A New York Central L-3a Mohawk leads a westbound mail and express train through East Rochester some time in the 1940s.
A class L-2d 4-8-2 Mohawk of the New York Central lays on the whistle as it passes by what is now Despatch Junction.
Taken from the NYC's 4 track mainline, this is just one small part of the sprawling Despatch Car Shops.
The Despatch shops produced a hundred different kinds of freight cars, this here being an insulated express reefer for Merchant's Despatch.
A storeroom inside the Merchant's Despatch facility.
Men hard at work in the wheel shop- Despatch made almost every component themselves, but wheels arrived as rough castings and forgings.
An 1898 ad for the Merchant's Despatch Co. of East Rochester (then Despatch) NY.
Overgrown with ivy, the Despatch Shop's main offices were located in this building.
An aerial view of the shops- you can just see what became Despatch Junction near the picture's top center.
East Rochester certainly doesn't look like it used to.
Looking southeast, this eye in the sky captures another angle of the car shops.
Sometime between 1890 and 1920, workers move archbar trucks into position- in a few hours they'll have a freight car riding on them!
A string of shiny new Merchant's Despatch reefers straight out of the car shops.
A view of the original late 19th century plans for "Despatch, NY". The name would be changed to East Rochester in 1906.
A restored MDT refrigerator car (reefer) at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum.