Finger Lakes history · regional story
Developing historyThe Auburn train that had to go backward
James Silk Buckingham's account of an 1838 journey describes wooden rails, horse power and an awkward meeting on a single track.
Research status
This history is still developing.
Parts of this account remain unresolved. Here is what the sources support, what is uncertain, and what we are looking for next.
About this review. Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- Buckingham's own published account describes the horses, wooden rails, passing maneuver and onward coach journey. Palmer dates the journey to 1838; Ludwig separately describes the June 1839 steam inauguration. These accounts do not establish a complete operating history.
- What remains uncertain
- We haven't checked a railway operating record against Buckingham's time and distance estimates. His account is one passenger's perspective. The surrounding book contains prejudiced statements about Indigenous people; those statements are not adopted as evidence here. This story makes no claim about land title, Indigenous history or prison conditions.
- What we are researching next
- Contemporary newspapers and company records could put this particular journey beside advertised schedules, track work and the transition to steam. The earlier January 1838 opening also needs its own primary citation: the museum article about Seward's ride does not establish that separate date.
James Silk Buckingham expected a locomotive. Instead, he found two horses, harnessed one behind the other, waiting to pull about twenty passengers toward Auburn. In the account he published in 1841, the railway began three or four miles outside Syracuse. A coach took him to it on the morning of August 9. Historian Richard F. Palmer places this journey in 1838.
The rails were wooden. Buckingham described a half-hour wait before departure, then a slow ride interrupted by another train coming toward them. There wasn't a second track to pass on, and the places where a train could pull aside were some distance apart. His horses were moved to the other end of the cars. They pulled the passengers backward for about a mile and a half so the approaching train could get through.
Buckingham put the journey at four hours for twenty-two miles. He was plainly unhappy with it. Those figures describe his remembered trip, not a timetable or an average for the railway. Once in Auburn, he stopped for refreshments and continued by coach toward Canandaigua, going by way of Cayuga and Geneva. The railway had covered one part of his day's travel.
Steam service supplies a different scene. In a later account published by the Erie Canal Museum, Seward House Museum educator Jeff Ludwig describes Governor William Seward riding the locomotive Syracuse on June 4, 1839, for the steam service's inauguration. Buckingham's frustrating ride belongs to the earlier horse-powered stage, not that celebration.
Sources
- J. S. Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive, vol. II, Harper & Brothers, 1841, printed pp. 128–129 / PDF pp. 140–141, railway paragraph and first paragraph after the page break. Archived volume. The passage was checked against both page scans; no page image is reproduced here.
- Richard F. Palmer, “The Auburn Road: A Study in Early Engineering”, January 1996, Buckingham passage and source list. Used for the journey's year, not as a second eyewitness.
- Jeff Ludwig, “Aboard the Auburn and Syracuse Railroad”, Erie Canal Museum, April 13, 2020, opening narrative paragraph. Used for the separately attributed steam inauguration.