Railroad Wars of New York State

New York's railroads were born of the cutthroat conflict of rate wars, bloody strikes and even federal graft. The railroad wars began as soon as the first line was chartered between Albany and Schenectady when supporters of the Erie Canal tried to block the new technology that would render their waterway obsolete. After the first primitive railroads overcame that hurdle, they began battling with one another in a series of rate wars to gain market share. Attracted by the success of the rails, the most powerful and cunning capitalists in the country--Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Daniel Drew and other robber barons--joined the fray. Timothy Starr's account of New York's railroad wars steams through the nineteenth century with stories of rate pools, labor strikes, stock corners, legislative bribery and treasury plundering the likes of which the world had never seen.

Timothy Starr was born in Danbury, Connecticut, and moved with his family to Hebron, New York, in 1977. During his senior year in high school, he wrote his first book, a novel called The Meatloaf Incident and Other Adventures that is based on his experiences growing up in a rural community. Soon after graduating college, he moved to the historic county of Saratoga. After noticing many ruins around the town of Milton, he began researching its history, particularly during the mid- to late 1800s. After stumbling upon the old trolley railroad bed behind his house, he was motivated to write a book about it, called The Ballston Terminal Railroad and Its Successors. That project naturally led to another one that detailed the industries served by the railroad, called Lost Industries of the Kaydeross Valley. When he discovered that several important inventions were developed to support these industries, yet another project unfolded that resulted in a Ballston Spa book of inventions and a Saratoga County book of inventions. He has been published in Saratoga Living, Our Towne Ballston Spa, Spotlight Milton, the Saratogian, Schenectady Gazette and the Ballston Journal and is a frequent contributor to the Ballston Spa Life History Lesson series. He is currently the treasurer of the Saratoga County Historical Society (Brookside) Board of Trustees, and he lives in Rock City Falls.