Sandy Hook. Distance from Boston 168.7 miles; from Hartford 51.4 miles; from Newburgh 59.9 miles. 2 trains each way daily, except Sundays. Population 250. This station is in the village of Newtown, a pleasant, old fashioned looking place, the residents of which are devoted to agricultural pursuits, which amply remunerate their efforts, especially their orchards, and as the the trains pass by during fruit seasons, the passengers may see on either side trees laden with fruit. Between the points above enumerated, if the passenger will look from the rear of the train he will see that the face of the country is characteristic of New England. Alternating hills and valleys and rugged rocky points predominate, showing throughout the continual conflits with nature necessary to establish the iron track across the country.
Newtown NY&NE 1886
Newtown. Distance from Boston 171.4 miles; from Hartford 54.1 miles; from Newburgh 57.2 miles. 2 trains each way daily, except Sundays. Population of township 4,013. Settled in 1709, recorded as a town in 1711 and incororated in 1824. It is an old and somewhat traditional town, the site of many fine farms, and the dwelling place of substantial people. Its pure air and other favorable features have converted the place into a much frequented Summer resort by city people. Two Hotels, Dick's and the Grand Central, and a number of private boarding-houses, supply good board and accommodations. Taunton Lake, a lovely sheet of water, is much frequented by rowing and fishing parties. The great India Rubber Company, known as the New York Belting and Packing company, the largest manufactory of the kind in the United States, is located here, making vulcanized rubber fabrics, adapted to mechanical purposes, and antiseptic rubber-lined hose. There are also extensive manufactories of combs, buttons, ivory goods, etc. It has a weekly paper , 3 churches and a savings bank. Issac Toucey was born here. He was for many years State Attorney of Hartford County, Member of Congress, Governor of Connecticut, Attorney General of the United States, United States Senator and Secretary of the Navy under President Buchanan.
Hawleyville NY&NE 1886
Hawleyville. Distance from Boston 173.9 miles; from Hartford 56.6 miles; from Newburgh 54.7 miles. 2 trains each way daily, except Sundays. Population 203. Formerly a place of no importance, it has recently become prominent as a railroad centre, being the junction of 4 railroads, The New York and New England, Housatonic, Danbury and Norwalk and Shepaug Roads. Near the station is a tunnel 380 feet long, 20 feet high and 26 feet wide. It is a busy town, engaged in the manufacture of hats, combs and condensed milk.
NY&NE info
Where ya gettin' this info? Do you have some sort of passenger guide book for the NY&NE in 1886? I'm sure others would like to know the source information. Thanks very much for such descriptive posts!
Towantic Grades
Regarding Tom Curtin's estimate of the grades at Towantic - 1.25 percent seems to be the maximum, but most of the climb is 1.1 percent. The profiles dated 1/1/22 show Sandy Hook to be about 145 feet above mean high water at New Haven. For a mlle eastbound the grade is only 10 feet per mile but it then rises at a rate of 59.8 per mile for six miles (1.13%), levels for a half mile then resumes at 53.6 for two mles, and 60.6 (1.15%) for the next mile before easing a half mile to the Towantic summit at an elevation of 650 feet, about 10.5 miles from the bottom of the grade. The grade is a little shorter westbound and only climbs 380 feet. It starts ouside of Waterbury with a mile of 37 feet per mile, jumps to 66 (1.25%) for a very short distance then levels for nearly a mile, resumes at 40 for a mile and a half, eases, then completes the climb at 59 feet per mile (1.1%) for four and a half miles, a westbound climb of about 7.75 miles. (Profiles do not account for the effect of curves.)
Re: Towantic Grades
Two years ago I spent a Sunday, after some light snow, following the grade from the tunnel under the Maybrook line to Southbury. Some of it was walkable and much of it was visable from the car/Jeep as I drove. There has been a natural gas pipeline that has been laid on the ROW from about a mile east of the tunnel to about a 1/2 mile from the Housitonic River crossing. The abutments over the Pomperaug River are quite visable from rt84 three seasons of the year; being completely hidden by summer foliage.
The east end, in Waterbury had been ripped out in the late 80s. It proceeded west under rt 8 and I was fortunate to walk it, with Bob Gambling, to a point about 1 mile west of the junction with the existing Waterbury line. The rails and ties were in place, but were significantly overgrown. Much of this area has been made completely indistinguishable from its surroundings because of a large and damaging rock and gravel operation.
By the way, the tunnel portal, in Newtown, is poured concrete and has a date of 1911 at its top. It is not adivsable to walk through it because of the amount of debris that has been dropped into the cut at the west end. Everything including the kitchen sink....even an automoble. Oh, a stream too!.
Pole Lines Along the NY&NE
Thanks to all of you who shared information on the pole lines along the Waterbury-Hawleyville route. I've always had an interest in them and noticed that many lines had their somewhat unique variations of quantity and placement of the pole lines. Back in the 60s I observed the route from Newington to Waterbury was accompanied by a pole line that usually had 4 crossarms worth of wires. Seems like south of Waterbury most of the poles had only two crossarms - now I see where the other two crossarms worth of wires probably went.
My interest turned into informal insulator collecting and I have a dozen or so insulators on the window sill at the Berlin CT ticket office, all except 4 are ex-NH from the Berlin area. In Berlin and on most of the Hartford line the signal lines were on one side of the right of way and the communications lines on the other. All the insulators I have found from the communications side were glass of several varieties or in rare cases rubber. I don't remember any special colors or types to mark the message or dispatcher wires, just the metal tags that appeared about every 4 poles or so.
Towantic grade
Thanks for clarifying the figures on the grade, which I had aften wondered about. Less than I would have guessed. Incidentally, when you drive I-84 between exits 16 (Rt 18 and 17 (Rt. 63)* you are climbing essentially the same grade. The old ROW is more or less paralell to I-84, and no more than 2 miles to the south.
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* NOT the grade between exits 15 and 16. The Railroad curved several miles to the south, through Southford, and essentially went around that mooutain.
NY&NERR
Information comes from a book issued by the Passenger Department 1886 for the New York and New England Railroad. A book of useful information in regard to the cities and towns on its Line. price 50 cts. Rand Avery Supply (engravers).
Re: Pomperaug Valley NY&NE 1886
Thanks to all for the feedback. This is very exciting for me to learn something about the history of my property. I did find an insulator in our back yard on the day we moved in. I think it's an insulator anyhow. It's glass and looks like it once screwed onto a large bolt. It has a letter "B" embossed on it. Does anyone know what the "B" represents? Also, were these power lines, telephone or telegraph lines? I would I determine it's age?
Re: Pomperaug Valley NY&NE 1886
All of the glass insulators I've seen were mounted on a threaded wooden dowel that were attached to the cross beam by means of a hole that the dowel was set into.
Glass Insulators
The B on the glass insulator, might be for (Brookfield) a lot on mine had it spelled out. Ther're not handy for me to look at, but I have one in front of me that says NEW ENG TEL & TEL CO. It's smaller than most. I have a clear one that is regular size that came off the Florida East Coast RR. Also have one off the CNE. The line that went through Southbury most likely had Telephone and Telegraph wires as well as the Western Union wires. I doubt there was any electric lines as the railroad had no signals on this stretch of track? I have heard about the Dispatcher's line (2 wires) having white insulators, but I have never seen any. I did read that they were suppose to be on the top arm, the furthest away from the track, on the outside. The Canal Line also had the Metal letters D and M under the set of wires, I was looking for the B (block line) but never found any yet! I did take photos of the pole lines. Westfield in later years still had the Western Union Junction box, I opened it up and took pictures, also took what little paper work that was still inside.
Waterbury Extension
I have been fasinated by this line for quite awhile. If you go down the bank just east of the tunnel in the winter you miss the debris and the stream is frozen. Giant icicles form inside the lining which is in good condition. Pushers were used in both directions from Sandy Hook. I've hiked from the tunnel east to the bridge, the section between exit 14 to where the row disappears under rt84, then exit 15 to Hop Brook. Its a great hike with most of the row in great shape. Stone Hardware bought the Southbury depot and stored hay in it which caught fire and burned it down. The east end serviced the lumber yard until around 1960, anyone have a more exact date?
Other Stations
West of Union City there was Osborntown, name changed in 1904 to Allerton Farms, Bradleys, between Allerton Farms and Towantic and South Britain, a flag stop near Southbury.
1911 tunnel
Parmalee rd goes over the tunnel. I approach from the east(about 30 yards)from face. A little wet but otherwise not bad. The lining is in beautiful shape and it is clean & dry inside. Don't try from the west and don't go down the Maybrook bank. I go from the north, much easier. I checked out the topo map from the 1890's, there was no NY&NE tunnel until 1911, the 2 lines ran parallel. Check out the wye coming from Bethel on old Hawleyville rd.
Re: Railroad in Southbury, CT
You ain't gonna believe this, but it's true: 30 years ago when I lived in Connecticut (was born in Bridgeport) I used to take summer evening drives in my red Barracuda fastback. On several occasions I wound up passing the ex-Southford depot at dusky twilight. The hair on the back of my neck almost stood on end; I seemed to sense ghost passengers standing on the platform, waiting for a train!
Re: Railroad in Southbury, CT
This discussiom thread sure brings back memories, since I spent summers in the late 40's at my late uncle's cottage in Newtowm just south of the NY&NE/NH rail trestle very near the Glen Rd.Silver bridge (now green) I still remember the last steamers moving a car or two towards Southbury across the trestle about 9 to 10AM, They would return around 1PM, backing across the bridge. The four abutments are clearly visible, though the steel was removed a piece ata time by a large derrick. I found several faded color prints detailing the disassembly of the bridge, a girder ata time. Every Saturday morning like clockwork I would watch with eyes as big as hubcaps as the locomotive wheezed it's way over and back. Sometimes if we were close enough the engineer would blow the whistle while I watched. At times we would also hike over the bridge to the southbury side (there was a walkway on the downriver side of the bridge)and walk down towards the pomperaug and collect the many spikes along the roadbed, Sometimes we walked in the other direction towards Hawleyville. As the ROW passed over Glen Rd. there existed a decrepit old building called the Glen Lodge (now long gone) which probably was a kind of hotel, general store, local meeting place. My aunt would take me in and get me a candy bar. I seem to remember a pot belly stove in there. The building had tons of character. At the time as a normal 8 year old kid, I thought that this area had to be the best place in the world.
A few years later(the late '40s) my mom and dad , and adifferent uncle bought cottages to put up in the Lakeside community, which were war surplus Quonset huts that had to be towed in intact from RI. Their encounter with the line came when they were towed to the top of Lakeside Rd and being blocked by the low overpass. This sat about where the ST Police barracks sit tiday. The only other alternative seemed even worse. Back down to Rt. 6, head west and take Fish Rock up into Lakeside the back way. Now Fish Rock has been improved immensely over the years. 58 years ago it was a very narrow,steep, paved cow path. It also had a very sharp hairpin turn about where the road turned left up the hill and away from the lake. After a very harrowing afternoon struggling up that hill the quonsets were finally with significant denting of their corrugated skins safely placed on their foundation on Scout Rd.
Man, would I ever give a buck or two to go back to those times, this time with a good camera. MEMORIES!!!
Southbury line
Very very very interesting recollections!!!
Your recollections of steam power was almost certainly a K-1-d (2-6-0) and would have been before December 1947. The remaining six months the line was is service between then and June 1948 the power was a DEY-3 (Alco S-1), according to a photo or two I have seen. Yes, that little branch survived just long enough to be dieselized!
Now . . . help me with something here. That line crossed over old Rt. 6 three times within a couple of miles. Working from west to east, the first was just on the Sandy Hook side of the "silver bridge" over the Housatonic. The second was part of the large bridge over the Housatonic River. The third was shortly after Rt. 6 turned away from the river to go up toward Southbury. I am told that the first and third of those were narrow, old, low-clearance stone arch overpasses, and that one reason the line was abandoned was that truck traffic on Rt. 6 was having trouble getting through them. Can you recall?
Railroad in Southbury
Hello Tom. I've read many of your posts. You have a real wealth of knowledge about the old railroad. Were you an employee? About the crossings over route 6. The one on the Sandy Hook side crossed over Glen Rd. right by the Glen Lodge. It was indeed a constricted underpass. It was knocked down soon after abandonment of the rail line. I guess Glen Rd was considered Rt. 6 at that point. On the Southbury side of the river was River Rd. which skirted the river and ran under the bridge right next to the eastern abutment. Down around the bend the line went across the Pomperaug River at that time on the left or north side of Rt. 6. For the life of me I can't remember the next crossing, although there must have been one before the overpass in Southbury, because at that point the line was to the right of Rt. 6. That same old uncle with whom I spent summers had an old road map from the '30s or '40s which showed the path of the NYNH&H. I went to Google Earth and zoomed in on the area but as I expected Rt. 84 messed up any possibility of tracing the route that way. I know that I still have the map somewhere. I'll check and post a reply.
PS I was an employee also for ever so short a time but it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I had. I was a subs. Messenger in the old NH Telegraph office from 1955 off and on with bumping until 1960. My job on weekends ( perfect for a college kid ) was to carry consists, teletype and still some Morse messages from the 4th floor of the station to the GOB and sometimes the Yellow bldg. Even had to hand off some stuff to the incoming engineers on Cedar Hill bound locomotives.
Thank you
Thanks for the nice feedback. No, I had no professional or family connection to the New Haven. What you have run into here is that certain of us in the NHRHTA (You can easily tell who, by reading their posts) have, over the years, have become --- mostly for fun --- veritable walking encyclopedias of esoteric minutiae about the New Haven. When we get together we're really something to see and hear, kind of like a roomful of Rabbis debating fine points in The Talmud. The late esteemed David P. Morgan of Trains magazine once stated in print that the NHRHTA "has inventoried every crosstie between Campbell Hall, NY and Provincetown, MA." I don't know if he was intending to be facetious or serious, but he was right on target.
But as I think about this, it's not so uncommon --- you meet baseball fans who do essentially the same thing, right?
Guys like you (Jack O'Connor) and George Ford who have specifically detailed recollections of unsung and long-vanished pockets of the railroad like the Southbury branch are very valuable to us.
