![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
39 watching. Of course, the trains went very slowly down this street, maybe 6-8 mph, and I suppose they were in view going one way or the other, for a total of a good many hours a day. For the entire period of my recollections of the trains on Washington Street, they were hauled almost entirely by Pacific type steam locomotives. These trains in the aggregate were known as "The Great Steel Fleet" and they were impressive. The depot, which was on West Fayette Street a couple of blocks off Selina, was old, sooty black, and inadequate, with a big shed which covered some five or six parallel tracks including one on the north side which was used exclusively for the trains operating on the northern branch lines out of Syracuse. A great mystery of my life at that time was just where the New York Central main line tracks entered the city both east and west. I first discovered that the tracks heading east came in through a short tunnel passing under the Erie Canal at the far eastern end of Washington Street; however, it was many years before I found that the west end tracks came in on a long fill just beyond the Women's and Children's Hospital on West Genessee street, crossing a bridge over West Genesee. The Lackawanna shared this same bridge with the NYC and I'd been over it on the Lackawanna en route to the State Fair and never connected it with the NYC. And so another mystery which had troubled me for years was solved. Moreover, when I discovered that the Erie Canal was carried [[underline]]over[[/underline]] the NYC tracks on a bridge, this seemed to me to be quite a remarkable engineering achievement. Another facet of inter-city travel at the time, was the inter-urban trolley lines and these held some fascination for me but not on a par with my railroad interest. Syracuse had such lines running to Utica, Rochester, Oswego and Auburn. In addition, there were shorter suburban lines which were part of the local trolley system that ran to Long Branch and White City on Onondaga Lake which were very popular amusement parks, and to Liverpool, Rockwell Springs, Solvay, East Syracuse, Minoa and Onondaga Valley. A couple of more long lines were to Manlius and Jamesville, and a line to South Bay on Oneida Lake. The most sophisticated of all these lines was the one to Utica, some 50 miles, which ran on the New York Central's "West Shore" tracks which had been electrified with 600-volt third tail for this stretch; Some of the cars even had streamlined front ends. Once again, little did I dream that one day I'd be in a business serving this industry which was also doomed to die. A feature of downtown rivaling the railroad in interest and importance at one time, at least, was the canal which my great-great-grandfiather Joshua Forman had been a primemover in developing. The Erie Canal ran right down through the center of the city from east to west and was traversed by many bridges, some stationary, some lift-type of various kinds. Just east of Warren Street, the Oswego Canal branched off the Erie and headed