Railroads - Part I of III

"We’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad"

by Dr. Paul Loatman Jr., City Historian

The rehabilitation of the XO Tower is a small reminder of what was once a great industry locally, one whose roots lie buried deep in our community’s history. Mechanicville residents "have been workin’ on the railroad" longer than in any other industry. Indeed, when the Saratoga and Rensselaer Railway came through here in 1835, Andrew Jackson was President, and Texas was still part of Mexico. Thus, even the briefest rendition of the local chapters of railroad history will require more than one installment.

The Saratoga and Rensselaer Railway had grown out of a rivalry between Troy and Albany merchants to win control of the trade with northern New York. Though not flourishing, the line operated continuously for more than thirty-five years, and after passing into the hands of its creditors in 1868, it was consolidated with the Saratoga and Whitehall Railroad. In 1871, it became part of a larger system when its stock was leased to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co., and its original charter was extended to the year 2500. Obviously, the state legislature was quite optimistic about future railroad prospects in granting the line a 600-year extension. The D&H had originated as a coal mining company which built canals beginning in 1823 connecting its mines in Carbondale, Pennsylvania with the lower Hudson Valley. Its expansion into railroading arose as a natural outgrowth of its merchandising anthracite coal in upstate New York. Beyond passing through our community, railroading generated few jobs here between 1835 and 1880 other than those related to the original laying of track.

The jaded 21st century passenger would be hard-pressed to match the enthusiasm displayed by a traveler on board the railway on the first trip through Mechanicville to Ballston Spa on August 8, 1835. Surveying the reproduction of famous works of art which decorated the train, English visitor Freeman Hunt noted that "the ‘tout ensemble’ is more like a moveable gallery of the fine arts than a train of railroad cars." And, he noted, taking a cue from their surroundings, "the agents of the railroad are civil to the passengers, and attentive to the locomotives." It should be noted that the trains were quite unsophisticated by today’s standards. For one, they ran on wooden rails which were covered with a thin piece of strap-iron; it would be twenty-five years before the Bessemer process, permitting the production of the now familiar steel T-rail, was refined. Over time, strap-iron rails recoiled from their wooden bases, wreaking havoc on cars – and any passengers happening to be standing in the wrong place. Passengers also received the dubious benefit of being showered with cinders belching from the steam engines which powered the trains, so we can assume that they did not spend all of their time admiring Hunt’s "gallery of the fine arts."

Interestingly, railway owners of that era presumed that passengers were more interested in looking at interior decorations rather than the passing scenery as they roared along at the unholy speed of 10 m.p.h. However, this fact reminds us that there may have been little of what qualified as "scenery" because, as a well-known travel guide of the time advised, our area was so heavily forested with pine trees that it would probably remain a wilderness area, unfit for farming.

Mechanicville’s real significance as a rail center developed only later in the 19th century and had much to do with Boston port interests’ attempts to recapture much of the western trade which that city had lost to New York port following the building of the Erie Canal, and later, the New York Central RR. Originally, Bostonians hoped to build a canal from western Massachusetts through the Taconic Mountains connecting with the Mohawk River. However, by 1854, railroad interests had gained the upper hand and were able to convince the Bay State legislature to use public funds to dig a tunnel through the Hoosac Mountains. Initially, people scoffed at the notion of building a tunnel five miles long through rock; nothing like it had ever been done before. When more than twenty-five years passed without "the bore" having been completed, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. suggested he would "wall up a dozen lawyers at one end of the tunnel and put a good fee at the other." With or without the legal profession’s help, when "the great bore" was completed in 1879, it ranked as the longest tunnel on the American continent.

The Boston, Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railway was chartered to operate the line west of the mountains, and soon after reaching Mechanicville in 1882, the Hoosac Tunnel House became a fixture on Saratoga Avenue near the present site of Modern Lumber, standing until the early 1970s. A small road by the standards of the day, the BHT&W line reaped modest profits attractive enough to become a target of a buy-out by the Fitchburgh Railroad in 1887. Employment by railroads doubled at this time locally, with over 275 men regularly working on the lines, and the probability that a good percentage of irregularly employed "day laborers" were hired to lay track and clear wrecks as the need arose. Expansion during the 1880s brought the first large group of Italian laborers to the village, a group which earned notice in the local press when it "threatened riot" because of unpaid wages. This would not be the last time Italians – or other immigrant groups – were involved in labor disputes because scheming padrones who acted as labor agents for their fellow countrymen often absconded with their wages. This process was repeated during many expansions of rail yards locally, and these immigrants were treated little better than the African-American convict laborers shipped here from Louisiana occasionally as strikebreakers. At any rate, this economic expansion led to an increase of population here from 1264 in 1880 to 3456 in 1892, with a doubling of that number occurring by 1905. The transfer of the Fitchburgh’s freight and repair shops here in 1897 solidified Mechanicville’s position as an emerging rail center.

Relationships between the village and the railroads were not always cordial, particularly with the D&H which Mercury editor Farrington Mead referred to as "the SKUNK." Mead and other local citizens were irritated with the railway’s unwillingness to build a decent passenger station in the village. Other controversies revolved around the village fathers’ willingness to ask taxpayers to assume the cost of building a modern water system which would not only bring water to homes, but more prominently, would slake the thirst of the steam engines which consumed water in hug mouthfuls. The fact that railroad property was outside the village limits, not subject to municipal taxes, bothered a number of people. Village President candidate, Con Greene, attempted to restrict voting on the water issue in 1892 to property owners, thereby curbing the influence of "the North Adams gang," railway workers who had recently relocated here. But Greene miscalculated the humor of the electorate, because voting patterns revealed that property owners were as supportive of the water initiative as were renters. People as well as trains benefitted from clean, regular water supplies.

By the end of the 19th century, Mechanicville had established itself as a major rail center, with the Fitchburgh giving it connections east and west, while the D&H intersected local lines on a north-south axis. The rail connections not only created hundreds of jobs locally for craftsmen and laborers in the transportation industry. Equally, or more importantly, they made possible the expansion of other local industries – brick making, paper making, and textiles – which now had outlets to major markets in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Canada. Though a small town, Mechanicville now had become a significant industrial center whose economic fate would be dictated by forces far removed from the local scene. The community had become integrated into a vast production network, the heart of which was the railroad industry. However, by 1900, in the aftermath of a major depression, that industry would be reshaped by consolidations and mergers, all of which would have a major impact on Mechanicville’s development as an industrial center and transportation hub. These changes will be discussed in Part II.