Connecticut western news., 1889-02-13
FOURTEEN YEARS TRAVEL IN THE
 RAILROAD WORLD
BY A FORMER CANAANITE.

A sight of the CONN. WESTERN NEWS brings up pleasant memories of by gone days. Seven years of my young life were spent among the hills of Connecti- cut, located most of the time at Canaan. It was there l brought my wife and first set up little home of our own. l read In the columns of the above named paper, many changes ; old time friends have solved the problem of human life and passed to the other shore others are still on the old stamping ground, battling with fortune, an to those old friends let me talk for few minutes and let them know where I have been and what doing since we left Canaan in the summer of 1875.
 The panic of 1873 and "A depressed business to such an extent that the Conn. Western R. R.. on which l was employed. and which company I had been with since 1868, when the first stake was driven, could not meet its indebtedness, thus causing me to leave and accept position on the Centennial furce at Philadelphia. While there we had two of the assistant engineers in ,ur office. who were formerly connected with the construction of the c. w. R. k viz: w w. Coe, (who was located at New Hartfor,D and who is now chief engineer of the Norfolk & Western R. R and lives at Roanoke, Va, and Stewart Hartrick, who was located at East Canaan. and lived with old Mir Sims. I left Philadelphia in February, 1876 and commenced work on the 6tn Avenue Elevated R. R. New York city. with the same chief engineer who located the c. w R. R. and two of his ,li assistants Our work that year is the present Elevated Railroad system uf New York city. On account of the delays in the work at that early day, owing to the bitter litigation with the surface (street carl roads, I moved with my family in the fall of 1876 to Hender- son, Ky, on the Ohio river, as road master of the Henderson division of the St Louis and South Eastern R. R., 8 line, 346 miles long, running from St Louis to Nashville, Tenn. This was a typical Southern railroad at that day ; no fences, chair iron, mud ballast, Negro trackmen, and labor 80 cents a lay, It took two years to raise the wages to $l.O0 per day, simply because connecting roads would not como up to that figure. We landed in Kentucky in the heat of the Hayes and Tilden CANVASS and might write something interesting to Northern readers if l wanted to touch on politics; suffice 1t to say, never opened my mouth on the subject of politics for four years after l
 mce crossed the Ohio river ;. it would not have been healthy for me if I had.
 Four years in the "Solid South, /" and Kentucky was "solid" with a veDge- lnce. was enough for me and mine, so that in the summer of 1880 we moved to Fishkill- -ou-the- Hudson afterwards to DLnbury, where, as superintendent of construction. we built tue extension of If the New York & New England R. R. from Waterbury to the Hudson. In January, 1881, this work was completed, and we moved to Elmira, N. Y, which place is still our home, as I had been appointed superintendent of construc- rion for the contractors on the exten- sion of tue D. L. & W. R. R from Binghamton to Buffalo. This was a magnificent piece of work 123 miles ot double track right through the heart of the state of New York. The r"ad Was graded, track layed and
 mllasted, depots built, and every aI,iug turned over to the company, good for 45 miles per hour. in eighteen months, and every man interested '-ceived one hundred cents on the dollar.
 I was on the West Shore R. R in lSS2 and on the Erie and Wyoming Valley R. R in 1883. This gave the Erie foothold in the Anthracite region # Scranton and Pittston.
 In the spring of 1884 I went to Cresson. Penn., on the summit of the Alleghany mountains, and for two years was employed building road iuto the soft coal basin of Clearfeld and Cambria counties. Finishing up this work in the fall of 1886 I conclu- lied to qnit roaming, and received the | appointment now hold, viz: Road puaster of the Buffalo division of the Erie R. R., this being my third year of service with the grand old Erie. This is large division, covering about 414 miles of road, with all the lake freight houses, docks, wharfs, coal trestles, ore Jocks, transfer trestles, etc., to look after and maintain, as we'll as all bridges, buildings and the water supply. There are 246 buildings on the division, on which we carry an insu1a ance, every one of which must be heated in the winter. It Is divided up in sub-divi- sions of about 60. miles each, under a supervisor, with a master carpenter in charge of all carpenters, master mason, master painter. division plumber and division slater. It is about all l can do to get over 1t once week.
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