The Nickel Plate Road

A richly illustrated history of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis railway.

“The New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railway (termed the Nickel Plate in a day when anything of superior quality was "nickel-plated") was incorporated in 1881. The line between Buffalo and Chicago was completed in the autumn of the following year, and hardly was the last section of rail in place when the road was sold by the Seney Syndicate (the incorporators) to the Vanderbilt interests. For thirty-four years it continued under what Mrs. Hampton terms the "suppressing domination" of the New York Central before it was taken over by the Van Sweringens in 1916. During the Van Sweringen regime the Nickel Plate acquired two additional divisions—the Toledo, St. Louis & Western and the Lake Erie & Western. These acquisitions virtually rounded out the present system. In 1937, with the collapse of the Van Sweringen empire, Robert R. Young acquired control of the Nickel Plate. Each of the periods of the road's history is dealt with by Mrs. Hampton, who devotes about half the pages of her narrative to the Seney Syndicate and divides the other half among the three succeeding regimes, with least emphasis upon the Young era.”-Journal of Economic History