RAILROADS IN DUTCHESS COUNTY by James Lumb
This is a paper about the years between the time of travel by horse, foot and canal on the one hand, and of modern airplains and automobile on the other hand. It will explore briefly a rather short span of time that quickened our journeys over this broad land. Together with the then concurrently invented telegraph, this new freedom of movement made us one country. It reduced the difference in local custom, idiom and accent. It tended to make us more homogeneous in dress, thinking and social custom. It formed us into a nation in a few generations — rather than in a span of centuries. The times, the things and the happenings in this paper, were a mere phase in the changes that have been and still are — going on constantly around us. There will be very little emphasis on social significance, portents for the future, or impacts on ecology. It was merely — but fascinatingly — an interim in our industrial and social development. Its time may have nearly passed forever in the transportation of people by private enterprise. The age of propulsion by reciprocating steam locomotives is in total eclipse. But, it is worth at least a memory and a fond remembrance for its place in our earlier days. When I was young, many people considered the Steam Train a fascinating subject. In my home — members of all ages talked, thought and expounded on the subject. Partially, in our case, because my mother was crazy about them. She'd often take us on a, picnic supper to see those wonderful strings of passenger cars drawn by an explosive, powerful, awesome, vibrating steam locomotive. This could take place adjacent to any well travelled railroad — at home or on vacation. The whistle at a far-off road crossing before the train even came in sight, the pounding rhythm of the engine, the plume of smoke and steam heralding the approach made for anticipation. And then — the great machine came rumbling and wrything up the track, noise increasing momentarily, smoke, dust, cinders, and the clackety-clack of wheel on rail joint until it passed taking its glamour with it. We'd seen the driving wheels, pistons and connecting rods of the locomotive in high powered motion, we observed superior beings gazing at us complacently from their pullman or coach windows, envied persons eating contentedly at dining tables and a brakeman or passengers on the observation platform. It was all much more rewarding than any visual spectacular or any sports event today on the "tele". Where were these select few going? To what destiny or what adventure, were they being carried? And then, as the train receded, the rhythm slowing as it passed us, we watched for the last sight of it, the last car with its red signal lights as it eased around a curve far away. Back in the early 1800s, the first designers, and inventors of rail locomotives mounted an upright, wood burning boiler on a four wheeled cart. They used the stam this tea kettle generated to work a single recipro145
