Adirondack Railway Company

Adirondack Railway Company. . , The Adirondack Railway Company of Thomas Clark Durant built the line from Saratoga Springs to North Creek between 1865 and 1871, leaving unrealized other dreams of laying track as far as the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario. The line’s first locomotive was The General Hancock, shown above in 1865. , The railroad’s backers dreamed of vast profits transporting Adirondack timber and high grade iron ore discovered 30 miles north of here, at Tahawus. But insurmountable financial woes stopped expansion, and the railroad was later purchased by the Delaware and Hudson Company. , For nearly a century the D&H prospered, with trains bringing tourists, summer residents and winter recreationists to the Adirondacks. Lumber and locally mined garnet were shipped to the outside world. And finally, in 1944, the US government extended the railroad to Tahawus. The cargo then was not iron ore, but valuable titanium that was urgently needed during world war two. Passenger trains stopped running in 1956, done in by improved roads, and freight operations halted in 1989.