shepaug.html

THE SHEPAUG, LITCHFIELD & NORTHERN R.R.

The Shepaug, Litchfield & Northern RR, was built from Hawleyville to Litchfield in the early 70's. It was sometimes called the Great Northern by some of the men who worked on it, because in the fall of the year, sometimes we had a great time getting over the road when the leaves were falling.

There were many carloads of stone hauled at one time from the quarries at Roxbury. It is said that the stone for the Brooklyn Bridge came from these quarries. In later years, there was a big ice house built at Bantam Lake. As many as 27 carloads of ice a day were hauled during the summer, but we shouldn't have said hauled, for 27 carloads didn't need any hauling from Bantam to the Housatonic River. They just shoved you down, but from there to Hawleyville you sure had to do some hauling. No more trains of ice from Bantam, Congamond and other points, the Frigidaire took away this business, and when cement began to be used for building, the stone quarries closed down and that business was lost.

At one time, it was intended to extend this railroad to Torrington or Winsted, but it was never built beyond Litchfield.

December 10, 1892, the N Y, N H & H leased the Hawleyville-Bethel branch to the Shepaug.

50 years ago, there were 2 passenger trains a day each way, between Bethel and Litchfield. A freight train also made a round trip from Danbury, via Bethel, to Litchfield. This train did the local work and handled quite a few cars of milk, and was sometimes called the little milk.

The Shepaug was leased to the N Y N H & H on July 1, 1898.

In the summer of 1905, a thru train from Litchfield to New York was put in service. This train did a nice business for a few summers but by 1913 the automobile got most of the business and that was the last summer it ran. In 1908 or 9, the two passenger trains were run into Danbury instead of to Bethel and the branch from Hawleyville was abandoned June 1911.

The last passenger service on the Litchfield Branch as the old S L & N was now called, was handled by a good gas-rail car and in the 30's the passenger service was abandoned., and as the stone, ice and milk business was gone and trucks taking away much of what was left, freight trains ran up the branch only as required, The pieturesque branch was abandoned in the summer of 1948.

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