochester, 1933
2-6-6-2	LL	700–754	55	Alco Schenectady and Brooks, 1914–23	KK-4 / 7500–7554. Retired by 1951
2-8-8-2	XX	800–808	9	Alco-Brooks, 1918, 1923	EE-2 / 7316–7324. Clarion Hill. Retired about 1950–51

The WW-2 road number in the 1933 Rochester photograph is #479 as lettered that day; the class block is 675–679 / B&O 5260–5264. Brooks built the Pacifics. The dedicated grid, including the messier X-subclass B&O splits, stays on BR&P steam.

Willard, 1929–1932

The B&O board approved purchase of 84.8 percent of BR&P stock on March 1, 1929. Operations of the BR&P, the Buffalo & Susquehanna, and the B&S coal company passed on January 1, 1932. Willard wanted a B&O path toward New York and New England that was not the Reading’s favor. The BR&P gave him Buffalo, Rochester, and Pennsylvania coal. The B&S was supposed to help toward Williamsport. The Depression stopped that. The B&O never got its own New York–Chicago main. It did get a Buffalo Division that still looked like a coal road, with KK-4s and EE-2s on grades the Central never had to climb.

Passenger service on the former BR&P lasted until October 15, 1955. Steam on the inherited power lasted into the 1950s, then diesel. Chessie and CSX followed the B&O.

Buffalo & Pittsburgh

Genesee & Wyoming took CSX’s leftover B&O / BR&P in western New York and Pennsylvania and created the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad in 1988, reporting mark BPRR. The Rochester piece had already gone to Rochester & Southern in 1986. Allegheny & Eastern, Pittsburg & Shawmut, and Bradford Industrial were folded in later. Railway Age named the B&P Regional Railroad of the Year in 2006. It still links Buffalo and the Pennsylvania coal counties, with CSX rights toward New Castle and Allison Park. The original BR&P Rochester main as a through coal conveyor is gone.

Sources

Rothfus, Robert L. Coal Trains North: The Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad Company. State Line origins, Brown, 1884 bankruptcy, Iselin, 1887
Mainey, David. Baltimore & Ohio Steam In Color. LL / KK-4 and XX / EE-2 after 1932
Staufer, Alvin F., and Lawrence W. Sagle. Baltimore & Ohio Steam and Electric Locomotives. KK-4 batches
Llanso, Steve. Locobase 295 (LL / KK-4), 314 (XX / EE-2). Clarion Hill; 800–808 / 7316–7324
American-Rails.com, BR&P steam roster (post 1900). Class table used on this page
Rafuse, Ted, and Cobourg and District Historical Society. Ontario Car Ferry Company, 1905–1950; Ontario No. 1 and No. 2
Official Guide of the Railways, 1930. 603 miles; principal lines
American-Rails.com: Baltimore & Ohio; Buffalo & Susquehanna; Buffalo & Pittsburgh

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