repair shop in Hornell. View is looking north towards downtown Hornell. Note the rotating train turntable and the
Canisteo River. Photo from 1971. Hornell had four rail lines, though the companies operating the railroads often changed names, routes, and ownership: • The main Erie Railroad line, connecting New York City (terminal in
Hoboken, New Jersey) and
Dunkirk, New York. • Erie's Buffalo line. This began as the Attica and Hornellsville Railroad (1845–1851), which became part of the
Buffalo and New York City Railroad, which extended the line to Buffalo and operated it from 1852 to 1861, when it was acquired by Erie. Hornell was the junction and transfer point for the two main branches of the Erie. • A line running to the northeast, from a separate depot on Seneca St. near Adsit, connecting Hornell via
Wayland with
Geneva. The company was the Geneva Southwestern and Hornellsville Railway (1872–1875), then the Geneva and Hornellsville Railway (1875–1876), and the Geneva, Hornellsville and Pine Creek Railway (1876–1879), and the Rochester, Hornellsville and Lackawanna Railroad (1886–1889), then the
Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, or Lackawanna for short. Later the
Pittsburg, Shawmut and Northern Railroad ran on this route one train in each direction per day, connecting Hornell with
Angelica to the west and
Wayland to the north. • The Hornellsville Electric Railway Company and Hornellsville & Canisteo Railway Company, consolidated in 1909 as the
Hornell Traction Company, provided service to
North Hornell,
Canisteo, and within the city, linking the Lackawanna and Erie depots, from 1892 until 1926. Some grading was done in 1872–1873 for a proposed but unbuilt Rochester, Hornellsville, and Pine Creek railroad. The most important railroad in Hornell was the
New York and Erie Railroad, or Erie for short. It arrived in Hornell in 1850 and began public service on May 14, 1851. President
Millard Fillmore, himself a native of western New York, and Secretary of State
Daniel Webster rode through Hornell on the inaugural train. Hornell was a central location on the Erie, making it a favorable location for the railroad's repair yards. According to an 1882 traveler's guide to the Erie Railroad, in Hornell "There are an immense amount of side-tracks, ample engine-houses, repair-shops, and other railroad structures, as the village is the dividing-point of the Susquehanna and Western Divisions, and the point of junction of the Buffalo Division of the Erie Railway.... It has banks, newspapers, a nourishing library association, which maintains a course of popular lectures, and is one of the most efficient and attractive institutions of the kind in the interior of the State. There are churches of various denominations, and a population of about 9,000. The cars destined for Buffalo, Niagara Falls, etc., are here detached from those going west via Salamanca or Dunkirk. At the station is a spacious dining-saloon, where meals are served to travelers at regular hours."
Hornell during the railroad period (1860–1960) For the next hundred years Hornell enjoyed prosperity, with its steam engine shop doing the repairs for the entire Erie line. The most important point in town was the train station, which survives and since 2005 houses the Hornell Erie Depot Museum. Next to it were the police station and fire department, at the beginning of Broadway, a wide street with stores, a luncheonette, and the Steuben and Majestic Theaters. Heading south, Broadway ended at Canisteo Street just before it passed under the tracks, a route served for some decades by the
Hornell Traction Company. The underpass was closed, save for a pedestrian passage, when the Route 36 arterial was built. At the five-way intersection just north of the underpass, where Broadway began, Canisteo Street ran northwestward. Near its southern end (now covered by the Route 36 arterial), was Hornell's largest hotel, the New Sherwood, the offices of the
Hornell Evening Tribune and above it those of its radio station
WWHG. On the east side was a storefront
Greyhound station (service Elmira – Corning – Bath – Hornell – Batavia – Buffalo, no direct service to
Rochester); on the west side was Hornell's main park, Union Park, destroyed by the Hornell Arterial, with the city's high school (middle school after new high school built), containing the city's largest auditorium, and other businesses. Main Street, with the Hornell Theater,
WLEA's studios, Koskie's music store, and other businesses, connected the two now-separated streets (Broadway and Canisteo/Seneca). Main St. extended east to Hornell's
Carnegie Library (the
Hornell Public Library), Hornell's largest grocery store,
Loblaw's, the
YMCA, with the only public swimming pool in the city, various medical and dental offices, and finally (turning south and crossing the Canisteo River), the Erie repair shops. North of Main Street the downtown area extended another block with the city's pharmacy, Jacobson's, a shoe store, the
United States Post Office (all now [2009] vacant), and the
Steuben Trust Company (bank). In the block north of Main Street, Church Street had Hornell's synagogue,
Temple Beth-El (closed), and at the intersection with Genesee Street four churches, one on each corner; two survive today (2017). Further north on Seneca Street were Hornell's best restaurant, The Big Elms, Hornell's baseball field (from 1942 to 1957 Hornell had a minor-league team), and car dealers. The current high school is adjacent to the baseball field. The city ended at the
Canisteo River, where a bridge led to the village of
North Hornell. Yet things were not idyllic in Hornell. In 1922, after a recruitment talk by "
KKK organizer C. S. Fowler... at the local
Grand Army of the Republic hall, the Klan announced its existence by igniting a huge cross on the side of a mountain, a demonstration evidently intended to intimidate the community's sizable immigrant population."
Hornell in the post-railroad period (1960–present) Hornell has struggled to regain its former prosperity. The population is half what it was in 1960, and still declining. Passenger service, in severe decline, ended completely by 1970. (The former station has been refurbished and, since 2006, is the Hornell Erie Depot Museum.) The railroad came upon further hard times as trucking picked up more and more of the freight business. In October 1960, the Erie merged with the
Lackawanna to form the
Erie Lackawanna. Diesel engines, replacing older steam engines, required less maintenance; In 2013, the facility was contracted to build 34 light rail vehicles for
OC Transpo. In 2020, the plant began production of
Amtrak's second generation
Acela high-speed trains. ==Highway construction==