Buffalo to Niagara Falls Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of America

with a new travelling companion.

Published in 1879, my Appletons' General Guide will steer me

to everything that's novel, beautiful,

memorable or curious in the United States.

Amen!

As I cross the continent, I'll discover America's Gilded Age,

when powerful tycoons launched a

railways boom that tied the nation

together and carved out its future as a superpower!

I'm travelling through the Empire State of New York.

I began on Manhattan Island and headed North through Poughkeepsie

to the state capital, Albany, before striking west to Rochester.

Today, I'll continue west to Buffalo,

then turn north to the spectacular Niagara Falls.

I'm nearing the end of my journey through New York State.

I'm approaching the Canadian border and the Great Lakes -

bodies of water which are incomprehensibly enormous,

as far as Europeans are concerned.

And not surprisingly, they've loomed large in American history.

On this final leg, I'll discover how westward expansion transformed

Upstate New York into the nation's bread basket.

At its peak, Buffalo moved enough grain to feed every

person in the United States, today,

a loaf of bread every single week.

I'm offered a monster munch in Buffalo.

-Well, they come in increments of ten - 10, 20, 50.

-50?!

-50 wing.

And end with an awe-inspiring experience for which

travellers at the time of my guide were unprepared.

The very first thing you see is a great plume of mist.

I'm continuing on a route recommended

in my Appletons' Guide Book, crossing much of New York State,

from Albany in the East to Buffalo in the West.

The commerce of Buffalo, New York, is, according to my Appletons',

"Very large, as it's position at the foot of the chain

"of Great Lakes makes it the entrepot for traffic

"between the East and the great Northwest.

"Since the completion of the Erie Canal, in 1825,

"its growth has been very rapid."

-ANNOUNCER:

-The station stop is Buffalo Exchange Street,

Buffalo Exchange Street!

Buffalo's golden age dawned in the pre-rail era of the Erie Canal.

This first all-water link connected the huge

resources of the Great Lakes region in the Midwest, via

the Hudson River, to the port of New York City, on the Atlantic Coast.

It was a catalyst for commerce, industry and westward migration.

Buffalo became the centre of the world's grain trade,

employing a growing workforce of new immigrants.

Appletons' tells me

that no visitor should leave without having seen the grain elevators.

So, I'm meeting third generation Buffalo businessman Rick Smith.

Rick, you own some of these old grain silos, why?

Well, I think it's all about, you know,

the preserving and celebrating of the past.

These were innovative things when they came into being

and trying to regenerate that innovation today,

having grown up next to these titans - it's a special thing.

This is a Perot malt house, in a Perot malting elevator.

This is where we're going to go meet Brad Hahn, who actually runs

a lot of the tours of Silo City.

I can't wait to see inside, amazing structures!

So, Brad, why is it that, in Buffalo,

we have so many of these extremely tall structures?

Well, Buffalo was the end of the line for the trade route

coming from the Great Lakes and the farms of the Midwest.

America's bread basket headed East. The ships could get to Buffalo

but could go no further because of Niagara Falls,

along the Niagara River.

Can you give me any idea of the scale -

how much grain passed through here?

At its peak, Buffalo moved 300 million bushels of grain,

through this city, every year.

That's enough grain to feed every person in the United States,

today, a loaf of bread every single week.

That is amazing!

From its opening in 1825, the Erie Canal revolutionised the movement

of grain, causing freight charges to drop from 100 to 10 a ton.

Irish scoopers transferred grain by hand from lake vessels to

canal boats but the process was slow and clogged the harbour.

1842, a local merchant named Joseph Dart says there's a better

way to do this.

He comes up with a vertical conveyor belt, powered by steam,

that had buckets on it, lowered into the hull of the ship, scooped

up the grain and emptied those ships of 1,000 bushels per hour.

So, they could unload one of these lake ships in a day,

compared to a week and this revolutionised the process.

Why do the silos need to be so tall, what's the point of that?

Well, they wanted to store as much grain as they possibly could

and this enabled a gravity system.

So, once they used that conveyor belt to get the grain to the top of

the complex, then it was gravity to bring it back down,

so they could take it out to either ship it to the east or to mill

it, to malt it or turn it into some other finished product.

Silo City grew into the world's largest grain port, with 27

of Dart's elevators lining the harbour.

The railroads increased the quantities of grain

that could be transported out of the city and speeded the journey.

By 1900, Buffalo had become the second busiest rail

centre in America, after Chicago.

It had great significance not only for the United States

but for the entire world

because the grain passing through Buffalo wasn't just for people

here in Buffalo, it was to feed the rest of the United States,

along the East Coast and in Europe, as well.

One of the reasons the Erie Canal was successful was because a lot of

that grain was going to Europe

and it was going through the Industrial Revolution,

a lot more people to feed.

In 1907, the wooden elevators were replaced with concrete ones.

These structures, the first sky scrapers of New York State,

which would inspire the generation of European

architects behind the Bauhaus school of design.

If you think of some of their catch mark slogans, for example,

"Form follows function", you really can't find any purer example of that

than here at the grain elevators, where you have a function

of storing and moving grain and the buildings reflect that entirely.

And, Rick, in your dream,

what can be the function of this place in the future?

We have two floors, in essence, we have the feed

floor at the bottom and then we have this floor, up 100 feet.

So, upstairs can be utilised as great living quarters

because you've got miles around, you can see everywhere.

Then, the feed floor can be just about anything a normal

building can be but a very cool nightclub or a very cool...

things to have art shows or galleries.

Those are kind of the really great functions that we could

repurpose them with.

When in Buffalo, do as the Buffalonians do.

So, with lunch beckoning,

I'm ready for the city's most celebrated snack.

Hi, welcome to the Anchor Bar, home of the original buffalo wing.

Buffalo wing? I didn't know buffalos had wings.

They don't, actually, but chickens do and that's what we've got

going tonight.

How did this dish get started in Buffalo?

It got started back in 1964 when one of the owners of the

Anchor Bar, Teressa Bellissimo, created the Buffalo wing.

Her son was tending the bar and some of his friends came in and they

didn't want Italian food, they wanted something different.

She said, "You know what?

"I've got these beautiful wings that I was going to put in a stock -

"let me see what I can do with it."

So, she experimented and out came the first order of chicken wings,

with the unique hot sauce on it.

What choices do I have to make?

-Well, they come in increments of ten - 10, 20, 50.

-50?!

50 wings, yeah, and you can have them hot, medium, mild,

barbeque, suicidal...

OK, look, erm, I don't know, give me a kind of medium size plate.

OK, well, I'll hook you up then, all right.

-You hook me up, thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Buffalo's legendary wings are deep fried, then coated in a vinegar

and Cayenne pepper hot sauce, before yet another fry.

Well, here you go, medium portion, medium spiciness,

the original Buffalo wing, I hope you enjoy them.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-We'll get you some napkins.

Only in America could that be regarded as a medium portion!

So, cool it down with a little celery,

dip it in a little blue cheese...

..mmm, that's spicy!

Ooh, that is hot!

A little beer.

Fire, fire brigade!

During Buffalo's rapid 19th century growth, it was transformed

by a rail network of more than 700 miles of track within the city.

Founded in 1853, the New York central railroad,

connecting Buffalo with Albany,

later came under the control of the rail tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

It became a dominant force in the Northeast,

stretching from Illinois to Massachusetts and from

Michigan to West Virginia.

In 1865, Buffalo was a stop on the route of President Lincoln's

funeral train after his assassination.

Citizens flocked to view the casket of the man who saved the union

and freed the slaves.

During the 20th century, Buffalo's 14 million central terminal

opened to great fanfare, just months before the Wall Street crash,

in 1929.

Built to service 200 trains and 10,000 passengers daily,

this art deco masterpiece never lived up to its promise.

The grand halls became increasingly deserted,

as air and automobile travel supplanted the trains.

Today, it's being restored.

Another of the city's architectural highlights is the 12 acre

Colonel Ward Pumping Station,

which was the largest ever built in the United States.

I think you'll like this, Michael.

-Am I in for a treat?

-Yes, you are.

I'm getting a tour from plant superintendent, Patrick J Martin.

That is a thing of beauty!

What a magnificent hall and incredible antique machinery.

Where is that machinery from?

The machinery was put in in 1907,

that's when the original construction happened

and was finished in 1915.

-Can we get a bit closer?

-Sure!

The population of Buffalo had grown to 350,000 by 1,900.

Irish and German immigrants found work in the new steel

and automobile industries, attracted to the city by cheap

hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls.

The demand for clean drinking water grew steadily, until

Buffalo's public works commissioner,

Colonel Francis G Ward,

found a reliable source at the mouth of the Niagara River.

Huh-ho, this is a wonderful, somewhat vertiginous view.

Erm, so tell me about the project,

what had to be done to bring the water to Buffalo?

They built this plant right on the shores of Lake Erie,

and they had to actually tunnel out onto the lake

and went 6,600 feet onto the lake

and they had to tunnel down below the bedrock

and went down 70 feet to get to the area in the lake what we call

the Emerald Channel, which sits on top of limestone.

It's crystal clear water out there in the middle of the lake.

They were able to get good quality water to all the residents.

Tunnelling 70 foot down, I'm thinking,

how did they keep the water out as they did that?

What they were doing was actually put a pressurised chamber,

steel bulkhead, and they actually

pumped in compressed air into the chamber to

keep the water out while they were tunnelling and they were blasting.

Because it was a pressurised area, the men could only work

in about three-four hour shifts, otherwise they would get the bends.

Said to be the largest construction ever built on the Great Lakes,

a 6,600 foot tunnel connected the channel to the pumping station.

Each one of these pumps has the capability of doing

30 million gallons of water per day.

Five pumps that gave us 150 million gallon capacity.

Standing 60 feet tall, these five 1,200 horsepower steam driven

pumps each had two 30-tonne fly wheels to drive their pistons.

The pumping station remains one of the largest in the world today.

It's a great pity that it doesn't run anymore under steam.

Do you, personally, have any memory of these engines?

It's kind of funny you ask.

My father used to work with the water department

and when I was a young child in the late '60s, early '70s, I actually

came into this plant and one of these was in operation.

It was amazing seeing one of these big, huge pumps just turning

and it was very quiet.

And it's marvellous that they have been preserved.

How is it that they've been kept?

In the '80s, there was discussion to remove them

and sell them for scrap and at that time my father was

the director of the water and he said that we sell water, not scrap.

And we still have a historic jewel because of that.

I think, this evening, if I go down to the banks of Lake Erie, I'm going

-to raise a glass to your father.

-I'm sure he'll appreciate that.

I'd been struck by Buffalo, as Appletons' was.

With the finest harbour on Lake Erie, formidable canal basins

and soaring grain elevators, New York State's second largest city

retains the excitement of its 19th century boom.

It's the last day of my first American railroad journey

and I'm about to fulfil one of my greatest ambitions.

TRAIN HORN SOUNDS

I'm heading 22 miles towards the Canadian border.

-Niagara Falls?

-Niagara Falls.

Who else is going, Niagara Falls?

Here almost a fifth of the world's fresh water drains from four of the

Great Lakes into the Niagara River before emptying into Lake Ontario.

Here are just some of the words used by Appletons' to describe Niagara.

"A profound chasm, water tossed about tumultuously.

"Great whirlpools and eddies, an inextricable turmoil of water."

Yes, I'm headed for a falls.

You've got two walkways, one there, one there.

Do not walk across the rail.

Before I witness the natural wonder for myself,

I've an appointment with Niagara Falls's mayor, Paul Dyster.

I'm thinking this is a very exceptional place that probably,

what, for two centuries you've been a tourist magnet.

Yes, sometime after the conclusion of the war of 1812, in 1815,

we started drawing visitors from around the world here.

Some of it, I think, coincided with the coming of the railways,

which opened up a new way to travel.

The method of travel was exciting

and then you had an exciting destination at the end of the line.

Romantic 19th century landscape painters like Frederic Church

inadvertently advertised this iconic spot.

His picture of 1857, once described as the finest oil painting

this side of the Atlantic, toured the East Coast Britain and Paris.

How many visitors do you have?

Somewhere between eight and nine million visitors, which is

more than visit any of our national parks.

You're quite a big city too,

so do you manage to spread that wealth amongst the population?

Well, it's one of our ambitions but I think it's difficult.

We were, for much of our history, an industrial city

and there's a transition that's under way here.

We've lost industrial jobs

but gained jobs in the tourism sector. That requires people

to change their training, get new types of education, maybe

change their outlook on careers and that can be a wrenching experience.

Now, there are two cities called Niagara Falls,

one in Ontario, Canada, one in New York State - rivalry between them?

Friendly rivalry, yes.

Friendly rivalry. We have an annual tug of war on the rainbow bridge.

We close down the border crossing so that our police departments

can line up and duke it out over bragging rights for who's got the

strongest policemen for the next year.

I'm afraid the Canadians won this year.

Formed at the end of the Ice Age, Niagara's three falls

consist of the American and Bridalveil Falls,

on the United States' side, and the Horseshoe Falls in Canada.

In the late 1890s,

Niagara was famed for producing the world's first hydroelectric power.

This is my first close encounter with Niagara Falls

and I hadn't expected to get this near, it's just a few feet away.

The other thing that is unexpected to me is how far it stretches.

The other part of the waterfall is far away and then this plume

of mist rises infinitely until it merges with the clouds.

I see all these crowds of people here of every conceivable

nationality and many of them may have

thought of visiting all of their lives,

as indeed I have and I'm just wondering whether Niagara Falls

has lived up to their expectations.

-Are you visiting Niagara Falls for the first time?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-What do you think of it.

-Gorgeous! It's really, really beautiful!

Is it as good as you hoped it would be?

I did read about that before because I was very excited

but I told my sister not to read about it.

So, for you it's been a complete surprise?

Yeah, it is very beautiful.

It's actually better than I thought it would be, with the weather

and everything, the way the mist comes off the water, love it!

-Where are you from?

-I'm originally from Nottingham, England.

-You don't sound like it at all!

-I've been in the US since 1978.

Can you still do a Nottingham accent?

Unfortunately not, unless I'm around my family.

-It takes a while to come back.

-Have your family seen Niagara Falls?

No, they keep saying they're going to come

and actually I texted them earlier today, they said,

"Hey, when we were visiting, we never went there!"

So, next time, I'm hoping to bring them out here.

Yeah, they'll love it, won't they?

For 19th century tourists, Niagara epitomised the limitless new world.

Wilderness in all its grandeur and terror!

The railroads brought travellers from afar and presented

money making opportunities,

which attracted many a publicity seeking daredevil.

In 1860, when Britain's Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII,

visited the falls, he was spellbound by the French tightrope walker

Charles Blondin carrying his assistant across the gorge.

Since then the falls have been braved in barrels,

rubber balls, even on a jet ski.

But I'm not quite that level of daredevil.

Appletons' recommends that you spend two days seeing Niagara Falls

but tourists don't have that sort of time today.

And, in any case, with new technology, you can take a quick

bird's eye view.

HELICOPTER BLARES

As the helicopter rises the very first thing you see is

a great plume of mist, where the water has hit the lower area

and risen in a great cloud.

Then, as you come up, over the top, you have this extraordinary view

of the falls range below you.

That incredible torrent of water.

From up here you can appreciate the six million cubic feet of water

that pour over the crest every minute,

reaching speeds of up to 68 miles per hour.

The 19th century tourists who came here, relatively unprepared,

with no television, with only crude photography, would have

been flabbergasted by this scene.

But I have to say that I am too,

I've known these falls in images since I was a child

but it's my first time here and nothing has prepared me for it.

The power of nature, the force of the torrent

and the extraordinary beauty of this scene.

Since the time of my guide book,

these falls have receded almost 150 metres.

A rate of erosion that in recent years has been slowed by flow

control and diversion to hydropower.

And there in the midst of the torrent

and enveloped in the mist is a little boat.

It seems almost incredible that it can be safe to navigate

through that fury of water.

And there's really only one way to find out what it's like in that

awesome deluge.

-One adult ticket for the boat, please.

-17.

Thank you very much indeed. Bye-bye.

-We're going to get wet, are we?

-Yeah, you're going to get real wet.

Now, naturally, that's defeated me.

Does it just go around you?

Finally, with my blue poncho tamed, I'm ready to follow illustrious

visitors from President Roosevelt to Marilyn Monroe.

I'm putting my faith in the Maid of the Mist, a fleet of tour boats that

has navigated tens of millions of people to the

centre of the swirling mist since 1846.

From here the waterfall is half obscured by the spray,

which actually just makes it all the more impressive.

Now, you begin to get a sense of the height of the waterfall.

I mean, it's as though we've all been miniaturised.

You get this feeling of human frailty in the power of nature.

I think of all those words in my Appletons' Guide,

which attempts to describe the fury,

the ferocity of the water and none of them is adequate.

When you get close to the torrent it just is overpowering!

We're being buffeted and soaked and everybody's anchoring down,

trying to escape from the spray.

But actually it's completely uplifting

and a wonderful rainbow has appeared through the mist.

Keep your eyes open, people, it's worth seeing!

We've pulled away from the falls now

and this is the calm after the storm and everybody's absolutely

thrilled by what they've seen and what they've experienced

and I think pretty relieved too to be out the other side.

From Manhattan's natural harbour to Niagara Falls,

my journey seems to have been about water.

The Hudson River and the Erie Canal brought enormous riches

to New York City.

Immigrants flooded across the Atlantic to Ellis Island and in

a Gilded Age, tycoons flaunted their wealth on the shores of Long Island.

But it was thanks to New York City's tangle of commuter

railways that it became the world's greatest metropolis.

Next time I begin my second American railroad journey in the city

that sealed America's independence, Philadelphia.

HE GRUNTS

Hey, Rocky, yay!

I'll travel south through the capital, Washington DC...

I just love American locomotives with their great, big, long horns.

..taking in local tastes and traditions...

Mmm, that's pretty good, isn't it?

..and discover the epic events that made this nation what it is today.

This war, if it's going to come to a close, if the North's going to

succeed, it's going to come with

union preserved and slavery eliminated.