One cannot begin to discuss the community of Stoneboro without first engaging in a discussion about the history of the railroad in North Western Pennsylvania itself. The railroad through Stoneboro was chartered in 1862 by the newly incorporated Jamestown and Franklin Railroad [J&F]. Work on the line was completed in 1864 from Stoneboro to Jamestown and a connection with the Erie and Pittsburgh [E&P]. From its beginning this line was to become a major mover of coal and oil. Coal became the prime commodity on the line. Looking to secure a reliable and continued source of fuel for his locomotives Amasa Stone, president of the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad [CP&A] leased the line in 1864. Coal, mined around Stoneboro, became one of the driving forces behind the success of this branch. On May 22, 1865 the first five car loads of coal were sent from Stoneboro and onto Erie where they were transferred over to the CP&A.

As the railroad became profitable carrying the valuable coal the first passenger trains began to run in August of 1865 as a mixed passenger freight train. The line was extended to Franklin in 1866 and completed in June of 1867. As a side note this railroad from Ashtabula to Franklin was built during the latter part of the civil war when resources and manpower were limited. Once the line was completed to Franklin, passenger trains began running twice a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Now that the line was completed from Jamestown to Franklin a total of forty-two miles both passenger and freight traffic began to increase as trains connected with the lake shore route by way of the E&P in Erie.

The first train to travel the line from Franklin to Jamestown were not without trouble. As noted in the silver centennial history of Stoneboro, the first passenger train from Franklin on June 27, 1867 ran into a delay. The CP&A locomotive Massachusetts with a passenger coach car with seventeen passengers and box car departed in the morning after a delay of one hour and forty minutes. This delay was caused when the rear wheels of the tender were derailed. The return trip however was able to be run on time. Passenger trains now ran from Jamestown to Franklin regularly.

A second rail line was built from Stoneboro and headed towards New Castle through Jackson Center, Mercer and Leesburg. This line became known as the New Castle branch of the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad (it did however change its name many times until the merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad). Alexander Bonner was one of the merchants who helped secure the right of way and even assisted in building the first two miles of this line. The interchange point with the Jamestown and Franklin Railroad was at a point called Coal Branch then headed towards Jackson Center, first stopping at Coulson Station, the spring house for the hotel there still exists with a marker in place. Alexander Bonner also purchased thirteen flat cars and a passenger coach for use on this line but no mention of a locomotive is made. The reason for establishing this branch is probably for the large coal reserves found in Lake and Jackson townships.

In 1867 the line was put under the control of George H. McIntire. He began his career with the Lake Shore Railroad in 1853 as a station agent in Girard Pennsylvania and was sent to Stoneboro in 1867 where he oversaw the extension from Franklin to Oil City. As superintendent of the Jamestown and Franklin he controlled all of the traffic on this valuable line which was beginning to send large amounts of coal and soon oil to Cleveland. Seeing that his office was located in Stoneboro leads one to believe that this station was valuable to the Lake Shore Railroad. He remained in Stoneboro until 1882 when his office was then moved to Youngstown Ohio after completion of the Youngstown secondary branch. George McIntire managed the final stages of building the original line which stretched from Ashtabula Ohio all the way to Franklin Pennsylvania.

William H. McIntire, the son of George H. McIntire, came to Stoneboro in 1869. Shortly after his arrival he became employed as a clerk for the Lake Shore an Michigan Southern Railroad, which now leased the Jamestown and Franklin Railroad. He was also appointed clerk for the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1877 he became the agent for that railroad and later the agent for the Jackson Coal Railroad which he has served at least until 1888.

The history could not be complete without some mention of the CP&A president Amasa Stone. Born in Charlton Massachusetts on April 27, 1818 grew up to be a carpenter by trade. His career however became one highly involved in the railroad. First with the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield as a superintendent. Finally ending his career on the CP&A as president from 1858 until 1869. As president he oversaw the growth into the vast coal fields of Western Pennsylvania as a cheap fuel for his locomotives. He earned the trust of New York Central and Hudson River Railway vice-president William H. Vanderbilt. In what was an exemplary career ended amidst controversy and tragedy when a bridge he designed collapsed in Ashtabula. He died on May 11, 1883.

The Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula was absorbed into the Lake Shore Railway [LS] in 1868. The Lake Shore Railway was merged with the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana in 1869. In September of that year Cornelius Vanderbilt bought controlling shares in the newly formed Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway [LS&MS]. This railway would not be officially merged into the New York Central Lines until 1917.

Below shows a picture of the passenger station. This image faces east or towards Franklin, Pa. The image on the right is of the freight depot. This image faces west or towards Jamestown, Pa.

While merging and consolidating of railroad lines continued the original Jamestown and Franklin continued to show growth and income. Coal was the primary mover on this line seeing nearly 112,417 tons originating in Stoneboro in 1880. Oil was also hauled over this line however not to the direct benefit of the railroad itself. Amasa Stone voiced his concern over revenues received from the Standard Oil Company of Cleveland in a letter to William H. Vanderbilt dated December 30, 1873. At the time of this letter oil had been hauled at a reduced rate for at least three years. At one dollar and twenty-five cents per barrel and traveling in only one direction the revenues only equaled the cost associated with transporting the oil. This became part of the problem that standard Oil Company would face in the future concerning anti-trust laws.

To show that Stoneboro was becoming a hub of railroad traffic of sorts a second railroad began building and eventually running its trains to and through Stoneboro. In 1870 the New Castle and Franklin Railroad [NC&F] was chartered and began building from New Castle to Franklin. At this time it already had a connection to take passengers all the way to Pittsburgh from New Castle. This new line would be 30 miles shorter that the existing line into Franklin and the valuable oil reserves of Venango County. By 1872 the railroad had reached Mercer, Pennsylvania. Financing caused some delays but the line was finally completed all the way into Stoneboro in 1874. Track-age rights were secured over the existing LS&MS line from Stoneboro to Franklin thus completing the line from New Castle to Franklin.

The line from New Castle served both the existing railroad through Stoneboro but other communities along the way. Three passenger trains each way existed. Two went to and from Stoneboro, while one was a through train to Oil City. The two trains to and from Stoneboro from New Castle used the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern wye at a cost of fifty cents per locomotive.

Passengers were not the only traffic seen on the New Castle and Franklin Railroad. One mine outside of Jackson Center was said to produce 500 tons a day in the during 1885. This line had a number of stops along the line between Jackson Center and Stoneboro, including Coulson Station (one mile from the station in Stoneboro and a marker plate placed some time in 2002), Summit (four miles from Stoneboro), Gawin (I have seen this listed as Garvins also six miles from Stoneboro) and finally Jackson Center ( eight miles from Stoneboro). A note of interest is that Coulson Station featured a Hotel, the spring house is still standing and seen below.

The Jackson Coal Railroad was built to take coal from mines between Stoneboro and Jackson Center in Jackson and Worth Townships. This branch was chartered on February 26, 1883 by S. B. Griffith, A. F. Thompson, Enoch Filer, James Westerman, S. H. Baird and some others. The main purpose of this line was to bring coal from the Mercer Iron and Coal company mines into Stoneboro to be transferred on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. This branch line was operated by the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. It was however hoped that this line would be extended south into Grove City. In 1909 this branch line was consolidated with the Jamestown and Franklin, the Central Trunk and the Franklin and Clearfield railroads to form the Jamestown, Franklin and Clearfield Railroad and leased to the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern.

It is interesting to note the type and amount of traffic on these lines. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern annual report from 1880 provides some interesting details and comparisons as to the traffic on the railroad. For example one can see that passenger traffic must have been good since 10,068 people were handled through the station in Stoneboro in 1880. In 1879 the number of passengers was 8,410 and in 1878 it was 10,046. This is more than ten times the population of the town itself. This does not take into account the number of passengers that would have traveled on the New Castle and Franklin Railroad then called the Western New York and Pennsylvania railroad. Many of the passengers were probably going to Stoneboro on an excursion train for the lake in Stoneboro known then as "Sandy Lake" but to those of us who lived in town it is simply "Stoneboro Lake" or "the lake".

Other commodities also made for profits on this line. In 1880 146,064 tons of materials were shipped from the station in Stoneboro. Although 112,417 tons were of coal many more items were shipped by rail. Some of the items included 36 tons of stone and lime, 476 tons of pig bloom and railroad iron, 10,381 tons of lumber and other forest products, 64 tons of grain, 50 tons of agricultural products, 117 tons of flour, 114 tons of provisions, 301 tons of manufactures and 4,707 tons of merchandise for the total of 146,064 tons shipped. One item that was not shipped from Stoneboro in any reportable amount was petroleum products although probably much traveled through the town. The station in Raymilton however sent 5,292 tons of petroleum products.

One company from Stoneboro that used the railroad to ship there products was the Stoneboro and Chautauqua Lake Ice Company. Obviously there product was ice. During the 1800's and early 1900's refrigerators were non-existent in homes so to keep things cold people used ice, hence the term ice-box. In 1893 the Stoneboro and Chautauqua Lake Ice Company contracted with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad to build a siding 960 feet in length for the loading of ice. The railroad was permitted by agreement to use this siding when the Stoneboro and Chautauqua Lake Ice Company was not using it for loading. The railroad was also required to maintain this siding and this agreement lasted nearly fifteen years. On March 25, 1907 a defective locomotive was on the siding when it caused a fire which destroyed the buildings of the Stoneboro and Chautauqua Lake Ice Company. This eventually was litigated all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that overruled lower courts stating the railroad was exempt from liability caused by the fire.

The village of Raymilton, ten miles to the west of Franklin, was founded by A. W. Raymond in 1844. He established a blast furnace, flour mill and saw mill on this location. A pipe line from Butler County brought in oil for shipping out on the Lake Shore Railroad which also had a station here. The company which owned the pipe line was United Pipe Lines and stretched over 22 miles. It was written that there was a tank which held 200,000 barrels of oil for shipping here, a great amount even in today's standards.

The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad owned a number of pieces of equipment. Of its 494 locomotives 474 were coal burning and only 20 were wood burners in 1880. The railroad was quick to convert from wood to coal in the mid 1860's which explains why they expanded into the coal rich area of Mercer County.

During the 1880's many changes began to take place in the small but building community. On April 17, 1880 the Keystone Mutual Relief Association was chartered. On March 1 1883 the Lake Local, a newspaper relocated from the neighboring community of Sandy Lake into the Borough of Stoneboro. This began a time of great expansion for the small borough.

This was a time of great growth in the small town. It was a time when industry expaned. The Franklin Manufacturing Company (known to many as the mud works probably got its name from someone who worked there in the making of bricks) had begun building insulation bricks for locomotives and continued to expand until the early 1910s. During the Great War (the first world war) they build liners for Howitzers that were used by the military. They employeed over 200 men and had many sidings along the main line to Franklin,PA. Other industries were expanding too the coal mines were continuing to expand and open more mines and the Stoneboro and Chautauqua Ice company expaned their operation with more ice storage space and employees.

In the early 1900's the Franklin Manufacturing Company built its third factory in the northwest corner of the borough. This plant was the largest now in existance (1912) and used for the manufacture of 85 per cent magnesia boiler lagging and coverings as reported in Railway Master Mechanic [June 1912]. This building was a reinforced concrete and steel building, fireproof throughout, part of which could still be seen into the twenty-first century. Their primary business was fireproof insulation and bricks that was used in the steam locomotives of the time. The company also manufactured brake shoes for locomotives and howitzer barrel liners. Many of the residents of town worked for this company until the end in the 1923. The postcard below show the property prior to the expansion of the third plant I believe. The property was finally cleaned up in 2001 as part of a Department of Environmental Protection Sites Cleanup Act funds to remove asbestos that remained from the oven liners.

On January 12, 1910 the Pennsylvania Railroad board of directors authorized block signals to be installed between Stoneboro and New Castle on the former Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. The only reason for this would have been a large amount of freight traffic and passenger trains which still included the through train to Franklin. From the postcard above many factories and two ice houses along with many coal mines were still running strong in Stoneboro. This continued until the 1920's when an economic downturn and a work stoppage at the mines reduced the train service to the town.

The final days of passenger rail travel hit the line in the 1920's. Passenger travel continued to decline with the popularity of the automobile. This unused passenger ticket from the late 1920's shows that someone could travel from Franklin Pennsylvania to New Castle Pennsylvania. The trip however required one to transfer from the New York Central in Stoneboro to the Pennsylvania Railroad for the final section of the trip from Stoneboro into New Castle. One could travel from Franklin to New Castle using the station in Stoneboro as a transfer point, I guess making it a union station of sorts. From New Castle the traveler could transfer onto one of many trains traveling south, east or west. The final train from Cherry Street in New Castle made its trip to Stoneboro on June 9, 1931. Even the lake in the summer couldn't keep the train running.

Although the trains from New Castle stopped running the town was still a popular place to visit in the 1930's. This is evident by the performers who stopped in town for various shows. Red Nickels and his Pennies played at the Stoneboro Lake Pavilion on June 27, 1933. Admission for this show was seventy-five cents. Another example of entertainment at the lake pavilion was the Duke Ellington Band which played on August 12, 1936.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's [PRR] route into Stoneboro came to an end in 1938. From the abandonment permit it was shown that although traffic was still flowing it had been reduced to a trickle and revenues were operating at a loss. The PRR had leased the road from the Western New York and Pennsylvania [WNY&P] in 1895. The entire length however was not being abandoned only 12.3 miles from Houston Junction to Stoneboro. Traffic had been down for the five years prior from 91 cars in 1933 to only 7 for the first three months of 1938. Cars being received was also down from 298 to only 12 in 1938. Houston Junction was an interchange with the Bessemer and Lake Erie railroad [B&LE] and Stoneboro was an interchange point with the New York Central [NYC].

One of the last remaining relics of the once busy coal line is a scale used to weigh cars before they were shipped. This picture shows the scale in the 1940's as repairs or maintenance was being performed. The borough currently owns this building as it is being stored for future use possibly along the rail trail that the line is becoming. Looking at the track chart the original location is shown by the number twenty four on the map.

On January 31, 1951 it is easy to see what type of traffic was flowing through Stoneboro. Engines 1859 and 1865, two H6a New York Central Locomotives, operated through town. Both of these units were built in 1918 and still in service 33 years later. The scan shows that the conductor was C. Eder and the engineer was H. Peterson and all of the freight being hauled. It also shows that more than coal went through town with cars from many different railroads.

This map shows the layout of the tracks through Stoneboro in the late 1960's. Although traffic was considerably less than it was at the turn of the century Stoneboro continued to be a crew changing point. This requires the number of tracks and sidings so that even long trains could be tied down till the next day. Coal continued to be weighed using the scales in the building above. Even though there was no longer a passenger station or freight station left in the borough much activity continued on the railroad.

The image below shows the rails prior to the start of my senior year and a little less than one year from abandonment. One can clearly see the traffic is gone and in a short period of time the rails and ties will also. The freight station now gone and the rails rusted.

The end came during the spring of my freshman year in college, on March 5, 1988 Conrail brought two cars down the line from Jamestown to Sandy Lake. When the cars were unloaded the train returned and the line was turned over to A&K materials to salvage the steel and ties. I remember piles of ties stacked up and hauled out of town into the mid to late nineties. This line will not be overgrown and forgotten like other abandoned lines as it is scheduled to become a rail to trail line.