In the microfilm collection of the Library of Congress is a book published in 1866 entitled "Over the Atlantic and Great Western Railway" by Patrick Barry. Barry was a Special Commissioner of the "Money Market Review" and the book was an investigation into the Atlantic & Great Western Railway to determine its suitability for additional investment by English investors.
The book is a first-person travelogue in which the author travels westward across the A&GW describing the line and areas the railway traveled though. It is a great description of the physical attributes of the company, as well as a look at the business factors shaping the railway.
I will be adding sections of the book my site over time (as my weary fingers allow) and hope to be able to provide photocopies of the book to interested researchers.
SALAMANCA, N.Y., 15th May, 1866.SALAMANCA bears the name of the well-known Spanish banker who, some time or other, and perhaps still, befriends the Atlantic and Great Western Railway. When the christening took place I do not know, but in 1853, when the first short contract to Ashville was taken, the well-intended compliment might almost have been deemed a satire. The place and district were then a wilderness; the flowing Alleghany, draining an irregular valley, which is hemmed in by outlying spurs of the great Pennsylvanian mountains, and casually and glimmeringly lighted in the night by the torches of the half-wild Indians while spearing sturgeon, pickerel, pike, and white fish from the prow of their canoes. Parenthetically, I may remark that Salamanca is in the district of one of the great Indian "reserves." So recently, I am told, as1862 what is now the town was represented only by a single tank of the Erie Railway, at which the locomotives now and then stopped to take water. Not a living creature had a fixed place of residence within the circuit of several miles, the half-wild Indians then, as now, leading a more wandering life than our own gypsies, to-day fishing and living on the Alleghany, to-morrow on the Susquehanna, and the day after on the Delaware. But 1863 brought change, and gave promise that the seed sown would yield fruit in less or more abundance. Over the now progressing Atlantic and Great Western Railway there were at length freight and. passengers passing freely; and as some of both were to and from New York, Dunkirk, and Erie, it became necessary to assort the freight at the point of junction, and to provide shelter for the transfer of passengers.
What the Atlantic and Great Western Railway did on their part, and what the Erie Railway did on theirs show how, imperfect the best judgments are in respect to the immediate future of American railways. The Erie Railway Company built a small wooden shed, which was dignified by the name of freight-house; and the Atlantic and Great Western Railway were extravagant enough to provide both a wooden shed as freight-house, and a wooden shed as depot. These erection are near the point of junction of the two railways, and in the neighbourhood of them there soon clustered one of those mushroom towns which are peculiar to this hemisphere. About Mr. Salamanca or the Atlantic and Great Western Railway the settlers did not care; but they took kindly to an old Indian who sold them fish, and they called the town Bucktooth, after the irregular teeth which the Indian rather liked to show.
Since 1863 " Bucktooth" has grown. rapidly; and to-day I had a very good table d'hote dinner in the chief tavern or saloon. It is a. town of decent streets, middling shops, and fair cottages and shanties; and, if three churches warrant the conclusion, the population is not heathen. But the growth of "Bucktooth" has been fatal to the whim which gave its name, and equally so, although indirectly, to the judgment of the railway companies. The small wooden shed of the Erie Railway has long failed to provide for the traffic, and, moreover, there, were repairs of rolling-stock needed., and a reserve of engines. To provide for both and other things, the Erie Railway Company have left "Bucktooth," and built, a good mile east of the junction of the lines, a handsome and commodious brick range of shops, sheds, etc. Opposite those buildings, the Atlantic and Great Western. Railway Company are about to build others, from the same drawings, and in the same substantial manner; and substantial manner and the stone foundation of an eleven-stall engine round-house has been already laid. The new buildings on either side comprise a car-shop, which is 250 feet by 100 feet, a blacksmith's shop, and fitting shop -- each half that size -- a through freight transfer-house, a local freight, house, a large enclosed water-tank and the roundhouse.
About these new and. prospective buildings another mushroom town is springing up, which has so nearly outstripped Bucktooth that the latter is willing to waive its name, on the understanding that it. shall be included within the bounds of Salamanca proper. To this request there can be no objection; and thus, after all, there was no satire in the compliment to the Spanish banker. Salamanca is destined to take, rank with the foremost towns, of the north-west portion of New York State, and. to preserve a family name for ever, which otherwise, in the course of time, might have been forgotten.