From 1875 map of the town of Phelps
Canandaigua Messenger, July 31, 1953
Phelps Junction Busy Place
Again Due To Thruway - Like
Old Times To A. S. Hildreth
by Alice Barton
“Phelps Junction Lives Again.”
The dandelions and Queen Anne’s lace growing between ties of the Pennsylvania and New York Central rails at the once-busy junction are now covered with diesel oil and cement dust. Phelps Junction has come alive, with the building of the super-highway, New York State Thruway, and the very means of the Junction’s decline - motor transit - is now causing the sidings to be full of covered hoppers of bulk cement and long flatcars of reinforcing steel for the highway. Trucks busily ply between the nearly Thruway and the Junction, transporting the cement and steel and other supplies.
Phelps Junction 50 years ago was the center of business activity and passenger travel. A. S. Hildreth, 40 W. Main St., agent for the Pennsy and New York Central railroads for more than 50 years, remembers well when he arrived at Phelps Junction August 1, 1902, just 51 years ago this week.
There was a passenger train each way every two hours, and it was common practice for Mr. Hildreth to work 16 hours a day. He was telegrapher, baggage and express agent, ticket seller and factotum at the joint agency.
500 Tickets A Day
Riffling through a box of momentous, Mr, Hildreth found some old timetables, a packet of passes issued each year to him throughout the years and clippings of outstanding events of the day,
One timetable, vintage of 1892 was marked “Northern Central Railway” the old name for the Pennsylvania. It showed the schedule of six trains a day going through Phelps Junction. The New York Central had similar timetables. An even older timetable had been sent some years ago to the Philadelphia museum for preservation.
Mr. Hildreth recalled that he sold as many as 500 passenger tickets a day during peak seasons.
Vaudeville troupes and old-time stock companies carrying their scenery were another part of the big business, according to Mr. Hildreth. Troupes with immense amounts of baggage as well as the scenery were loaded and unloaded at Phelps Junction so that the actors and actresses could make their “one-a-day” stands in nearby cities.
Twenty 10-gallon cans of milk were shipped each day at the Junction; and by 1912, tons of cabbage and potatoes were being shipped in bulk out of the Junction to New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburg. Produce became big business for the railroads until the gradual inroad of truck transit. As highways were improved, more trucks were piled with local produce for shipment to the cities, and the gradual decline of the Junction began.
There are no passenger trains now that stop at the junction. About five yeas ago the old passenger and freight station burned to the ground, and with it, many old records which had been stored there. The only buildings at the Junction now are the Charles S. Robinson coal and oil storage buildings and Mr. Robinson’s office.
Reminiscing on his job as agent, Mr. Hildreth recalled that he was first an “extra agent” sent out where needed to relieve the regular agent and that was his first job at Phelps Junction. Then he became the joint agent for the two railroads.
It was not long after he became agent at the Junction that a tragic accident took place when an engine jumped the track near Sodus Bay and live steam burned many passengers who died. Mr. Hildreth worked all day and all night then, sending messages by wire; re-routing trains, answering the frantic questions of relatives and friends.
Mr. Hildreth was he last agent at the Junction. He retired about 10 years ago. About 15 years ago he went to Stanley as block operator for the Lehigh and Pennsylvania, but returned to Phelps to make his home after retirement. He was succeeded at the tower in Stanley by Howard Cayward, another veteran.
He looked at the long line of covered hoppers on the tracks at the Junction, and tag the elevators from which the loose cement poured into the Thruway trucks. It seemed like old times again to have the Junction siding full of freight.
Photo by Paul J. Templeton
Phelps Junction in the mid-1970s, looking east on the Auburn branch, at the "diamond." This is what was called an "automatic interlocking."
