Sometimes these men of the rank and file had their reward. More often they did not. John O’Sullivan’s came when in 1890, after a few years of unsuccessful experimentation, General Passenger Agent Butterfield handed him the annual Northern New York Sunday excursion to Ontario Beach (in the outskirts of Rochester) and asked him what he could do with it. O’Sullivan replied that he could make it go. He had watched the success of the road’s annual long-distance excursions; to Washington in the spring and to New York in October—this last for a fixed fare of six dollars, for a six or seven hundred mile journey. The excursions ran coaches, parlor-cars, dining-cars and sleeping-cars, and did a land-office business. Northern New York had acquired a taste for railroad travel. O’Sullivan knew this.
“I’ll take you on,” said he to Mr. Butterfield.
And so he did. For seventeen successive years thereafter he handled the annual Ontario Beach excursion from Potsdam and all its adjoining stations—all the way from Norwood to Watertown—on a one-day trip over some four hundred miles of single-track railroad. The excursion had a vast business—invariably running in several sections, each drawn by two locomotives, and having from fifteen to sixteen cars each. It carried passengers for $2.50 for the round trip. Few Northern New York folk along the road went to bed until it returned, which was always well into the wee small hours of Monday morning. And yet, it was withal, a reasonably orderly crowd. O’Sullivan kept it so. On the handbills which announced it each year appeared these conspicuous words:
“Behave yourself. If you can’t behave yourself, don’t go.”
Yet a practical reward such as this could in truth be handed to but a very few of the road’s workers indeed. Yet it continued until the end to command their loyalty. Not even the cruel handling of the property by the predecessors of Parsons could dampen that loyalty. To even attempt to make a list of the hard-working and energetic workers of that day and generation of the eighties would mean a catalogue far larger than this little book. There comes to mind a brilliant list—names some of them to-day still with us, and some of them but affectionate traditions: George Snell, who began by running the Doxtater; Patsy Tobin, who had the old Gardner Colby on the day that she exploded on Harrison Hill, just outside of Canton; Ed. McNiff; William Bavis; Butler (who had started his career toward an engine-cab as blacksmith at DeKalb Junction, trimming for relaying the old iron rails that the section-gangs brought to him); and Superintendent W. S. (Billy) Jones.
Jones was a much-loved officer of the old R. W. & O. He started his railroad career at Sandy Creek, as an operator, receiving his messages with one of the old-fashioned printing-telegraphs. One day Richard Holden, of Watertown, dropped into the Sandy Creek depot and suggested to Jones that he throw the old contraption out of the window—it was forever getting out of order. Jones demurred for a time; then accepted the suggestion. And in a few weeks was one of the best operators on the line, which led presently to his appointment as agent at Ogdensburgh, where he remained until the days of the Parsons’ control.
Both Britton and Parsons were constantly on the alert to discover the best available material on their property and Jones was appointed in the mid-eighties to be superintendent of the line east of Watertown, with headquarters at DeKalb. Later he was moved to Watertown and there became one of the fixtures of the town.
I cannot close this chapter of the second golden age of the Rome road without a passing reference to George H. Haselton, who died but a year or two ago. Mr. Haselton was the successor of Griggs of Jackson and of Close, becoming Master Mechanic of the road in 1878, or at about the time its shops were moved from Rome to Oswego. He builded in the latter city the engines that were the precursors of the mighty power of to-day. He used great facility in building and rebuilding the early locomotives of the R. W. & O.—in keeping them in service, seemingly forever and a day. In the North Country a locomotive goes in for long service and, in its difficult climate, hard service, too. There still is, or was until very recently at least, a locomotive in service at the plant of the Hannawa Pulp Company at Potsdam, which although ordered by the Union Pacific Railroad from the Taunton Locomotive Works was delivered to the Central Vermont in May, 1869. First named the St. Albans and then the Shelbourne, she was inherited by the Rutland Railroad and then, after many rebuildings turned over by its Ogdensburgh branch (the former Northern Railroad) to the Norwood & St. Lawrence Railroad. Fifty years of service through a stern northland seemed to work little damage to this staunch old settler. She was typical of her kind—old-fashioned built, and with old-fashioned standards of the service to be rendered.