SHORTLINE TO SHORELINE

by Brian C. Whiton

If I said to you that I am a compulsive shortline railroader, you might well ask what I'm doing in the RUTLAND Society. Oh, I'll admit the RUTLAND operated more than 100 miles of main line most of the its life, thus exceeds the normal criteria for a shortline. I could, however, point out that for a pretty long railroad, the RUTLAND had few signals, no high speed streamliners, and served no large cities directly. In fulfilling its railroad destiny, the Green Mountain Route provided railroad services to small cities and a lot of rural America in the easy going, homespun way of a shortline and did it very well, if not profitably. So, you could say that the RUTLAND has the personality of a shortline and that is all I needed to be attracted to it.

I always wanted to model a shortline form a mainline interchange to a sea port. As much as I loved the RUTLAND I began to stray, almost taking up the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR as a modeling subject. Then, as luck would have it, I found a shortline within my shortline. And, it ran from a main line interchange to the inland sea.

The Addison Railroad, i.e., the Addison Branch of the RUTLAND Railroad was the product of the RUTLAND's territorial war with the Central Vermont. It was born in obscurity and died the same way. Most folks didn't even notice its existence, except, of course, to the folks who lived along it and needed it. Although the mere thought of the Addison Railroad pushed the Central Vermont over the edge, causing it to lease the RUTLAND, that single influence was the sole claim to fame of the Addison. Operations on the Addison, until a few years from the end, were nearly independent of the main body of RUTLAND.

Surprisingly there is a lot that has been written about the Addison if you dig a bit. There is a fair amount of the right of way and a wonderful covered bridge at East Shoreham still available for us to see, assuming you like to walk old rights of way amongst Vermont's verdant natural gifts. Let's meet the Addison. I'll share with you what I know in this and succeeding articles and solicit the contributions of those more knowledgeable as guest columnists.

Most of what I know is derived from six published sources, all of which are open to you if you care to read more. These are: two small paperback books by the Webster Cousins, Harold B. and Frank L., an article in Vermont Life by Bill Gove, Bob Nimke's Sixty Years of Trying, Volume I and of course, the bible of RUTLAND reading, The RUTLAND Road by Jim Shaughnessy. Track plans were published by Bob Nimke in his soft cover text on that subject. How two cousins came to both produce books on the Addison, of nearly identical content is a mystery I have not solved, but these are currently available from Cushman Baker, RFD 3, Brandon, Vt.

The Vermont Life article will take some more digging. It is to be found in the Autumn 1973 issue. We'll seek permission to reprint it. Of these sources, there are some disagreements about the traffic density on the branch which I will try to sort out.

All sources agree that the line was incorporated on Nov. 27, 1867. It wasn't long before all who were interested realized that the RUTLAND, thwarted by the C.V. in its attempt to reach Canada and points west, was seeking a route other than around the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. Since about this time the Whitehall and Plattsburgh in an attempt to make a through route on the western shore of Lake Champlain. Since about this time the Whitehall and Plattsburgh was building north from Whitehall and south from Plattsburgh in an attempt to make a through route on the western shore of Lake Champlain, the RUTLAND began to ally with these interests. A hole existed between Port Henry and Ausable Forks, including the famous Red Rocks area, a most formidable construction barrier. The RUTLAND, however, felt a physical barrier could be overcome whereas the C.V. could not. Its full weight was thrown at closing the gap in the W&P and establishing a connection.

Once closed, a through route to the west could be obtained via a Whitehall and Plattsburgh connection with the Plattsburgh and Montreal at Plattsburgh thence northwest to the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain at Mooer's.

The C.V. started countermeasures by proposing to operate the O&LC on March 1st of 1870. By November of that year, Addison would be under construction providing the missing link between the line from the RUTLAND main to the Whitehall and Plattsburgh. This was an observation made by more than the RUTLAND management. A route via Crown Point was briefly courted, perhaps striking more fear in St. Albans, but there were a lot of low hills to contend with between the eastern shore of the lake and the RUTLAND main. The line from Whiting station to Larabee's Point then across the lake on a bridge to what would become Addison Jct. was much more sound from an engineering standpoint and so it came to pass. Surveys were run, and with a flicker of construction evident, the blood pressure in C.V. headquarters rose rapidly.

Since the cost of a bridge 40 feet in the air, sufficiently high to clear the masts of the lake boats would be most expensive, and in view of the nearly as expensive conventional draw bridge designs available, the Addison elected to install a floating railroad bridge.

It was really a barge anchored on one corner, complete with steam donkey engine and sprocket gear to winch its way open on a slack anchor chain along the lake bottom. However absurd this might sound, it was not the only one of its kind, a sister bridge being the first one used by the C.V. at Rouse's Point.

Since this line would pass directly through Whiting, the former Whiting station on the RUTLAND mainline was renamed Leicester Jct. Besides Whiting, the villages of Orwell and Shoreham would be served by stations somewhat outside the villages, named North Orwell and East Shoreham respectively. Also within Orwell was a place known as Hough's crossing, halfway between North Orwell and Larabee's Point which would be of later significance. Total mileage of the line was 15.6 through hardly as the Whippet flies.

The RUTLAND wasn't much impressed by the significance of the available local traffic potential, and nor was the C.V. as history would have it. The value of the line lay totally in its link to a north and westerly through route. Of course Railroad Fever had a lot to do with support from the towns to be served.

The big question was: could the RUTLAND afford to subsidize the construction of the Addison and have anything left to financially aid the completion of the Whitehall and Plattsburgh? Anything short of the whole pie was pretty useless.

Well, the ink on the construction contract was not dry when the C.V. leased the entire RUTLAND inclusive of the barely begun Addison Railroad, but exclusive of the any portion of Whitehall and Plattsburgh. I believe the C.V. did help operate the W&P briefly, but by now the O&LC was in the C.V. camp and W&P/M&P only added to the threat that dangerous competition might be reborn on the west shore of Lake Champlain. The C.V. did what it could to see that and so they did.

Some historians say no, but from 1896 to 1900 before the line up through the Hero Islands was built, the RUTLAND would have had no through route to the west were it not for the Addison. Only the Oakes Ames car ferry, running between Plattsburgh and Burlington, a seasonal link at best, provided a non-hostile route to the western connections. During this period, the Webster Cousins contend that the line enjoyed very brisk bridge (pardon the pun) traffic and logically so. Other evidence supporting this theory has recently been uncovered.

An acquaintance of mine (and its making is a story in itself), Mr. Conrad LeCompte was the station agent at Orwell for many years, first coming to the line May 1st 1932. He remembers well the previous agent, who was ill that summer, necessitating Conrad replacing him. In the course of giving him his training at the station, a few remembrances of the busy year were passed on.

Mr. Boggs was the agent at Orwell for 53 years from 1874, just 4 years after construction was begun, to 1937, bracketing the busy period and immediately preceding Conrad. Mr. Boggs remembered days on which he had to block a train either east or west bound every ten minutes. This was the era of the American 4-4-0 type and other light engines, so I doubt if train lengths were too great, especially considering the grades on the Addison. Frequent trains of 10 to 20 cars seem likely. Wow, it must have taxed the bridge to the limit.

Mr. Boggs healed and returned to work, but not for long, so Conrad will return to our story.

The bulk of the bridge traffic, during this period, was run as extras while the formerly one-train each way per day mixed freight was raised to two mixed freights each way daily. Local business was pretty brisk during busy years from 1896 to 1900. The increase in the peddlers was a much due to the increase in local freight traffic as passenger. Shipment of butter and cheese to Boston and New York was substantial, while No. 1 Timothy hay (steak-and-eggs to a horse's pallet), and apples in season were the major products shipped. We must remember that is it didn't move by train or barge at this time it moved by horse and wagon and horses burned hay. Side tracks jammed full with hay was a common sight. In season wool also moved in quantity as did cattle, as evidenced by the number of stock cars on the RUTLAND roster. At one time considerable stock originated on the Addison and later, in 1938, a solid stock train from Texas to Shoreham, arriving at Larabee's Point for unloading brought 20 cars of cattle and another 2 cars of horses and calves.

The Webster Cousins make no mention of it, but Mr. Baker, who fired for the RUTLAND until it went out of steam, tells me that the pilings in Bradley's Cove were to get a side track over to the point of land on which the bulk of Larabee's Point is located and on which he believes there was located a saw mill. Presumably this mill shipped some quantity of dimensional lumber. Of course, inbound freight must have run the gamut of agricultural supplies, LCL (Less-than-Car-Load) and express. Truly this little shortline was humming.

The independence of the Addison rivaled that of its neighboring fortification. Only the extras ran through, very likely from Port Henry to RUTLAND as through service to Port Henry had earlier been the established pattern. A temporary interruption in Port Henry service shortly after the line was built caused the mixed train to stop at Addison Jct., in the shadow of Fort Ticonderoga for awhile. This arrangement, which the management of both roads found to their liking, was continued to the end of the mixed. On the east end the mixed had never strayed past Leicester Jct. Neither Leicester Jct. nor Addison Jct. had enough track capacity to have originated any sizable freight trains, even those of the time. Both locations had a wye for turning the engines of the locals, while Addison Jct., some times called Fort Ti Jct. by RUTLAND men, had the engine facility for all of the Addison. The engine facility would later be moved to Larabee's Point.

The crews of the mixed were likewise local men never straying off the Addison. It was their railroad and they only let the RUTLAND borrow it for a hot-shot or two when necessary. Alas, rumor has it that Tommy Behan, an infamous local conductor, was less than well suited to the high iron. Nonetheless, Tommy served well the folks along the Addison as did his fellow trainmen, provided the economic link between them and the big city.

Of course the winds of railroading never blow very long in the same direction and the RUTLAND soon tired of having the now Delaware and Hudson get the haul from Mooers or Plattsburgh to Addison Jct. It was 1900 by now and the line up through the Hero Islands was well under construction. Once the island route and the O&LC in the RUTLAND camp, was opened, the Addison was much less important as a link to the west. What bridge traffic remained could be handled by the mixed trains. Local traffic remained high, but began to change in nature.

The Tin Lizzy did not care for No. 1 Timothy and so hay shipments began to fall off. To a certain extent these were replaced by shipments of clover and alfalfa, but not in serious volume. Bostonians and New Yorkers had, however, outgrown their local supply of milk, while refrigerator cars (invented on the O&LC) were now available to bring good Vermont milk down to market. Milk stations, merely small buildings with a platform at express car height sprang up along the Addison as farmers began to ship can milk to markets farther from home. Among these were cream, shipped in 10 and 20 quart cans to Chateaugay N.Y. and Buffalo N.Y. The

consignee at Buffalo was the Fairmont Creamery.

In time, these were replaced by milk plants. A large ice house was erected at Larabee's Point to ice the can cars, then used to move the milk. Ice was harvested locally at first, while later, ice was shipped in by box car during the winter from the Alburg house.

As dairy farming increased in volume, so did inbound shipments of grain. Farm machinery began to make up significant inbound tonnage too. Conrad tells us that coal was received, at least at Orwell. It came in gondolas exclusively (perhaps RUTLAND 36 footers reloaded from offline cars at Alburg) and had to be hand shoveled into waiting wagons of the local coal supplier.

There was a Wagon scale at Orwell, with a small cabinet for the weigh ticket machinery adjacent to it. Conrad was obliged to shovel the snow off of this in the winter so that a wagon of coal could be weighed. It took a good half hour of hard work away from his other duties. For all the work he (the railroad) received the princely sum of 10 cents per weighing for private wagoners, a nickel for wagons belonging to Mr. Lilly, the coal dealer.

The team track was often as not the side track, especially at the end when no meets were conducted anywhere on the line. At Orwell in particular team track was heavy. Quite a bit of this was inbound grain, all sacked, no bulk. By Conrad's time, outbound loads were most significantly apples. Forty-four cars were billed out the first summer that Conrad had the station. These were shipped in ice refers, mostly MDT, which, according to Conrad, stood for "more damn trouble" undoubtedly since they had to be ordered pre-iced, one ton per bunker, two tons per car.

Incidentally, the previous agent, then in his 80's, who had 53 years service in when the Railroad Retirement Act was enacted on June 1, 1937, took his retirement immediately. Conrad thinks billing forty-four cars of apples influenced at least the haste of the decision to retire. On September 15, 1937, Mr. Boggs ended an era on the Addison and Conrad LeCompte entered the stage for the final act.

Among the more unusual loads to come to the Addison was the material necessary to complete the diversion of its lifeblood traffic to the highways. Tank cars of asphalt were delivered to the North Orwell team track to furnish paving material for Route 22A. These cars had to be heated with steam each morning for four or more hours before the tar would flow. A man from Manchester came up with a portable boiler to accomplish this.

Although traffic had held up adequately up through the teens to sustain two mixed trains a day captive to the branch pattern, by 1920 maintenance items on the line were allowed to slip a bit. Repairs to the floating bridge were among these. In 1918 the bridge had dumped three box cars into the lake, but had been repaired sufficiently to continue in service. Repairs weren't that thorough, however, and in 1920 it nearly dumped an engine into the lake. Having gained the attention of the authorities by now, the bridge was inspected and found to be unsafe. It was condemned, but war in Europe forced its continued use sporadically until 1923, by which time cars had to be pushed across the bridge by one engine and picked up on the side by another, hardly an efficient arrangement.

Though a difficult decision, Addison Junction was closed forever. Mr. Gains Hayes, the last agent at Addison bumped into another position on the RUTLAND. The bridge was dismantled, a turntable built at Larabee's Point (there had been a wye at Addison Junction) and the mixed, now back to a single train, laid over on the Vermont side henceforth.

I have never been able to confirm it, but rumor has it that the entire engine house was dragged across the frozen lake one winter for continued use by the little 2-6-0 Moguls which had come to call the Addison home. I have never seen a picture of the facilities at Larabee's Point in the later years. Incidentally in Mr. Nimke's Volume 1 there are pictures of the Larabee's Point turntable with No. 144, one of the Moguls, on the deck. John Gardner may have some pictures of this local near the end of the service. (Please consider your arm twisted, John.)

Local passenger traffic had ebbed to a point where the crew generally outnumbered the passengers, while express traffic and LCL had diminished to the point where a single agent could cover more that one station. The next blow to the Addison came in 1934 when the mail contract was cancelled. Truck delivery to the local Post Offices was much faster now and with more modern trucks pretty reliable too. Passenger service just had to go. That being the case, the mixed train, captive to the branch, was superfluous. That meant moving on for John Deedman, the last night hostler at Larabee's point.

The Addison for the first time was operated as a branchline rather than an almost independent shortline. The shortline to the shore was now the territory of the "Proctor Job," Work Extra 63, a turn originating in Rutland. This job did all the peddler work from the outskirts of Rutland through Proctor and Florence to Larabee's Point and return each day. This put them through North Orwell at about 10 am taking two hours to proceed to Hough's Crossing, Larabee's Point and back to North Orwell. If LCL was heavy the way car would be left at North Orwell for Conrad to deal with while the turn worked the unmanned stations further down the line. It would be picked up on the return trip.

While milk stayed healthy as a revenue earner, can shipments were replaced by bulk shipments and so the can cars once iced at Larabee's Point were replaced by milk tank cars. At Hough's Crossing, named for the crossing of the brook, not the railroad, the building was a milk plant, not just a station. Another plant, off rail in Shoreham brought their already processed milk to this plant and, in later years, ran it through that system into waiting milk tank cars. The Hough's Crossing plant was a New England Dairy operation, also selling grain and feed for the Clyde Feed Co., while the plant in Shoreham was run by local people and not associated with a chain to my knowledge.

Service on the Addison was still once a day, but some of the stations were to be reduced to caretaker status. That is not to say that they were not open, as a care taker was a very real job, however, the billing was handled by another station in a sort of regional manner. In Conrad's time, Orwell had Larabee's Point, Hough's Crossing and West Shoreham, while Leicester Junction handled Whiting on the branch and Salisbury on the main line.

As time went on, two facts came together to spell a gradual end to service. Trucks were being used to bring local deliveries from farther afield and Leicester Junction is no more than a half hour drive away from any place on the branch. Most of the local milk was going by truck to an H.P. Hood plant at Whiting, originally a Sheffield plant. Some was going to the milk plant in Florence or off-line to other plants. With mail, LCL and express traffic gone or going, the car count was way down. Management elected to shorten the line to Orwell in 1951. Orwell station remained open, doing a decent business in grain, coal, and farm supplies. According to the Webster cousins, the rails were torn up as far as Orwell. Since Conrad was the agent at Orwell to the end and does not remember a partial tear up, I must question the point.

The frequent high water in the low lands around Pleasant Brook saw to it that stream was used on the Addison at lest in the spring for as long as steam was available. The steamers could tolerate one or two feet of water over the tracks while their infernal combustion replacements could short out at the sight of a puddle.

Whiting was becoming the center of milk shipping in the area. This plant started as a cheese plant operated by Silverman Bros. of New York City. It was a Sheffield Farms plant for a time and finished as an H.P. Hood plant. By the fifties, the Whiting station building was a feed, grain, and hardware store, operated by Austin Barrows. He was also a John Deere dealer and business was adequate to insure the continued visits by the train to Whiting for some time.

Incidentally, while Conrad was the agent at Orwell, John Hantric from Florence built a Dairyman's League milk plant on a side track at Orwell. Conrad says little milk was shipped from there and the milk machinery lay idle. The business also retailed general farm supplies, representing Eastern States Farmers Exchange, now Agway, which lasted longer. Conrad sats this amounted to about 2 cars of grain per month. In addition, Oliver tractors were sold and serviced.

Back to chronological events, the shortening of service on the line, first to Orwell and thence to Whiting, was, of course, only a temporary save. The Proctor Job stopped running to Whiting in 1961 when the H.P. Hood milk plant closed, due to the trucking of milk to the Florence plant. The only remaining customer was the Barrows Grain Sore at Whiting which was doing a fair business, but not enough to justify all that trackage.

This store produced the largest and heaviest load ever carried on the Addison, and the last one at that. The RUTLAND offered the owner land and a building at Leicester Junction to use if he would allow closure of the branch. That was fine, but he needed the store he already had as well. And so it was that the store itself, 40 feet wide and 60 feet long was loaded onto two flat cars and brought to Leicester Junction September 1, 1961. That explains why the cut at Woodchuck Hill seems too wide for a railroad and of rather recent excavation. The RUTLAND would do anything to keep a valued customer, even move him miles down the line to a better location.

Today only the wye at Leicester Junction and bit of tailtrack remain. Long out of service and overgrown with weeds, they comprise the full trackage of the shortline to the shore. The covered bridge is still up at Shoreham and well preserved. Stone abutments and roadbed clearly mark the remainder of the right of way. I recommend it as a most pleasant nature walk.

Next time we will look into the subject of railfanning the Addison just in case you haven't attempted to do so by then. I'll twist Conrad's arm for some more detail regarding life on the Addison and I have yet to interview Cushman Baker.

ADDISON ANECDOTES:

Once upon a time a local man who had relocated to St. Louis returned to visit the area. While there he obtained a gallon of maple syrup. Not wishing to carry it home on the train, he shipped it as LCL to his home town station on a mid-western road. Now Conrad LeCompte, the agent who billed out this enormous shipment, could not obtain a through rate so the item went first to Chicago on the NYC then through the Chicago network of connecting lines then down the connecting road to its destination. The RUTLAND as the originating carrier got 26 cents for their effort, while the other road who had to bill the item from Chicago to its destination got a whole 6 cents. And you ask why railroads didn't fight to keep LCL traffic. This item would have been handled by no less than five railroad employees enroute and billed by another half dozen. Using the pay scales of the time, the railroads had about 8 dollars in labor involved not to mention the actual haul.

My friend Conrad, while working at Orwell station one day, was at track side as the train was switching. Though not his duty, the engineer asked him to bleed a freight car of air so that it might be moved without pumping up. The train line was closed, both angle cocks at 90 degrees, so Conrad also opened the angle cock. Unfamiliar with the task, he jerked the valve wide all at once resulting in a violent discharge of air through the gladhand. The hose jumped up and struck Conrad square in the left bow of his glasses, nearly knocking him unconscious. The severity of the hit was only known when after an exhaustive ground search for his shattered glasses, the brakeman gave up in disgust and Conrad, having nearly recovered, ascended to the brake platform for the car move, only to find the remainder of his glasses less the bow resting on the brake platform 8 feet above the point of impact. And you thought freight agents had it soft!

From a Subsequent Letter from Brian Whiton:

Addison research was limited to doing the Addison Junction area. Lots of weeds and brush. Should have waited for winter. Followed the phantom pilings across the bay at Larabee's Point. Nothing to see. Mr. Baker says there was a sawmill over there, but no traces. Found an old boiler front and tube sheet in the water at Larabee's Point. Wonder if it is industrial. i.e., the sawmill or a RUTLAND artifact. Locals now consider me to be a harmless endangered species of little mental capability, living in 1933. They smile and nod a lot, but still come forth with an occasional word of wisdom. Paddled up the creek to the first culvert, and as suspected, it is large limestone block abutments with many pieces of rail across, and more blocks, then earth on top. Clearly postdates early construction, as there was a rail shortage at that time and nobody was doing any relay that would yield so much scrap rail. Also paddled Lemon Fair in a 15 mph wind to get a setting gun shot of the covered bridge at East Shoreham from the water. It was worth every stroke.

From a Letter from Dick Costello:

For about twenty years, I used to ride the Proctor Job over to Larabee's Point, usually on the engine, a couple of times a year. It sure was primitive railroading. We used to drop off empty milk cars at various creameries, wait at Larabee's for a couple of hours and then pick up the filled cars for return to Rutland. I started riding these trains, courtesy of the conductors and engineers, in 1931, the same year I started taking pictures.

From Bellows Falls Interchange Reports compiled by Jeff English:

In 1961, Austin W. Barrows received a steady flow of box car loads of feed from John W. Eshelman of Lancaster, PA. Eshelman was served by the PRR, and since these loads were passing through Bellows Falls, it appears that the routing was either via New York Harbor car floats or the Poughkeepsie bridge. Either way it would have gone via NYNHH to Springfield, MA and then B&M to Bellows Falls, but west of the Hudson it could have gone by any number of routes, including LNE, L&HR, or even Pennsy's "Bel-Del" line. The shipments averaged about a car a day, at roughly 25 tons per car.

Addison Railroad