January 8, 1838
One of the first railroads to be built in New York — and the entire northeastern United States, for that matter — first went into service. The Auburn and Syracuse Railroad (A&S) was constructed to provide easy access for the village (present-day city) of Auburn and the factories in that area to the section of the Erie Canal located to the northeast in the village (present-day city) of Syracuse.
The A&S had been incorporated on May 1, 1834. The investors for this new enterprise included Vivus W. Smith (1804-1881), who would become known as a prominent journalist in the region and also a staunch opponent of slavery. Work on the A&S began in 1835.
At the time of its official debut in 1838, the railroad extended from Auburn to a temporary station in the town of Geddes (just west of Syracuse). The inaugural public trip on the new line left Auburn at 9:30 on that Monday morning in January, with a horse-drawn train pulling five cars filled with passengers. The train reached Geddes at 12:30 p.m., and the passengers then traveled in horse-drawn carriages to Syracuse for a celebratory luncheon there at a hotel that was owned and operated by Philo N. Rust (1802-1851). The train returned to Auburn that night at 8:45.
A couple of days later, the Auburn Journal and Advertiser reported that “a large number of citizens was gratified with an excursion upon this road to Syracuse.” This newspaper further noted, “As far as we have heard, all express themselves highly pleased. All was joy and hilarity of the prosperity of the speedy completion of this ‘link’ which is to connect us still closer with the commercial interests and prosperity of New York. The expedition was performed with reasonable clarity upon the road by horsepower.”
Ultimately, however, not everyone would enjoy traveling on those trains. One such person was the prolific English writer and lecturer James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), who provided a less-than-stellar assessment of his experience as an A&S passenger in August 1838.
“We left Syracuse in a coach that conveyed us to a railway, beginning at a distance of three or four miles [4.8 or 6.4 kilometers] from the town, to take us to Auburn,” recounted Buckingham in his 1842 book The Eastern and Western States of America. “But great was our disappointment at finding that, instead of a locomotive engine, the cars were drawn by horses, of which there were only two to draw about twenty passengers, the horses being placed one before the other, as tandems are driven, and not abreast . . . After a very tedious ride of four hours in performing 22 miles [35.4 kilometers], we reached Auburn.”
The A&S started using steam locomotives in June of the following year. (In the attached image, a steam locomotive is depicted in an article about the A&S that was published that same month in the New York Times and Commercial Intelligencer.) Not long after steam locomotives first began serving the A&S, this line finally reached Syracuse. The A&S merged with the Auburn and Rochester Railroad in 1850 to form the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad, which became part of the New York Central Railroad about three years later.
Image Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the Auburn and Syracuse Railroad (A&S), please check out https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1340&context=neha
Transportation History 
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