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Ulster and Delaware Railroad
"The Only All Rail Route to the
Catskill Mountains"
The Horseshoe Curve between Pine Hill
& Grand Hotel Stations.
The Ulster and Delaware Railroad
The Ulster and Delaware Railroad Company (U&D) was a Class I
railroad located in New York State, headquartered in Rondout and founded
in 1866. It was often advertised as "The Only All-Rail Route To the
Catskill Mountains." At its greatest extent, the U&D ran from
Kingston Point, on the Hudson River, through the heart of the Catskill
Mountains to its western terminus at Oneonta, passing through four
counties (Ulster, Delaware, Schoharie and Otsego), with branches to
Kaaterskill and Hunter in Greene County. The U&D connected with five
other railroads: the West Shore, Wallkill, and O&W in Kingston, the
D&N in Arkville, the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley in West
Davenport, and the D&H in Oneonta.
Although a small railroad, it was big in stature, as it went through
many favored tourist hot-spots. Many elegant hotels kept business going,
some of which were sponsored or built by the railroad. Besides the
passenger business, there were also plenty of farms and creameries (most
of them in Delaware County) as well as businesses shipping coal, stone,
ice and various wood products.
One of the few downfalls were the many grades, some as steep as 4.4%. A train
took almost four hours to get from Kingston Point to Oneonta, running
at an average speed of only 30miles per hour (48
km/h), although some sections permitted running at
60 miles per hour (97 km/h) or more. When roads improved and
automobiles became more widely available, the advantages of train travel
were nil.
(Short description from Wikipedia)
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