A year after the Erie Canal was opened for commerce, the first railroad in the State, the Mohawk & Hudson, was chartered. It began running between Albany and Schenectady in 1831. The rails were of wood, faced with strap iron and secured to granite blocks. The first locomotive, the De Witt Clinton, built in New York City, hauled a train of stagecoaches mounted on special trucks. Riding was accompanied by jerking and jolting, and the clothes of outside passengers sometimes caught fire from the pine embers blown from the smokestack. But improvements were rapidly introduced and the road was declared a success.

 In 1832 it established connections with the Schenectady & Saratoga Railroad, which opened that year as a horsecar line. In 1835 the Rensselaer & Saratoga Railroad was built between Troy and Ballston Spa, where it connected with the Schenectady & Saratoga. In 1836 the Long Island Railroad began operation.

In the early days of their development railroads were thought of as auxiliary to waterways, providing short cuts and feeders. As they grew in wealth and popularity and roads were planned to parallel the Erie Canal, the State imposed restrictions to protect its canal investments, especially in regard to the transportation of freight. Not until 1851 were all railroads allowed to carry freight at their own rates and retain the revenue. Thereafter began the competition which led to abandonment of some of the branch canals and greatly reduced the importance of the Erie.

In the thirties a number of short lines, varying in gauge, were built across the State; the Utica & Schenectady in 1836; the Syracuse & Utica in 1839; the Auburn & Syracuse in the same year; the Auburn & Rochester in 1841; the Tonawanda between Rochester and Batavia in 1837, extended in 1842 to Attica; and in the latter year, the Attica & Buffalo. Thus eight short lines extended disjointedly between Albany and Buffalo. Trans-State travel had its difficulties, especially the several changes of cars and the uncertainty of
schedules. In 1853 these roads, together with several branches, were consolidated to form the New York Central. North from New York City, the New York & Harlem, begun in 1832, crept gradually up through the easternmost counties, reaching Greenbush (Rensselaer), opposite Albany, in 1852.

 But it was beaten to this terminus by the Hudson River Railroad, constructed along the edge of the river. Cornelius Vanderbilt, prominent steamboat operator, acquired control of both roads between Albany and the metropolis, and then forced the New York Central to capitulate to him by refusing to furnish connections at Albany. The consolidated roads, headed by Vanderbilt, became the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, and later, after reorganization, simply the New York Central. In 1871 the New York Central, which controlled and still control the only right-of-way entering Manhattan from the north, built the first Grand Central Station at 42nd street.

The railroads in general intensified and accelerated the economic processes stimulated by the canals. In sections of the State where the influence of the canals was limited, as in the Southern Tier and the North Country, the railroads supplied the primary impulse for development. The Erie Railroad provided the Southern Tier with an outlet to the eastern seaboard. Even before it was completed in 1851, between Piermont on the Hudson and Dunkirk on Lake Erie, the Erie began its checkered career. After many difficulties,
caused in part by provisions in its charter, it was granted new termini, Buffalo in the west, which enabled it to compete with the New York Central for traffic, and Jersey City in the east, which brought it within the metropolitan district.

 Its track gauge was six feet, and 50 years passed before it adopted the standard gauge of four feet, eight-and-one-half inches. Overcapitalization and waste drove the road to Wall Street for aid, and it was turned into a financial football by Daniel Drew, James Fisk, and Jay Gould, at the expense of Vanderbilt, whom Gould outmatched in manipulation. The history of the Erie has been a succession of receiverships. Income from its immense freight traffic has failed repeatedly to overcome the effects of the financial mal-administration that dogged it from the start.

The first line in the North Country, the Northern Railroad, completed in 1850 between Lake Champlain and Ogdensburg, was built by Boston interests to participate in the commerce with the Great Lakes area. The road is now a branch of the Rutland Railroad. Another important North Country road was the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, formed in 1861 by a merger of two earlier roads. When it extended its lines and began to compete with the New York Central, it was absorbed by the latter.

 After a severe rate war the West Shore Railroad, built along the west shore of the Hudson and the south shore of the Mohawk and west to Buffalo closely paralleling the Central throughout, suffered the same fate. The Albany & Susquehanna (now part of the Delaware & Hudson), together with its branches, and the Ulster & Delaware, joining Oneonta and Kingston, carried Pennsylvania anthracite to the industries of eastern  New York and northern New England. In all, ten railway systems at present operate 8, 260 miles of track in the State.

Men of New York have played a large part in the development of railroading since the time when scouts went out on horseback to locate late trains and brakemen stopped trains by the exertion of sheer physical strength. The first train order sent by telegraph is credited to Charles Minot, superintendent of the Erie. Henry Wells, of Albany and points west, and William Fargo, of Pompey, Buffalo, and points west, organized some of the earliest express companies. George Westinghouse, inventor of the air brake, was born in Central Bridge. 

The first sleeping cars were built in the late fifties almost simultaneously by Theodore Woodruff, of Watertown, and
Webster Wagner, ticket agent at Palatine Bridge. In 1867 Wagner built the first drawing-room coach, or palace car, befrilled with plush seats, carved cupids and crystal chandeliers; and in 1890 his company was merged with the Pullman Company to form the Pullman Palace Car Company. Within the last few years the Delaware & Hudson Railroad has developed in its Waterville shops the "velvet rail', jointless, welded track a signal block in length, which reduces maintenance costs and eliminates the clickety-click of rail joints.