Steadily the Black River sought to improve its service. As it succeeded in so doing it became more and more of a thorn in the side of the R. W. & O. It touched that system at three points only—but they were important points. It was a slightly longer route into Watertown from the New York Central’s main stem, but considerably shorter to both Philadelphia—where it crossed the R. W. & O. at a precise right-angle—and Ogdensburgh. At the first of these two last towns it developed an irritating habit of holding its trains until the Rome road train had come, in hopes of luring Ogdensburgh passengers away from it and getting them in to their destination at an earlier hour than they had hoped. Several times it was suggested that the roads pool their interests and work in harmony. For one reason or another this was accomplished but once—the R. W. & O. management almost always opposed such plans. It apparently preferred to play the lone hand.
The Utica & Black River had a very considerable tourist advantage in reaching the St. Lawrence River at Clayton, in the very heart of the Thousand Island district, instead of at Cape Vincent, which was rather remote from the large hotel and cottage sections. It established its own boat connections with the John Thorn, as the flagship of its fleet.
John Thorn’s name and personality were again reflected in a fine coal-burning, Schenectady-built locomotive, which also bore his name (the U. & B. R. in those days had a decided penchant for the engines that the Ellises were building at Schenectady). Its motive-power was almost always in the pink of condition, brightly painted like its cars, which bore the same shade of yellow upon their sides that had been borrowed from the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. Like the R. W. & O., the locomotives were all named. In addition to the John Thorn, there were the Isaac Maynard, the DeWitt C. West (named after a resident of Lowville, who was an early president of the road), the Theodore Faxton, the Fred S. Easton, the Charles Millar, the John Butterfield, the J. F. Maynard, the Ludlow Patton, the A. G. Brower, the Lewis Lawrence, the D. B. Goodwin, and others too. The road at the end of the seventies had a fleet of about twenty locomotives.
There was one time, at least, when the upkeep of the motive power suffered a real shock. I am referring to the noisy way in which the road entered Watertown, by the explosion of the locomotive Charles Millar, No. 4, near the Mill Street crossing there on May 9, 1872. It was one of the few accidents, however, in the entire history of the Utica & Black River. Augustus Unser, better known as “Gus” Unser, of Watertown was at that time engineer of the Millar, which was one of the earliest wood-burners that the road ever possessed—it did not begin the installation of coal grates until 1874. Unser was standing in the cab at the moment of the explosion, talking to Jacob H. Herman—better known as “Jake” Herman—who was at that time conductor on the Rome road.
Without the slightest warning came the explosion. There was a terrific roar and a crash, followed by a rain of small engine parts over a goodly portion of Watertown. Fortunately neither Unser nor Herman were seriously injured. An investigation into the cause of the wreck, which tore the Millar into an unrecognizable mass of metal, failed to develop the cause of the accident. It was generally supposed, however, that the engine-crew had permitted the water in the boiler to fall below the level of the crown-sheet.
Back of the highly developed and independent Utica & Black River of a decade later there stood a pretty well developed human organization. John Thorn was its President; the head and front of its aggressive and alert policy. The full official roster was, in 1882:
| President, John Thorn, Utica | ||
| Vice-Pres. and Gen’l Man’g’r, J. F. Maynard, Utica | ||
| Treasurer, Isaac Maynard, Utica | ||
| Secretary, W. E. Hopkins, Utica | ||
| Gen’l Supt., E. A. Van Horne, Utica | ||
| Asst. Supt., H. W. Hammond, Utica | ||
| Gen. Pass. and Fgt. Agent, Theo. Butterfield, Utica | ||
| Directors | ||
| Robt. L. Kennedy, New York | Edmund A. Graham, Utica | |
| John Thorn, Utica | Theodore S. Sayre, Utica | |
| Abijah J. Williams, Utica | Abram G. Brower, Utica | |
| Isaac Maynard, Utica | Russell Wheeler, Utica | |
| Lewis Lawrence, Utica | J. F. Maynard, Utica | |
| William J. Bacon, Utica | Daniel B. Goodwin, Waterville | |
| Fred S. Easton, Lowville | ||
The final thrust of the Utica & Black River into the sides of its older competitor, whilst that competitor was still in the anguish of the Sloan administration of its affairs, came in the ferry row up at Ogdensburgh. By 1880 the once-brisk lake trade of that port had fallen to low levels. The fourteen-foot locks of the Welland Canal, between Lakes Ontario and Erie had failed utterly to keep pace with the development of carriers upon the upper Lakes. The steamers that still came to the elaborate piers of the old Northern Railroad at Ogdensburgh—for many years now, the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain—were comparatively small and infrequent. Buffalo was a more popular and a more accessible port. And yet the time had been when the Northern Railroad had had a daily service between Chicago and Ogdensburgh; some fifteen staunch steamers in its fleet.