Why did NYC lease the Peanut in 1858?

Has anyone read a reason why the NYC leased the Peanut (Canandaigua-Tonawanda) in 1858?

The disparaging moniker "peanut" is attributed to Dean Richmond, the Central's most powerful director in Western New York at the time. So why did NYC take it on?

WDB

Without doing any research I will guess that it was to keep someone else from getting it...

I think untrr-author is quite correct. The line was originally built by the New York & Erie who completed it from Canandaigua to Suspension Bridge in 1854. It was named the Canandaigua and Niagara Falls and was part of their route from Elmira to Suspension Bridge. This route was built in three seperate parts and the C&NF went into receivership in 1855. It came out of receivership in 1858 as the Niagara Bridge & Canandaigua and was leased by the New York Central.(The other two parts remained solvent and eventually were sold to the Northern Central.)
What I don't know is what transpired during the receivership. The last thing the NY&E would have wanted was for the NYC to take it over but, apparently, they had no choice. It may have been that the receiver was not sympathetic to the NY&E cause. The NY&E was having troubles of their own with some serious flooding problems, an engineers strike and the Panic of 1857 such they they went into receivership in 1859. They were probably in no condition to fight for their position or prevent the receivership in the first place.
What we do know it that the NYC immediately changed the gauge of the Peanut from six-feet to standard gauge thus shutting the NY&E out of that market. Since the NYC already had the Falls Road for its access to Suspension Bridge, they downgraded the Peanut to a branch line status. When the NY&E operated it, it was a main line operation. (The NYC also tried to obtain control of the Rochester & Genesee Valley in order to reestablish their monopoly in Rochester but this attempt failed.) Ted

Well, didn't the Peanut run into/through Caledonia ?

Most of the access to the salt mines was from the North and ran through Caledonia.

For a tiny little town Caledonia hosted a whopping 5 different railroads. I might be off by one or two, but without the salt traffic nobody would have gone out of their way to get to Caledonia.

Salt is heavy and costly to transport unless you have a nice convenient railroad connection.

Just my opinion from what I have read about the history of the RR's in WNY.

Cheers, Kevin.

NYCRRson wrote: For a tiny little town Caledonia hosted a whopping 5 different railroads. I might be off by one or two, but without the salt traffic nobody would have gone out of their way to get to Caledonia.

Four Class 1 lines, plus the Genesee & Wyoming all met at Caledonia..
(technically a mile or so west of Caledonia proper..at P&L junction..although most people call it Caledonia for simplicitys sake)
the G&W also interchanged with two more class-1's on its southern end..
Making the G&W a 11-mile long shortline that directly interchanged with SIX major class-1 systems!
representing virtually the entire railroad network of the North-East:

Lehigh Valley
BR&P-B&O
Erie
New York Central
DL&W
PRR

Those 6 ancestral routes then led, after mergers, to the G&W interchanging directly with thirteen major railroads over its entire history:

LVRR
Erie
DL&W
PRR
New York Central
BR&P
B&O
Chessie System
D&H
Penn Central
EL
CSX
Conrail

that has to be some kind of record for a shortline!

maps, and more info, here:
http://gold.mylargescale.com/Scottychaos/GW/GWpage.html

Scot