The Elizabethtown Terminal Railroad Story

History is intertwined. One event happens and then triggers a reaction and on and on it goes. It can occur in small and large scale.

Here’s an Essex County example. In the early 1900s the county revived the discussion of shifting the county seat from Elizabethtown to Westport. The primary reason, the road connecting the two towns was rather treacherous to travel in winter. Many town supervisors used the Delaware & Hudson Railroad that ran through Westport to conduct business in Elizabethtown.

Concerned Elizabethtown town residents gathered and came up with a solution; construct a nearly nine-mile long railroad from Elizabethtown to connect with the D & H. Basically, it would roughly parallel the risky thoroughfare in winter, the Elizabethtown-Westport Turnpike. The route would start north of the D & H Depot and conclude at Brainard’s Forge, north of Elizabethtown village on Maple Street.

Subscribers quickly pledged funds to help avoid the moving of the county seat from their town. After all, Elizabethtown had been the home of county government since 1807. With $28,000 in guaranteed cash, the Elizabethtown Terminal Railroad was incorporated on September 27, 1909.

Less than two months later company representatives appeared before the Public Service Commission for approval “to build, maintain and operate a standard gauge railroad.” The commission unanimously approved the application. The project could move forward.

There exist no official records for the railroad. The construction story is assembled by piecing together assorted newspaper articles. This does create a few gaps in the history.

Vincent R. Coon was hired to be General Manager and he first hired an engineer, Ralph H. Rockwood. He had an excellent reputation as “an experienced railroad construction engineer” and started surveying the route completing all the necessary data. Coon and Rockwell negotiated a number of right-of-ways “with the least possible expense.” Some property owners were very willing to sell, others considered “hard cases.”

Coon then hired the firm of Marco Lavorgna & Company of Canton, Maine to undertake construction. The Maine firm had established a good reputation in building railroads and highways. A Maine newspaper stated the company was “to build the surface for a railroad.”

Office of Marco Lavorgna Company on Maple Street

On March 21 work commenced at the large rock located about a half mile east of Youngs Road along the Elizabethtown & Westport Turnpike (present Route 9N).

To do much of the manual labor of clearing the right-of-way, filling in low areas, building culverts, grading the roadbed and blasting through rock, the company utilized immigrants; Italians. The workers built themselves shacks and shanties to live in at two separate camps; one Local citizens hired out teams of horses and cut timber for fence posts, ties and for the trestle spanning the Black River.

The greatest challenge was cutting through a rock ledge that bordered the turnpike. Workers drilled holes, packed them with explosives and set off the charges. Though the rock proved hard, it shattered easily. Derricks lifted the large pieces off to the sides while more manageable chunks were loaded into dump carts and filled in low sections nearby. When completed, the cut measured ten feet deep and eighty feet long.

Workers cut through the ledge at Big Rock

Through the grading process there existed great optimism in the press reports. Lavorgna brought in another 25 Italians three weeks into the project and after just one month of work “over a mile of the hardest grading being done.” The Maine contractor hoped to have the grading by the first half of July.

Grading the right-of-way

Supplies arrived via the D & H for construction; one carload of corrugated culvert and a half carload of wire fencing.

Optimism continued to prevail as workers commenced the track connection with the D & H in Westport, raising a five hundred foot long trestle built of oak logs the spanned the wetlands on either side of the Black River and the company released the news that 950 tons of rails had been ordered from the Carnegie Steel Company of Pennsylvania.

Also, there was a big announcement that the railroad had purchased in June a “200 Horse Power Motor Car” from the McKeen Motor Car Company of Omaha, Nebraska. Fifty-five feet in length, it could carry 56 passengers and pull freight cars. For the time, it was state-of-the-art. To assist in his engineer responsibilities Rockwood hired two University of Maine engineering students for the summer. It helped Rockwood was a graduate of the same school.

Style of motorcar ordered, but never delivered to the railroad. (Library of Congress)

Drawing of the type of motorcar ordered for the railroad. (Shiawassee History)

By mid-August about 150 men were employed at railroad construction.

On September 29 the Elizabethtown Post reported “The roadbed of the Elizabethtown Terminal has just been finished, including all culverts, and the fencing is practically completed.”

With the job complete, Marco Lavorgna advertised his employee camps for sale and the company leadership returned to Maine. Apparently, their contract only covered the grading of the nine-mile route.

The railroad company’s stenographer, a Mr. Truman, left his job in early October, “for having finished his duties here.”

  Vincent R. Coon continued as manager and went searching for another contractor to complete the rail line.

He found a firm from Brattleboro, Vermont; Crosby & Parker. The firm had experience in building four traction/trolley lines in central Massachusetts.

For some untold reason, Coon departed his general manager position in March 1911. The local paper failed to report the news.       

  The new company set to work, bring in forty Italian laborers who settled into shacks near the Black River. Those men started filling in around the trestle with loads of soil to create a strong and stable embankment plus make repairs to the roadbed. To support the twenty-eight-foot steel bridge, crews readied forms to erected twelve-foot high abutments for the piers. The new bridge would be the same length as the bridge on the turnpike.

The Railroad’s Treasurer Merritt C. Stanton ordered 16,000 ties in late March for the line and workers commenced lay them down in July.

However, after the local paper reported about the progress on the ties, there is no further mention of work on the railroad; no rails, no locomotive, nothing. Work stopped and the rail line remained incomplete.

The following year, disaster struck. On May 20, 1912, at about 3 p.m., as a result of torrential rains, the Kingdom Dam burst for the second time in three years. The twenty foot wave of water tore down the course of the normally tranquil Black River stripping the banks of vegetation and moving boulders like marbles. When the water hit the bridge on the Elizabethtown-Westport road, it quickly disappeared in “a couple of minutes” as did --- feet of roadway and embankment. The Elizabethtown Post picks up the narrative, “Then the water spread out on the flats to the Elizabethtown Terminal Railroad bridge spanning the Black River which stood the test for quite a while. Finally, however, the water dug under the embankment and then the railroad bridge proper, the abutments and about 300 feet of earthwork gave way.” The work of many laborers disappeared downstream.

The dam had impounded the waters of present day Lincoln Pond and that provided water to run two powerhouses; one near the dam, the second in Wadhams. The electricity produced powered the mines in Mineville, and both Westport and Wadhams. But the story of the dam break is another future story.

       After the major washout, there were several attempts to resuscitate the railroad, but to no avail. No repairs were made to the gap in the line and there is no record if the owner of the dam, Daniel Payne, ever paid any damages to the railroad company.

Traces of the failed rail venture still are visible. Portions of the rock cut can be seen from 9N east of Youngs Road though brush is obscuring some of the workmanship. Looking north from 9N where it crosses the Black River, the railroad embankment can be observed about 500 feet downstream. It is tree covered and actually easier to see through a satellite view. There is a large fill near Brainard’s Forge Road and Spencer Road, which runs between two ponds, actually parallels the former rail bed which is now partially obscured by a beaver dam. It is best to see the former right-of-way in the early spring before leaves have sprouted or in fall after leaves have dropped. Many portions of the former rail bed are on private property. It is best to view these pieces of history from the road and not trespass.

Views of the right-of-way from 9N

Satellite view of the railroad embankment and bridge site over the Black River. The bursting of the Kingdom Dam in 1912 created the large gap that was never repaired. This can be viewed by looking north from Route 9N where it crosses the Black River.