company Genesee & Wyoming, without any significant changes to operations. P&W is headquartered in Worcester, and maintains significant facilities there, in Valley Falls, in Plainfield, Connecticut, and in New Haven, Connecticut. It operates a variety of GE and EMD diesel locomotives to power its trains. P&W serves major ports in New Haven, Providence, and Davisville, Rhode Island (the latter via a connection to switching and terminal railroad Seaview Transportation Company). In addition to the lines it directly owns and operates, P&W freight trains share tracks with Amtrak, Metro-North Railroad, and MBTA Commuter Rail passenger trains on the Northeast Corridor and two Metro-North branches in Connecticut. Key commodities carried by P&W include lumber, paper, chemicals, steel, construction materials and debris, crushed stone, automobiles, and plastics. While the company is primarily a freight railroad, since the 1980s it has occasionally operated passenger excursions, using refurbished passenger cars purchased from Amtrak. Original Providence and Worcester Railroad Background and founding The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W) was preceded by the Blackstone Canal, which opened between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1828. While initially somewhat successful, the canal's business was severely harmed by the completion of the Boston and Worcester Railroad between its namesake cities in 1835, with shippers fleeing the slow and unreliable canal for rail transport. Providence therefore lost much of the business the canal had provided, and residents began to plan a response to the opening of the Boston and Providence. The canal company went bankrupt after its canal was severely damaged by flooding in 1841, and was forced to petition the state of Rhode Island for additional funds. The canal also competed for water with the many mills along the Blackstone Valley, which used water power to operate their machinery. As plans for other railroads across New England began, in January 1844 a group of citizens, primarily from Providence, petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a charter to build a railroad from Providence to the Massachusetts state line. This group also petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a charter to build in that state from the state line to Worcester. The railroad was incorporated in Massachusetts as the Providence and Worcester Railway on March 12, 1844, and in Rhode Island as the Providence and Worcester Railroad in May 1844. Two aspects of the charter were unusual. One provision capped the company's maximum dividend at 12 percent; additional profit