GETTING OVER THE RANDOLPH HILLS.

During 1848, the Company completed and had in use 200 miles of railroad, and was vigorously prosecuting its further extension. Work was under contract from Binghamton to Corning, a distance of seventy-six miles. The grading between Binghamton and Owego was finished, and the railroad was completed between Piermont and Binghamton. The difficulty of getting over the dividing ridge between Deposit and Binghamton was great. The original route of 1834, via Nineveh and Bettsburgh, was forty-five miles long, and had two summits, 905 and 1,200 feet high, with grades as steep as eighty-two feet. Another route was reconnoitred, via Windsor, which was sixteen miles shorter, with two rises of 728 feet. Another via Windsor had grades sixty-six feet, and required three tunnels, 700, 3,400, and 2,600 feet long. This route was thirty-seven miles in distance, with a rise of 1,840 feet. Benjamin Wright, James Seymour, Edwin F. Johnson, H. C. Seymour, C. B. Stuart, T. S. Brown, nor George E. Hoffman could succeed in discovering any better route than either of these. In making the surveys in 1840, the remarkable glen at Gulf Summit, between the waters of Cascade Brook, going to the Susquehanna, and McClure's Brook, going to the Delaware, was discovered. Passing between the towering rocks, just wide enough for the road, an engineer named John Anderson traced a line from Deposit to Lanesboro in 1841. It was continued by Hoffman to Great Bend and Binghamton, thirty-nine miles. The grade of this route was sixty-six feet on the Delaware side and seventy feet on the Susquehanna side, a distance of sixteen miles. The original line of 1834 ran one mile and a half from Binghamton, and was unsatisfactory to the people. This Anderson line passed directly through that village, and, after the legislation authorizing the Company to go into Pennsylvania, it was the route chosen between Deposit and Binghamton—the route of the present day.