Long-serving agent of a Slate Valley lifeline

GRANVILLE, N.Y.

The Granville Sentinel was rooting for the hometown underdog.

“In the gold watch voting contest of the Albany Journal for the most popular railroad station agent appears the name of J.H. Reynolds of this village, and who has received thirty-nine votes,” the Sentinel reported on Aug. 8, 1890. “Mr. Reynolds is not likely to win the prize, but on the basis of popularity, he is justly entitled to it.”

Reynolds’ railroad employment dated back to 1852, when the Rutland and Washington Railroad hired him as its station agent at Middle Granville. A few months later he was transferred to the Granville station, where his career continued for more than 45 years.

He stayed on when the Delaware & Hudson Railroad took over the line through Granville, which extended from Rutland southwest along the border of New York and Vermont to a junction with the Boston & Maine Railroad at Eagle Bridge, N.Y.

Reynolds owned a home in Granville and, for many years, a vacation cottage at Lake St. Catherine known as the Idylwild, which he sold in 1898.

The Sentinel reported on Nov. 30, 1890 that Reynolds was among 30 Granville residents who were set to have telephones installed at their homes.

On April 22, 1896, The Greenwich Journal republished a Troy Record report describing Reynolds as “probably the oldest agent in point of service” in the United States.

And on Oct. 20, 1899, the Sentinel republished a Poultney Journal report that Reynolds was one of just two former Rutland and Washington employees still working on the line after the recent death of a third.

The Rutland and Washington helped to provide an essential rail link from Canada through Vermont to the Albany area and points south and west. Its construction in the early 1850s allowed for year-round cargo transportation through the region as an alternative to the state’s canal system, which was shut down during the winter months.

Although the rail line operated throughout the winter, the trains sometimes were delayed by snow.

“The train which left here yesterday morning on the Rutland and Washington Railroad was all day in reaching Granville,” the Sentinel reported on Jan. 19, 1865. “The detention was caused by the snow and the train getting off the track. No train came in during the day on that track.”

A natural phenomenon that delayed trains on the local line made news in the Daily Gate City of Keokuk, Iowa, on Sept. 14, 1860.

“The Springfield (Mass.) Republican says that trains over the Rutland and Washington Railroad are considerably impeded in their passage by the myriads of grasshoppers that lodge on the railroad track and are crushed beneath the giant wheels of the engine,” the Iowa newspaper reported. “The track is rendered as slippery and greasy by the crushed mass that is almost impossible for any headway to be made on the upgrades.”

 

Connecting to the world
Merritt Clark, a businessman who served a number of terms in the Vermont state legislature, and Thomas Canfield, who later was involved with the Northern Pacific Railroad, chartered the Rutland and Washington in 1847, and organized it in 1848-49, The New York Daily Tribune reported on Dec. 26, 1850.

The railroad would pass through an area with about 30,000 residents and robust marble, slate and agricultural industries.

“At Rutland, the railroad reaches the richest marble quarries in the Union,” the Daily Tribune wrote. “They are unequalled in all their varieties, except statuary marble from Italy.”

Directors of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad, a separate Vermont line, expressed hope at the company’s 1848 annual meeting of connecting to the proposed Rutland and Washington Railroad, “a road recently chartered, and one, it is confidently believed, soon to be built,” The Galaxy of Middlebury reported on Jan. 25, 1848.

The newspaper predicted the new railroad would open up trade by linking the region to “the waters of Lake Champlain, at the head of navigation, the markets of the Hudson River, and the immense trade and travel of the great West.”

The Dec. 26, 1850, Daily Tribune article reported that 11 miles of track, from Rutland to Castleton, had been constructed and was operating, and that the remaining track was under contract to be constructed the next year. Other sources state that the full line began operating in 1852.

After the Panic of 1857, the railroad baron Jay Gould bought out most of the bonds and took control of the Rutland and Washington Railroad. Eventually the line became the Washington Branch of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, and continued as such through much of the 20th century.

The D&H abandoned the line from Castleton, Vt., south to Salem, N.Y., in the early 1980s, and much of that portion has since been turned into a recreational trail.

 

Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star of Glens Falls for 21 years before retiring in 2017. He now is a freelance writer focusing on the history of politics, labor and media in the region.