Noted Elmira newspaperman Frank E. Tripp came from a railroad family. His father and grandfather were locomotive engineers. Although he pursued a very successful and noteworthy career in journalism, railroading was in his blood. As a boy he frequently rode the locomotive with his father and others.
Frank Tripp
He occasionally reminisced about local railroading in his editorials. He was born in Breesport on February 21, 1882, the son of Edward C. and Melissa Jane (Turk) Tripp. They moved to Elmira when he was two years old. He began his career at the age of six as a newspaper carrier and got his first reporter’s job 13 years later with the Elmira Advertiser.
He had a long and distinguished newspaper career, ending it as chairman of the board and general manager of the Gannett Group of Newspapers. His columns had been syndicated in at least 120 newspapers. He died April 29, 1964 at the age of 88. He lived at 361 Euclid Ave. in Elmira. Frank said “My grandfather ran an engine into Boston in 1836, when the railroad was six years old. His son, my father, was a locomotive engineer for 52 years. I wanted to be one too but my father steered me off, because he thought that railroaders had seen their best days. His pessimism was 60 years early.”
Edward C. Tripp was born June 30, 1842 in the old Fairbanks Homestead in Dedham, His mother, Nancy, was of the seventh generation of the Fairbanks Pilgrim family that came over on the Mayflower in 1620. Edward’s father, James Tripp, was a native of Kennebunkport, Maine and was a locomotive engineer on the Boston & Providence Railroad out of Boston in 1836. In the 1850s the family “came west.” First they lived in Owego. James was one of the first engineers on the New York and Erie Railroad. He was killed in a passenger train wreck in Binghamton in 1861.
The Syracuse Journal of Thursday, February 25, 1861 reported:
Death of Engineer Tripp. - We deeply regret to announce that James Tripp, the Engineer who was scalded at the late railroad accident in this village, died of his injuries today (Wednesday) at about 12 o’clock, at the Lewis House.
A few days ago Mr. Tripp was supposed to be in a fair way of recovery and now we have to announce his death. In the death of Mr. Tripp, his family have lost a fond husband and parent, the community a good citizen, and the N.Y. & Erie Railroad company a faithful and competent Engineer.
[Binghamton Republican]
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Edward became a railroad man and served his apprenticeship as a machinist under DeBruce Goodell, superintendent of the Erie shops in Elmira, then went out on the road. About 1870 he became an engineer on the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad. He stayed on after the U.I. & E. became the Elmira, Cortland & Northern, and later the Elmira & Cortland Branch of the Lehigh Valley. He retired in 1925 after 55 years of service, 45 of which were spent as a locomotive engineer. He died on December 5, 1927. He lived at 715 West Gray St. in Elmira. He had two brothers, James Tripp Jr., who also was a locomotive engineer on the Erie Railroad and lived in Buffalo; and Hiram Tripp of Lawrence, Kansas.
The Lehigh’s a Hundred
By Frank Tripp
[Excerpts from Elmira Star Gazette, April 22, 1946]
The Lehigh Valley Railroad is celebrating its centennial. So much of my father’s life was part of its history that I feel like recognizing the anniversary and recalling a few pioneers of the railways.
During the ’70’s Ed Tripp, my dad, became a locomotive engineer for Joe Rodbourn’s little lumber road, just being laid out from Horseheads, through Breesport, over Swartwood hill to Van Etten by Surveyor Mort Rickey. Chainmen for Rickey were Frank Stevens and Elihu Turk, bosom friends of Ed Tripp. Ed met and married Turk’s cousin, set up housekeeping up Jackson Creek in Breesport, where an offspring in due time arrived, to be named for the young surveyors, Frank Elihu. Thank God they didn’t reverse the names.
By 1884 the little railroad had extended its tracks down the old Chemung Canal tow path from Horseheads to Elmira, built headquarters on East Fifth St., moved the shops from Breesport to Cortland, and became the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira R.R. Later, it was the Elmira, Cortland & Northern; then in the ’90’s the Lehigh Valley bought it. My father stayed with that road 54 years. So the Lehigh brought me up, educated me and in my boyhood gave me many exciting, happy days.
The earliest civic grouch I can remember was that the Lehigh would have come through Elmira, up State Street and thence north, rather than via Van Etten and Spencer, that its shops would have been in Elmira, rather than Sayre, for opposition of Elmira, rather than Sayre, but for opposition of Elmira capital which was interested in the Erie and the Lackawanna.
Anyway when I was a young boy, before it acquired the E.C. & N., the Lehigh entered Elmira over the Erie from Sayre via Waverly. The engineer of the Lehigh passenger train which shuttled all day between Elmira and Sayre was Alex Forbes, a friend of my father’s. He had a room at our house, and the Saturdays when I was not riding with my father on “old 24” over the E.C. & N., I was riding with Alex Forbes back and forth between Elmira and Sayre. That was about the acme of envied opportunity for a boy; to ride all day on a locomotive, ring the bell and get all grimed up and greasy. Out of this and a youth sent among railroaders came my lifelong understanding and affection for railroad men - and for the Lehigh Valley.
We always lived in railroad neighborhoods. In one of them we were just a few doors from the Maguires, whose dad was ab Erie official. One of the kids, Frank, wen high with the Lehigh. Another of them became Father Maguire who was the first reputed creator of “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” Later denied.
Then when dad died I learned that corporations do have a heart. Not only did letters come from his superiors up to President Ed. Loomis, but even earlier something else had happened. Age made my father’s ultimate retirement necessary. The Lehigh then had no pension system. My father was none too well fixed and was proud and independent. I famed a deal with Ed. Loomis. The Lehigh sen my dad a modest check each month, preceded by a letter which recounted his years of service and hopes for his comfort and contentment.
Its meant more to him than anything that came into is fading years. He never knew that I was supposed to reimburse the railroad - and ’tis well he didn’t. It would have spoiled it all and wouldn’t have been true anyway for Ed. Loomis never sent m a bill.
Why shouldn’t I like the old Lehigh Valley?
Frank E. Tripp
For Railroaders Only
By Frank Tripp
[Excerpts from the Elmira Star Gazette, January 19, 1950, September 6, 1953 and May 31, 1954]
This is a belated report on my railroad career.
Tommy King played out his string on the Lehigh the first of the year and retired. To me the event would have been just another item in the paper, except that Tommy started firing almost 50 years ago for Ed Tripp. Ed was my dad, a family connection which on a few occasions I heard him regret. One was when I told him I was going to work on a newspaper, and he said: “ugh, you might better learn a trade, so you can support yourself.” There have been times when I thought him right.
[Note: Thomas King began is service as a fireman for Edward Tripp. In 1910 he became an engineer and spent his last years on the run between Sayre and Horseheads. He made his final run on December 24, 1949. He lived at 476 Livingston St. in Elmira.]
Tommy landed under Ed Tripp’s exacting yet kindly tutelage a little late to have the on-the-side responsibility of wet-nursing me on the Saturdays and holidays that I spent on my father’s engine. Yet as a high school lad I heard pop speak often and kindly of Tommy, who soon had his own engine.
Then Billy Rafter and Dick Rundell had their turns at keeping me from under the wheels. Pop broke a lot of ‘em and I may be missing some who will feel glad or hurt - glad I hope. Contemporary “shine line” engineers of that day were Mike Finn, Frank Knight, Charlie Paige, Joe Ready, Noble Staples and Tom Durant. It was before the old E.C. & N. became the Lehigh Valley and sported only about a dozen engines. I have accounted for half of the men who ran them. John J. McGraw was a news butcher on their trains; baseball’s immortal “Muggsie.”
Later when I was in the Academy we moved into the Lackawanna section. Around thee lived railroaders Tom Milan, Charlie Price, Tom Turner, Porky Smith, Billy Schroeder, John Quigley, Ben Doolittle, Billy Coe, the Houghaouts, Sullivans, Quimbys, Dwyers, Coneverys; and the big house that awed us, Billy Peters, who wore white shirts, owned a horse and buggy and looked down his nose at us.
Then came 1901. Florence Sullivan, next door, and I had absorbed so much high school learning’ that we couldn’t converse handily with our families.
That was the first year of comic opera at the late lamented Rorick’s Glen Theater. Charlie Swartwood and George Reynolds, hustling your lawyers, had taken over the Little Giant Railroad from some busted itinerant carnival people. They installed it at Rorick’s Glen. Thus, in my teens, rather than being the engineer, I became “general manager” of a railroad one half mile long and two feet wide. My inseparable pal, Si Haight, was general passenger agent, whose duties were to sell tickets and five cents a ride; whereupon I sneaked out of the general manager’s office, donned a conductor’s cap, rode the train and took up the tickets. We had an advertising and promotion department too. He was Bill Orson, side show barker.
Because my father was an engineer, the budding counsellors hired me to run the engine, which bore the proud number 999. The steam locomotive, and the ten little cars of two passenger each, wee coupled together and made a train about 50 feet long. There was a tunnel on the “scenic nickel ride,” built against a hill like a lean-to shed and covered with boughs to create the create the deception, Basically it wasn’t for scenery; it was the night shelter and winter quarters for the little train.
Running the engine made a dandy summer job for a superannuated locomotive engineer. My father knew my limitations and it was so arranged that Terry Reidy should save me from blowing up the boiler and my carcass with it. I was not to be an engineer - not yet. Terry was an old-time Lackawanna engineer and had pulled the Lackawanna Limited. But at $1.50 a day he didn’t value his new job too highly.
Pretty soon I began to suspect Terry’s observance of Rule G [i.e., drinking]. Where he hid the bottle puzzled me. Then I found out. When Terry passed through the tunnel eastbound he snatched up a bottle which he’d cached at the tunnel’s entrance. Going through the darkness he took himself a snifter, then parked the bottle at the other end of the tunnel. Returning westward he reversed the procedure.
Every few days by mid-afternoon lovable old Terry would begin to get groggy and by night several times I had to take over his job. Which I enjoyed, except that as general manager, general passenger agent, ticket seller, conductor and also engineer, I was busier than the president of the Union Pacific.
That gave Terry two shots each round trip. Some days, after a half dozen trips, it became expedient for Terry to lay off for a run or two and I ran the engine. Just in case the president and board of directors showed up for a ride over the line in their private car.
The extent of Terry’s jag and the hour of its arrival depended upon the rush of business; the busier we were, the sooner he went loco. That’s how I came to be demoted from general manager to engineer - and loved it.
Finally Terry quit and I became engineer. My life’s ambition was achieved. My father used to spend his off days watching me run the 999. He got a big kick out of it. One day I blew a cylinder head. The cocky old fellow made me dig myself out. “You’ve seen me do it; go ahead and fix it,” he said. I disconnected the main and valve rods on the disabled side, blocked the ports, and the little 999 ran all day on one side.
I never got in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen but George Reynolds once carried around a pocketful of annual passes - because he was president of the Little Giant Railroad.
Most of our youngest children will grow up never having seen a steam locomotive in action; nor a trolley car. They won’t care. Already they are bestowing admiration upon the “imposter” diesel. It palls me.
The last job I had before joining a newspaper was as engineer for the Little Giant Railroad in Rorick’s Glen Park. My engine was the 999, a miniature replica of that famed New York Central speed demon. She handled ten tiny open cars, carrying two passengers each, over a half a mile of 20-inch gauge track. When she tipped over, as she twice did, thee of us could right her without losing her fire.
She was a string little bugger. One day when she blew a cylinder head, I blocked her ports, disconnected the main rod and she ran all day on one side, not missing a trip.
Now every week I pass a lakeside park where kids gather about a miniature diesel, bestowing the affection that belonged to the 999. It stings the pride of the only Tripp of three generations who didn’t live his life with steam locomotives, yet always loved them.
Maybe today’s youngsters have as much fun, but they pay 25 cents for the ride that kids got behind the 999 for a nickel, and have less to show for it. There are no cinders in their hair, no soot on their pretty summer clothes. Cleanliness is one of many firsts for the diesel over the steam engine - but I’m homesick for the dirty old devils just the same.
[Elmira Star Gazette, May 29, 1902]
(At a meeting of the park commissioners at city hall that morning). In regard to the Little Giant Railroad which has been transferred from Rorick’s Glen Park to Eldridge Park, the commissioners decided that the engine could not be operated by anyone except an experienced engineer.
The owners of the railroad had made arrangements to have the engine operated by a fireman, but this new order will necessitate their employing the services of a regular engineer. The position will be given to George B. Mattice, who has had twenty-three years experience as an engineer on the Lackawanna railroad.
The Little Giant Railroad’s last year of operation was 1905 when it was flooded out and the owners decided to abandon it. The Elmira Star Gazette of May reported on May 23, 1905:
The Little Giant Railroad has been sold and is being shipped to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where it will be run in Rocky Glen, a summer resort near that city similar to Rorick’s Glen. The railroad, which was a feature at Rorick’s Glen Park for two or three seasons, was owned by Attorney Charles Swartwood, who has decided to withdraw from the railroad business and rather float the interests of the Little Giant on Wall Street sold out at a great sacrifice.
The equipment, which consists of a half mile of track, an engine and ten cars went today. They will be used in connection with another outfit of the same kind. Trains will be run oftener, one going each way all the time.
Runaway Circus Train
By Frank Tripp
[Elmira Star Gazette, September 17, 1951]
Maybe every boy will feel the urge to ride on a diesel - even to run it. Still there doesn’t seem to be the juvenile affection for the diesel that was bestowed upon the puffing locomotive. There's something about whirling drivers and exhausting steam which the diesel lacks.
All of which only prefaces an urge to tell of wonderful hours spent as a boy in the cab of my father's engine. It is the one thing for which I can remember being envied; something I couldn’t share with my playmates, for even in those days I rode at risk of pop’s job.
The ride that most stands out in my memory was in the night, on a runaway circus train, To ride on any engine was a thrill, but to ride the engine of a circus train! And then to have it run away, down a hill with a 140 foot grade to the mile—oh boy!
The original Barnum & Bailey, “Greatest Show on Earth,” was leaving our town over my father's road and he was to haul one section. Days of teasing finally won me a ride. I was only 10 and my first midnight ride on an engine had been granted me with parental reluctance.
We were the first to leave, with the menagerie section, or part of it. I saw the elephants loaded; camels and caged wagons of lions, tigers, jaguars, monkeys and snakes. Then I took my place in the engine cab in front of my father, on a nail keg. Back past the trainload of wild beasts the conductor's lantern semi-circled and we were off. The greatest night any boy ever lived was under way.
What would I not give to live again those moments as I peered into the dark, saw the shining rails and jumping phantoms ahead, felt the thrust and rumble of the driving rods beneath me and heard the roar of wheels and shriek of whistle.
On curves I looked back at the gaudy cars loaded with animals from every clime. I conjured strange thoughts about them. How they took this ride every night; about their life in captivity and what they would do if released in the forests through which we were passing. For an hour these muses possessed me, until I became sleepy and could barely keep my eyes open.
Then the engine cab filled with steam. My father whistled for brakes. We were running away down Swartwood Hill.
This was in the day before air brakes. Trainmen rode the tops of cars carrying hickory sticks with which to wind up the brakes on each separate car. The only power brake was the steam brake on the engine. This night the engineer’s brake valve blew out, filled the cab with burning steam and rendered the air brakes useless. On the steep grade the heavy train was out of control. Brakemen could not get from car to car. The clung flat on their stomachs to the runways atop the cars.
Speed gathered. The wild ride was frightening. I was thrown to the floor of the cab. I could not see my father. He was groping for the master valve to shut off the flow of scalding steam which enveloped us. The wheels crunched and shrieked against the rails. We were rounding curves, dashing through cuts and over high trestles. My dream of animals free might come true, but would I be alive to see them?
A dozen times the engine leaned off the rails, first on one side, then the other, but landed back on them again. My father lifted me from the cab floor, braced himself against the boiler, hugged me close to him and kissed me - goodbye, I guess he thought. We were beyond human ability to save us.
But God rode with the circus that night. Telegraph poles dashed by like fence posts. We passed Swartwood station as fast as man ever rode till came airplanes. Miraculously we reached the base of the grade.
We were safe a last, on a level straightaway. Pop whistled for brakes again. Slowly the brakemen could crawl from car to car. Gradually speed slackened. Floyd Zimmer came over from the fireman’s side. “My God, Ed, what ever kept her on the rails?” he said.
“It was the boy, I guess,” my father patted me and said.
Then he spoke to me and made me very said: “Boy, enjoy yourself tonight, for this is your last ride” - but it wasn’t.
No, we didn’t have any autos, radio or movies. Kids then only had minor thrills like this.
Both children and adults enjoyed their ride on the Little Giant Railroad at Rorick’s Glen in then early 1900s. Here members of the Manhattan Opera Company pose. Engineer is Terry Reidy. Standing on the hillside is general manager, Frank Tripp. The half-mile railroad featured a tunnel. Later the it was moved to Eldridge Park for a short time. The train was brought to Elmira by the Brockway family in the spring of 1901. The engine was first displayed in the show window of the Barker, Rose & Clinton department store. Financial troubles beset the Brockways and the train was purchased by Attorneys Charles B. Swartwood (later judge) and George G. Reynolds. They hired Frank Tripp as “assistant impresario” because his father, Ed., was an engineer. Frank hired Reidy as engineer. After he resigned, Tripp himself took over for awhile. Soon after the Little Giant was moved to Eldridge Park it was washed out by a flood. For years the county court dockets carried the case of the “Little Giant vs. the Erie Railroad” for damages, alleging the Erie-owned culvert had given away during the flood.
George Reynolds lifted many railroad tycoons’ eyebrows in the days of his co-ownership by trying too swap passes with the “big railroads.”
Sources
Old-timer in City Calling on Friends - [Article about DeBruce Goodell] Star Gazette, December 31, 1913
Obituary of Edward C. Tripp, Star-Gazette, December 6, 1927
Publisher Tripp Also Newsman, Columnist, Advertising Leader Elmira Advertiser, July 3, 1953
Little Giant at Rorick’s Star-Gazette, November 28, 1954
On the Newspaper Front, book by Frank E. Tripp, Gannett Newspapers, 1954
The Tripp Saga: Newsboy to Publisher, Star-Gazette, April 29, 1964
Tripp was at forefront of change Star-Gazette, June 6, 2006
