The subsequent history of the Vanderbilt lines is chiefly a story of business expansion and growth. From 1885 to 1893, the great panic year, the New York Central each year added to its mileage, either by merger of smaller lines or by construction. All this time it was consolidating the system, eliminating the weaker links, and strengthening the stronger. Its lines penetrated all the best Eastern railroad territory outside of New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and no other railroad system in the country, with the single exception of the Pennsylvania, covered anything like the same amount of rich and settled territory, or reached so many cities and towns of importance. New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis--these are a few of the great traffic centers which were included in the Vanderbilt preserves. The population of all these cities, as well as that of the hundreds of smaller places and the countryside in general, was growing by leaps and bounds. Furthermore the Northwest, beyond the Great Lakes and through to the Pacific coast, saw the beginnings of its great development at this time; and the wheat fields of the far western country became a factor of profound importance in the national development. Consequently when the period of depression arrived with the panic of 1893, the Vanderbilt properties were, as a whole, in a strong position to meet the changed situation and, like the great Pennsylvania property, they all passed through to the advent of the new industrial era without the defaulting of a bond or the passing of a dividend. The remarkable character of this achievement is evident in view of the fact that in the period from 1893 to 1898 more than sixty-five per cent of all the railroad mileage in the United States went into the hands of receivers. After the close of this era of panic, the Vanderbilt lines began expanding again, though on a much smaller scale than in their more active time. In 1898 William K. Vanderbilt, then president, made the announcement that the New York Central had leased the Boston and Albany Railroad, at that time a lucrative line running from Albany across Massachusetts into Boston. This gave the system an entry into the New England field, which it has continuously held since. A few years later this New England interest was increased by the acquisition of the Rutland Railroad in Vermont, thus making connection with the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain, a line running across the northern part of New York State, which had also come under Vanderbilt control.