In the meantime the Watertown & Rome was having its own new locomotives builded for it in a shop in the United States. Four of the new engines were completed and ready for service about the time that the road was opened into Watertown. The fifth engine, the Orville Hungerford, built like its four immediate predecessors, by William Fairbanks, at Taunton, Mass., was not delivered until the 19th day of that same September, 1851. The Hungerford was quite the best bit of the road’s motive-power, then and for a number of years thereafter. She was inside connected—her cylinders and driving-rods being placed inside of the wheels; always the fashion of British locomotives—and it was not until a long time afterwards that she was rebuilt in the Rome shops and the cylinders and rods placed outside, after the present-day American fashion. She was but twenty-one and a half tons in weight all-told, while her four predecessors, the Watertown, the Rome, the Adams and the Kingston, each twenty-two tons and a half.
I have digressed. It still is the evening of the fifth of September, 1851. A great crowd had congregated that evening in the neighborhood of that first, small temporary station at Watertown. The iron horse was greeted with many salvos of applause, the waving of a thousand torches and, it is to be presumed, with the presence of a band. Yet the real celebration over the arrival of the railroad was delayed for nineteen days, when there was a genuine fête. It was first announced by the Reformer on the 4th of September, saying:
“... We are informed by R. B. Doxtater, Esq., the gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent of the Watertown & Rome Railroad, that the public celebration in connection with the opening of this road will take place on Wednesday, the 24th September. This will be a proud day for Jefferson County and we trust that she may wear the honor conferred upon her in a becoming manner. The known liberality of our citizens induces the belief that nothing will be left undone on their part to contribute to the general festivities and interest of the occasion....”
Nothing was left undone. The morning of the 24th of September was ushered in by a salute of guns; thirteen in all, one for each member of the Board of Directors. At 10 o’clock a parade formed in the Public Square, under the direction of General Abner Baker, Grand Marshal of the day, and in the following formation:
Music
Watertown Citizens’ Corps
Order of The Sons of Temperance
Fire Companies of Watertown and Rome
Order of Odd Fellows
Committee of Arrangements
Corporate Authorities of Watertown, Kingston, Rome and Utica
Clergy and the Press
Officers, Directors, Engineers and Contractors
of the
Watertown & Rome Railroad
Specially Invited Guests
Strangers from Abroad and the Stockholders
Citizens
The procession marched down Stone Street to the passenger depot of the new railroad where the special train from Rome arrived at a little after eleven o’clock and was greeted by a salvo of seventy-two guns—one for each mile of completed line. There it reformed, with its accessions from the train and returned to the Public Square where there was unbridled oratory for nearly an hour. After which a return to the depot in which a large collation was served, before the return to the special train for Rome.
So came the railroad to Watertown. By an odd coincidence, the Hudson River Railroad from New York to Albany was finished in almost that same month. It was with a good deal of pride that the resident of Watertown contemplated the fact that he might leave his village by the morning train at five o’clock and be in the metropolis of the New World by six o’clock that same evening. Such speed! Such progress!