Schenectady 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.

-ALL:

-Amen!

As I cross the continent, I'll discover America's gilded age,

when powerful tycoons launched a railway 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 in Manhattan

and continued north through Poughkeepsie

to the state capital of Albany,

from where I'll head west and finish on the Canadian border.

On this leg, I'll travel some 225 miles through Schenectady

and Utica to the booming 19th-century city of Rochester.

I'll then continue west to Buffalo,

before turning north to the spectacular Niagara Falls.

This route takes me towards the Great Lakes, and it was

the courses of the waterways that determined the spread of population

and manufacture before the railroad tracks had been laid.

Far away from the Big Apple, the smaller cities of this state

were key to creating the American industrial powerhouse.

On my way, I'll man the Erie Canal,

a waterway that shaped America.

It changed New York state and, really, the country.

Almost an immediate impact after the canal opened.

I try to keep pace with the latest rail technology...

You see, there's a little dip in there, in the terrain here...

You've got to be ready for that. You've put all the hazards in here, haven't you?

..and land somewhere over the rainbow.

-And you have a yellow brick road running all the way through your town?

-Yes, yes, we do.

I'm offered a monster munch in Buffalo.

They come in increments of ten - ten, 20, 50.

-50?!

-50 wings.

And end with an awe-insipring experience.

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

I'm following a recommended Appletons' route which traverses

the state heading north-west,

and passes through the rich midland counties.

"Schenectady is one of those pleasing Native American

"place names still in use today."

Appletons' says that it's situated on the banks of the Mohawk River

on the spot which once formed the council grounds of the Mohawks.

An inventive American made a breakthrough which put

Schenectady on the map for a different reason,

and brightened up the world.

-TANNOY:

-Schenectady next. Exit towards the rear of the train,

where you see a conductor.

Please watch your step getting off the train

and please check for all your personal possessions.

This old trading port was thrust into a new age of innovation

and industry in 1892, when Thomas Edison,

the man who lit up the world,

made Schenectady the headquarters of his General Electric Company -

a business that would go on to hold interests

in major industries across 170 countries.

I'm meeting vice president Christine Furstoss.

Christine, my guidebook is 1879, and I get the impression

there were a lot of hopes around electricity at that time.

What was actually happening?

Thomas Edison, really the father of today's electricity,

he was working on one invention - a light bulb.

What Thomas Edison did was he took a relatively small invention

and made it something that the world could rely on.

And the light bulb itself, what was the breakthrough that he made there?

It wasn't very durable.

And it had very, very thick wires going to and from it,

because it had very low resistance.

So what he did was he changed the filament and then he also worked

on getting the voltage down and the resistance up, in order to make it

be able to be used in people's homes and not just a novelty for a museum.

In 1880, Edison patented the first commercially viable light bulb

and turned his attentions to the electrical systems

needed to power it.

The first electric power station was in 1882 in Manhattan, New York City.

Edison drove that.

In fact, the Edison Illuminating Company, as it was called

at the time, created the equipment to build that power station.

That power station, at Pearl Street,

took Edison nearly two years to establish

and was the model for the electrification of American cities.

Edison carried his technological revolution into many fields.

And did Thomas Edison also concern himself with electric locomotion

-for railroads?

-Almost certainly he did.

In 1895, he actually oversaw the building of the world's

largest electrical locomotive, right here in the Schenectady area.

And so Schenectady really plays an important part in the history of electricity?

Oh, it most certainly does, in many, many ways.

Edison's General Electric Company was listed on the original

Dow Jones stock-market index of 1896.

It is the only company from that date still listed today.

It continues to innovate in many industries, including water,

aviation, energy, health care and transport.

Before I move on, I want to see some of its latest rail technology,

designed to reduce fuel consumption on freight trains.

-Is this the hot seat?

-This is the system.

And what we can have you do here today is drive a trip an operator

would see normally and see how you compare to the system.

-OK, so...

-Are you up for the challenge?

MICHAEL LAUGHS

-I'll give it a go. I've got to follow this speed limit, is that right?

-Yes.

On the screen you can also see the terrain,

the profile there of the hills and the valleys.

Oh, this is a challenge, isn't it? A lot to look at, isn't there?

All right, here's your first speed reduction.

-You see the 60 mile an hour coming up?

-Uh-huh.

-Four miles in advance.

-I've got to be ready for that.

So the challenge - there's a little dip in the terrain here.

So the train will actually accelerate as you approach

that speed reduction.

You've put all the hazards in here, haven't you?

So the computer wouldn't be doing all this up and down that I'm doing?

Whoa! I'm just over the speed limit, I think.

So I assume you don't just play with this, here in your laboratory?

-This is really a practical application?

-Yeah, that's right.

And this system is in use at all the major railroads in North America.

Have you any idea what it's saving the rail companies?

On average, we're seeing about a 10% reduction in fuel.

If you look at the railroads in North America,

they consume about four billion gallons

-of diesel fuel a year, so that's a huge saving.

-Oh! What...?

-Right, so here we have the comparison of you and the system.

-Oh, wow.

-You were significantly slower.

-Yes, yes.

And you see you burned 12.5% more fuel.

The key feature of Trip Optimizer

is that it's able to predict when to begin slowing down,

to hit this speed restriction that you exceeded.

James, I resign. I hand over to computers.

That's the story of the world, isn't it?

-Utica?

-Yup, right up on your left.

-Thank you.

Appletons' tells me that "the great Erie Canal traverses

"New York state from Albany to Buffalo on

"the same line with the railroad and often in sight from the train cars."

I hope that in my enthusiasm for those who constructed the railways,

I never forget the wonderful achievements of those who

built the canals - pioneers in huge-scale civil engineering.

The Erie Canal created the first all-water link from the Great Lakes

in the Midwest via the Hudson River to the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the catalyst for mass migration westwards,

and a trade explosion.

Thank you very much.

I'm stepping off in Utica,

whose 100-year-old station was built in the classical style by

Stem & Fellheimer - the architects behind New York City's

Grand Central terminal.

This station served the old water-level route, which runs

alongside rivers and canals.

I'm off to the Erie Canal's Lock 20 to meet Bill Schweizer.

Constructing the Erie Canal - what does it achieve, as it were,

strategically?

So it achieved...

I mean, at the time, we were a young nation and, you know,

the plan was the western expansion, you know, move west.

But it was hard.

The terrain of New York was very mountainous - no roads, obviously.

And so, surveyors and many... The thought was build a canal.

Thomas Jefferson,

the President at the time, said the idea was something

short of madness, to connect Albany, the northern navigational

point on the Hudson River, to the Great Lakes.

They started in 1817

and started about ten miles from here in Rome, New York,

because that was the plateau, that was the flat, high part.

Considered the folly of its sponsor in the Senate, DeWitt Clinton,

the Erie Canal was to be double the length of anything in Europe.

It was a huge state gamble at 7 million.

Built by many Welsh and Irish labourers,

the 363-mile waterway opened in 1825.

What was the impact of opening the canal up and down its length?

At that time, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston were the ports.

Within a year of the canal being opened, New York City became

the port of choice and soon became the choice for immigrants as well.

But it changed New York state and, really,

the country - almost an immediate impact after the canal opened.

This new link halved journey times, slashed costs by 90%

and boosted trade as unexploited raw materials from the Midwest

could now reach the port of New York City.

The canal created new cities

and helped the North to industrialise in the pre-rail age.

Nowadays, can you still get from Lake Erie to

-the Hudson River by canal?

-Sure.

The canal still, today, is a viable means of commercial transportation.

What we see a lot today is cargo that's not time-sensitive,

that doesn't have to be there right away,

or cargo that is too big - some of the turbines for

the General Electric power plant -

because it is cheaper and it uses less gas.

So it'll be...

We think it'll become even more popular as time goes on.

Now, mountainous terrain, so you have to have locks.

How many actually are there?

So today, the modern-day canal, there's 57 locks

in the whole system - about 34, 35 between Albany and Buffalo.

As heavy traffic increased, 20th-century engineers were

forced to abandon much of the original man-made channel.

A new system of dams,

pools and locks was introduced to accommodate larger barges.

Michael, let me introduce you to our chief operator, John.

-I'm John.

-I'm Michael. How do you do?

-Nice to meet you.

I'm just looking at the machinery.

It seems to be a certain age. How old is it?

-It's roughly 100 years old.

-That's fantastic. Still operating well?

Yes, excellent. Most of it's original equipment.

-You've got a barge in now.

-Yup.

So we've got to drop the level of the water,

and when we've done that, we've got to open up the gates, is that right?

-Correct.

-So we're going to open up, moving that one...

..and then moving that one.

John, the water is absolutely pouring out now.

How long does it take you to bring the lock down to the proper level?

-About seven minutes.

-And how much water are you moving in that time?

-It's right about three million gallons.

-And the drop is how much?

-16 feet.

-Very efficient.

How did you get the job, John?

-I have a long history of family that worked here.

-Really? How long?

My grandfather started in 1950.

-Is it going to pass down to the next generation?

-Probably not.

He's more interested in culinary arts.

The water's down. Time to open the gates.

HORN BLARES

So the Governor Roosevelt takes a route that boats have been

-plying for 190 years?

-Correct.

Returning to the railroad that superseded these waterways,

I press on west,

leaving the tracks to continue onto a curious place called

Chittenango which, according to my Appletons', is where iron

and sulphur springs are frequented by invalids.

I'm intrigued.

And it seems that the clientele has changed considerably

since Appletons' day.

So, Dorothy, I presume?

So, I've seen the Lion, I've seen the Tin Man, now I find Dorothy.

What's going on? What's it all about?

Well, the author of the book The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz,

L Frank Baum, was born here in 1856, so every year, we have

a lot of different characters just roaming around this wonderful

-little town.

-And you have a yellow brick road running all the way

-through your town?

-Yes. Yes, we do.

Published in 1900, L Frank Baum's magical story was picked up

by Hollywood in its golden era.

MGM Studios thought that the Kansas farm girl looking for

a better place over the rainbow would offer

escapism for their Depression-hit audiences.

Now, just one tiny thing, Dorothy.

You're wearing sliver shoes,

whereas I distinctly remember, in the Hollywood movie,

that the shoes are red - what's going on?

Well, when L Frank Baum wrote the book, in 1900,

he originally had Dorothy wearing silver slippers.

But in 1939, when MGM had filmed the movie,

they used Technicolor so then the silver shoes looked grey

and they wanted more of a poppy look for Dorothy's shoes.

So they made them red instead of silver.

What else does the town do to celebrate L Frank Baum?

Well, actually, every year,

we hold a large festival called Oz-Stravaganza!

We've been holding it since 1978, I believe.

Before I head back to the rails,

I can't resist a trip along that most famous of roads.

# Follow the yellow brick road

# We're off to see the Wizard

# The wonderful Wizard of Oz... #

'I guess that makes me the Scarecrow.'

# If ever a Wiz there was

# The wonderful Wizard of Oz! #

As my journey continues across New York state, I consider how

the mass migration of people westwards changed

the social order of this young nation and its religions.

Greater democracy in America shook up the old order.

The new society looked for new faiths.

There was an evangelical revival and new sects emerged.

I'm hoping that my next stop, Palmyra, will shed some light

on one of the most controversial religious groups of its time.

Palmyra, along with Troy and Ithaca and Rome and Syracuse,

is one of a number of New York towns to bear a classical name.

My Appletons' tells me that on a nearby hillside,

"Joe Smith claimed to have found the golden plates of the Mormon Bible."

Well, casting aside the apparently sceptical tone of my guidebook,

let me investigate this remarkable religious phenomenon.

Joseph Smith would go on to found the Mormon religion,

known as the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints,

which today claims 15 million members worldwide.

I'm visiting his old homestead with Charlene Campbell,

who is a member of the church.

Charlene, what sort of childhood did Joseph Smith have?

He was raised in a family who were religious themselves,

they didn't belong to a church.

They were a hard-working family, they had a farm,

three years of failed crops brought them to New York.

-To this very spot?

-Yes.

What were Joseph Smith's juvenile religious beliefs?

When he was young, he was serious in thinking

and contemplating about God,

wondering why all of the churches around him

were conflicting and bickering and not getting along.

He wanted an answer.

He decided he would go into a grove near his home and pray

and ask God himself for the answer -

which of all of these churches could be true?

At the time, 40% of Americans were churchgoing Protestants.

But a raft of new evangelical religions

each claimed to show the way.

What was the result?

As he prayed, two heavenly beings appeared to him.

Brighter than all description, brighter than the noonday sun.

He thought the leaves would catch on fire, they were so bright.

They explained to him that none of them were true,

that they have the precepts of men, but their hearts are far from Me.

This is the sacred grove.

How very beautiful, very beautiful.

-So after that first vision, was there a follow-up?

-Yes.

He waited for something to happen. Three years went by.

He was worried, something's got to be happening.

So he prayed, wondering that he could have direction of where to go.

And appeared to him was the angel Moroni.

He was the last person to hold the ancient records that had been

carried on for hundreds of years, here on this continent.

He buried the plates in the Hill Cumorah, not far from his home.

And he appeared to Joseph to show him where the plates were buried.

According to Mormon teachings,

Joseph found the golden plates buried in the mountain.

He dug them up and kept them hidden

whilst he translated the ancient text written on them.

So this is the miracle.

Joseph being an unlearned boy of very limited schooling, many people

wondered how could he translate something of ancient records.

The plates told a story of a visit by Jesus Christ in ancient times

to the Americas, where he founded a society of peace and love.

Smith's writings became The Book Of Mormon, and he set out to

rekindle the values of that ancient society in 19th-century America.

Now, after that, a church is established by Joseph Smith.

-Yes, in April of 1830.

-Here in New York?

-Here in Palmyra.

Many people came to the church.

Once reading The Book Of Mormon, they felt the power of the gospel,

and seeing that it was a church of Jesus Christ, established the same

as it was in Jerusalem in the times of Christ, people rallied to that.

And they joined the Church Of Jesus Christ.

Soon after the church was organised, persecution started.

Why do you think the Mormons were being persecuted?

I think people didn't understand them.

And so the Saints had to move from place to place.

They first left New York and went to Ohio and then to Missouri.

And each place they went, they were burned out of their homes,

they lost property, never to be reimbursed.

They eventually ended up in Nauvoo, Illinois.

As Mormon numbers grew, so did animosity towards them.

Some were opposed to the welcome that they offered to freed slaves,

but for most, it was the practice of polygamy

which they couldn't tolerate.

Wherever they settled, the Mormons inspired hostility.

Smith himself was persecuted and jailed over 30 times.

Finally, in 1844, he fell victim to an armed mob.

This time, Joseph Smith and his brother and a few others

were led to Carthage Jail, near Nauvoo, Illinois,

and they were martyred and killed.

After Joseph Smith's death, his followers fled west to Utah,

to a place now called Salt Lake City.

Smith is remembered by Mormons as both a prophet and a martyr.

-What's your destination, if I may ask, sir?

-Rochester, New York.

-Do you like to use the train?

-I do.

-Quite a regular?

-I am.

It's unusual, because most people prefer to fly back and forth.

I like it because I know I can read,

I can catch up on my computer,

because there is Wi-Fi and there is telephone service.

So how long's it going to take you from New York to Rochester?

Well, it's scheduled to take around seven hours.

But it can often take longer.

And you're happy to be on the train for seven hours?

-You could cross the Atlantic in that time.

-I could.

I once took the Concorde, so I know what you're talking about.

-You could cross the Atlantic twice in that time!

-Yes, that's right.

The original 1830s boom town, Rochester became

the world's breadbasket, with 20 flour mills

powered by the Genesee Falls.

But in the late 19th century,

it was the George Eastman Kodak Company that launched

a new era of mass-market photography,

bringing prosperity to the city.

I'm visiting Cathy Connor at the inventor's Colonial revival mansion,

which houses the world's oldest photography museum.

Well, Cathy, this is the George Eastman house,

-and a wonderful mansion. Did he begin life like this?

-No, he didn't.

First he was an errand boy at a local insurance company,

and then eventually became a teller at a local bank.

And it was through his job there that he saw

that many people who were wealthy at the time

were investors in land and land development.

So he thought he'd take a trip to Santo Domingo, where he knew that land was for sale,

and eventually purchase some that he could then sell and make money.

To record the trip, Eastman brought the latest kit -

a huge camera, chemicals and a tent

in which to spread emulsion on glass plates before exposing them.

Fascinated, he decided to pursue photography instead of land.

And what is it that George Eastman

does for photography in the early days?

Does for photography? Simplifies it.

Basically makes it easier, so that you no longer had to have

that darkroom experience. You could actually just press a button,

and then afterwards, somebody else would do that

photo finishing and that processing for you.

And that's really his claim to fame, putting cameras in the hands

of everyone, because you didn't have to be a chemist any more.

Eastman's first leap was the roll of film.

Patented in 1884, it was economical and fitted every plate camera.

Next, he set about making cameras as easy to use as pencils.

And this is an example of the original Kodak.

Came out in 1888,

and it was considered totally automatic at that time.

Now, the one funny thing is that you had no viewfinder.

So many people held the camera up here

and tried to aim at whatever the subject might be -

their friend or their home or the chicken in front of the house.

So many times you're not sure

what they were actually trying to get in their picture.

In fact, many times, people backed up quite a bit

so that they make sure they'd get it all in the frame.

Eventually, Eastman found a way to put a viewfinder

and actually hook it on.

It was considered an accessory back then.

What about this little fellow here, what's this?

This is the little Brownie character that was very popular with kids.

So Mr Eastman borrowed that same design

and used it to market these cameras to children.

Initially, the Brownie camera was only a dollar.

This one has a viewfinder in the top, so you would have to look down,

make sure that you were getting what you wanted in your frame.

And then you would actually click

this little thing to take the picture.

Isn't that amazing?

My mother had quite an old Brownie, and I remember how difficult

it was just to get the image in the viewfinder.

But isn't that an exquisite item? And here, presumably, is the...

You would roll the film once you took each picture.

George Eastman's introduction of photography to the masses

was underpinned by a clever advertising campaign...

The idea was that if you were on a camel in Egypt

and you ran out of film and you wanted to get your picture

on that camera, there would be a store -

or actually the man running the camel rides

would actually be able to sell you a Kodak roll of film.

The Eastman Kodak Company made George Eastman

one of the leading industrialists and philanthropists of his day.

He gave away a lot of money, probably over 100 million in his lifetime.

And it went to very specific charities and causes.

Mr Eastman didn't give to everything, he had specific things,

but education was key,

not only education for the people that lived

in the Rochester community, but people internationally as well.

He gave a lot of money to schools like MIT, OK?

And also to the University of Rochester cos they were cranking out

the chemists and the engineers he needed in his company.

Unlike many conspicuous philanthropists who sought to immortalise their names,

George Eastman protected his privacy.

He donated 20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

under the pseudonym of Mr Smith.

The third most generous philanthropist of his era,

behind John D Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie,

Eastman gave away over 100 million in his lifetime.

His mom had bad teeth,

and she had her teeth pulled at the kitchen table without

anaesthetic. He remembered that for years to come,

and because she didn't have good teeth she couldn't eat,

she always had health ailments because she wasn't eating good, nutritious food,

everything had to be blended,

so he wanted people to have good dental care,

to not have those problems later on in their life.

He also did a lot of other things in our community,

giving land that he owned to parks, so there was recreational things

for a lot of the workers at Kodak.

Since he didn't marry and have kids I think that he considered the Rochester community

his family, an extended family.

And so he wanted to make sure Rochester was a good place to live, work and raise a family.

Kodak, like the General Electric Company,

emerged in America's heyday.

These giants of industry grew within a confident new superpower

that would soon overtake Europe.

But it was thanks to the Genesee River and the building

of the Erie Canal that upstate New York was able to industrialise.

Leaving Rochester behind, I'm making for Buffalo

on the shores of Lake Erie,

before heading north to finish my journey through the Empire State

on the Canadian border at the magnificent 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.

As I near the northern edge of New York State,

I reflect on the huge expansion of industry in America

during the decades after the Civil War.

And I'm struck above all by its sheer concentration in this one state.

The industrial production of New York State then amounted

to double that of the whole of the South,

an extraordinary achievement that I'll explore at my next stop.

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

"Very large, as its 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, and 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 breadbasket 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 tonne.

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 skyscrapers of New York state,

which would inspire the generation of European

architects behind the Bauhaus school of design.

Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius

found in Buffalo's grain elevators the seed of a new international style,

where form would follow function, unadorned by ornament.

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 - ten, 20, 50.

-50?!

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

barbecue, 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.

When 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 1900.

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 into 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 flywheels 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 any more 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've 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 BLARES

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.

I think we were aided by the Romantic painters of the 19th century

that made this a world icon.

If you were a well-heeled traveller in the mid to late 19th century,

of course Niagara Falls was on your bucket list.

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.

You know that if you strayed over there and just tumbled over the edge

you would be dashed to pieces.

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.

In 1883, British sea captain Matthew Webb,

the first person to swim the English Channel,

set out to swim the most treacherous stretch of the Niagara River below the falls.

Webb acted against local advice

and was ripped by the rapids and pulled under by the whirlpool.

He was not seen alive again.

Since Webb, 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 ranged 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 68mph.

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 attempt 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 hunkering 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

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

Don't you 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.