NEB&W Layout Guide - Cohoes, NY

Last Update: 2008-11-11

Mock-Ups

Across the aisle from Rutland yard you can see the mock-ups of Green Island to the left and Cohoes to the right. We build cardboard mock-ups of all our buildings for planning purposes only. The actual structures are generally made of styrene plastic with a vinyl embossed brick veneer, although we "kitbash" plastic kits wherever possible.

Cohoes

Most of the interior of New York State is drained by the Mohawk, which tumbles into the Hudson over the falls at Cohoes, NY, second only to Niagara Falls east of the Mississippi. In 1922, Cohoes had a population of 22,900.

Stephen Van Rensselaer was one of the organizers of the Cohoes Company in 1834, formed to build a dam and power canal system around the falls of the Mohawk. The Harmony Manufacturing Co. was established two years later, to make cotton cloth. By the 1870's, a single building of the extensive Harmony complex was claimed to be the largest cotton mill in the world. (This building was called the "Mastodon Mill" because the skeleton of this animal was unearthed during the construction.)

Cohoes became a mill town, where the Harmony Mills Company owned the houses, churches, stores and most other components of the workers' lives, thus by this total control preventing strikes and other labor organizing. Other independent mills sprang up around the system of power canals. Besides cotton, several of these mills made "shoddy" or cotton waste, used to contain the lubrication in the journal boxes of railroad trucks. By the 1930's, the Harmony Mills ended production.

The power canals were a series of block-long canals at graduated elevations and connected by underground tunnels. Factories located between two such adjacent canals would be powered by a water wheel or turbine, taking advantage of the water flowing from the higher canal to the lower one. The Cohoes Company charged the various mills for how much water they used.

The D&H's original freight station was built in 1853 and torn down after the D&H built a new freight station in 1914. Just north of the original freight depot was a similar-looking freight house for Harmony Mills. The passenger station was built in 1883. It is surrounded by over five major churches, an unusual grouping to be found near the tracks.

Next to the freight house was Peck's Coal. (For more on coal dealers, see the section on the coal industry.)