Once Five Railroads; Today Almost None
[Newark Sunday Spectator, February 27, 1977; also with some variations in “Annals of Newark” by Cecilia B. Jackson, 1979]
Newark once had full service from five railroads. Today she has limited freight service from two, or three if the Marion-Newark Road is considered separate from the Pennsylvania.
However, to the average villager the most important and convenient line was the last railroad, introduced in July 1906 - the Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern Electric line. Coursing through the main streets of the village from East Newark to the four corners to the south end one could board a car in East Newark and for a nickel ride to the four corners. On stormy days school children availed themselves of the car in East Newark to ride to the East Ave. corner and the trolley station leaving them only a short two block walk to the Washington School. Mrs. Louis Schweitzer recalls, “If the conductor knew you, you rode free.”’
It was a boon to older people and saved them the long walk from one part of the town to another. Children and adults joined in a ride to Gurnee’s Glen and Stop 48 for the annual Sunday School picnics.
Or, if one wished to go farther, every hour a car arrived to take one to Rochester for shopping or entertainment. Its uses were endless. Employees in Newark’s factories came by trolley from Clyde, Lyons, Palmyra and Macedon. High school teams traveled by trolley to compete in sports with neighboring towns. It was years before the truck and automobile took the place of the trolley. Even today it is still missed by some old timers.
The center of the Rochester, Syracuse and Eastern Electric line was at Newark. The car barns, now the village barns, located on Grace Ave. had offices there, too. The road brought 100 families to Newark, many of whom settled in the Grace Ave.-Bartle Ave. section of the village. Difficulties were met in trying to secure a franchise, as it was felt it might be in competition with the New York Central Railroad. However, it was finally allowed as a part of the Newark-Marion Railroad. The first cars ran between
Newark and Macedon on July 2, 1906. Tracks had already been laid to Lyons and East Rochester, but the bridge at Lyons, the present Blue Cut Bridge on Rte. 31, had not been completed. By the spring of 1909 cars operated between Rochester and Syracuse.
The first car barns in Newark burned in 1912 with the present structure replacing them. Freight service was established during the second month of operation. The motto of the road was ‘‘Your watch is your
time table—A car every hour on the hour.” This was largely true.
The peak of business was reached between 1910 and 1920. Then freight business began to drop off and by 1929 passenger service was practically gone. By July 1931 the work car went through Newark taking down the lines. Even the effort to put on a chair car failed to compete with the growing use of the
automobile.
The trolley served its time, the last railroad to be established. The first railroad completed through Newark was the New York Central in 1853. The only transportation available before was the horse and wagon, Erie Canal, or the Ganargua River. That waterway, which transported the early settlers here, was
proclaimed a public waterway in 1799. The Erie Canal followed in 1825. It was said that the railroad route was placed halfway between the Ganargua and the Erie Canal. This opened new channels for industry in Newark.
As early as the fall of 1851 the Sodus Point and Southern Railroad was projected from Great Sodus Bay southward via Newark, according to the McIntosh History of Wayne County. Surveys were made, directors appointed, right-of-way secured and work begun. Financial embarrassment prevented its completion and for years it lay a hindrance to farming.
A fresh effort finally was made and towns voluntarily gave bonds in large amounts. The work on the Sodus Pt. and Southern was finished by 1872 and trains ran daily. The road crossed the New York Central on a viaduct of trestle work of considerable extent at Newark. The road’s construction cheapened coal as it was transported directly from the coal fields of Pennsylvania.
In your town historian’s files is a ‘‘State of New York Sodus Point and Southern Railroad Company Bond of the Town of Arcadia, Wayne County” for $500, dated Sept. 1, 1870 and redeemable Sept. 1, 1900.
Interest was 7 percent per annum, payable the 1st of March and September in each year at the Union Trust Company of New York City. It is signed by a Mr. Ford, whose signature is illegible, C. Phillips and
O. Blackmar.
The first train passed over the road on July 4, 1872. It had stations at Newark, Fairville and Zurich. The railway commissioners in the ’90s were Clark Phillips, J.G. Pitts and Peter R. Sleight. This route to Sodus Point was popular with summer people at the Point, providing them with an easy means of access to their summer homes.
However, as time went on, mothers found that the 72 blasts of the piercing whistle from the engines woke their babies at 3 a.m., when it seemed much of the switching took place at Newark. C.W. Burgess, who has made a study of the fact, states that the engine was uncoupled to go into the yards to take on water, and tooted its way there and back. Coupled again with the train, it proceeded noisily, on its way to Sodus Point.
Only four toots are required for each crossing, but it could be heard approaching for miles to the south over the many rural crossings before actually reaching Newark. Maple Avenue, Church Street, Miller and Murray Streets had to be crossed and reversed. One engineer had a girlfriend, so the story goes, in the neighborhood and he gave a few extra toots for her benefit.
The road was commonly called the ‘Slow Pay and Seldom”’, but it served well both freight and passengers until the passenger service was discontinued in 1935. A gasoline car, called the “Toonerville’’ traversed the road morning and afternoon from 1923 until 1935 after passenger service by steam was discontinued. The road was sold to the Northern Central in 1880 and on Aug. 1, 1914 to the Pennsylvania Railroad. On Feb. 1, 1968 Penn Central became the owners and it is now part of the Conrail system as of April 1, 1976.
Just before the end of 1976 tracks south of Newark to Stanley were removed from the roadbed. When the crew started to remove the tracks by the Hallagan Manufacturing Co., which still uses the line in a limited capacity, they blocked the road and made hurried calls to headquarters in Philadelphia and the work was stopped and the tracks left. These are used by Hallagan, Marion Foods and Palmer Distributors.
Years ago a newspaper story stated that the old Universalist Church on E. Miller St. which was on the site of the Sodus Point and Southern, was converted into a railroad station. However, the
station of today was never the old Universalist Church. The present station was purchased in 1970 by Donald E. Palmer. His two sons, Gerard A. and Douglas F. Palmer had it converted into four apartments.
In 1884 the West Shore Railroad was opened with a large passenger station and freight office at Newark. It-was taken over by the New York Central two years later. Early in this century the passenger station located about where the Carr Lumber Co. now is, was dismantled, but the freight buildings were not leveled until urban renewal arrived in Newark. They were on the property of the present OTB office and the New York State Employment office.
The Marion Railroad, eight miles of track connecting Newark and Marion, was incorporated in 1900. A newspaper clipping of May 1900 states that the directors of the Newark and Marion Railway Co. held a meeting in the Sherman Opera house Tuesday, May 15. Directors present were C.L.B. Tylee, C.N. Tylee, H.C. Sill of Penn Yan, W.H. Kelley, E.V. Peirson and F.D. Burgess of Newark. W.H. Nicholoy of Newark and C.H. Scutt of Marion were unable to be present. The meeting was to elect officers and they were: president and general manager, C.L.B. Tylee; vice-president W.H. Kelley; treasurer, E.V. Peirson and secretary, F.D. Burgess.
The road was opened Dec. 14, 1905. For this trip, souvenir tickets were given and a chicken dinner served at Newark, free of charge, before the return run. F.D. Burgess was superintendent until 1912 when he was replaced by P.H. Collins. Mr. Burgess once stated that the greatest claim to fame the Marion Railroad had was the quarter mile of grading and bridge west of Newark which was the “one thing
the Marion Railroad had over the New York Central.” His diary reported that Sundays were spent ‘‘cleaning Mary Ann’s boiler” [the locomotive] preparatory for the next week’s run. The Marion railroad reached its heyday during the ’30s when it transported more celery than any road of its length in the country. Today, with the advent of the large trailer trucks its trips are made ‘‘when needed” which is two or three times a week. From a total of over 1,325 carloads a year of celery, carrots, onions and canned goods it has dropped to some fertilizer products, a few canned and frozen goods, potatoes, coal and ladders.
The tracks were originally laid down N. Main Street until the West Shore Railroad refused to let the new line cross their tracks. It was then continued down E. Pearl Street and a spur took it onto the old
Northern Central or Sodus Point and Southern tracks, ending at the freight office, once called the ‘‘car knockers’’ shanty just south of the celery wash and cold storage plant on Murray St.
Today Jim Topping of Wolcott, a railroad man for 28 years, is freight agent for all active Newark lines. With his office in the building on Murray Street, he directs the cars to the spur at the Central where they are picked up and taken to the yards at Fairport for distribution. Robert Newell, employed for 45 years, was last stationed at Lyons with three assistant agents. After the station at Newark was closed with no regular agent, it was opened each day by an assistant agent sent from Lyons to sell tickets for the one or two trains on the line which stopped here. The West Shore freight station was closed in 1957, according to Newell, and all freight transferred to the main line. Twelve trains stopped at Newark daily before 1957. By 1967 Newark had been eliminated from the time table.
One of the early ticket agents at the Newark station of the New York Central was Mrs. Martha E. Donk who retired Sept. 1, 1928 after 55 years as telegrapher and ticket agent, 54 years of which were spent in Newark. She was the oldest woman employee at the time of her retirement. She lived to be 94.*
John Murphy was another long-time employee of the railroads. Now a resident of an Elmira nursing home, he was employed for 59 years, 41 of which were as agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the old Sodus Point and Southern. Many others served all their working lives on the railroads.
No longer are the cars of freight sent to Lyons for redistribution, according to Jim Topping. Inbound cars are from Fairport, outbound sent from Fairport to Buffalo. Newark firms still serviced are Fold-Pak,
Marion Foods, Kerr-McGee Chemical, Hallagan, Roy Mason, Caves Lumber and Palmer Distributors. The line is still open to the Point, but the West Shore goes only from Newark to the area just beyond Roy Mason’s.
The answer of what happened to the railroad has several different explanations. Arthur Dailor of Marion Foods says that his company ship 95 percent by truck while five years ago it was 20 percent
by rail and 80 percent by truck. He blames the poor service, the cars in poor condition, leaky roofs, dirt. Two years ago two-thirds of the cars were turned down for lack of maintenance. Yet he admits in emergencies the railroad is still needed but should be better organized to combat the advances the trucking companies have made. The railroads failed to meet the challenge.
The railroad on the other hand denies this. The case of the railroad is best expressed in a letter written to trainmasters, road foremen, general yardmasters, agents taken from an editorial in the Dec. 11, 1967 ‘‘Railway Age”’ entitled ‘‘Why The Twentieth Century Died”’.
The reasons for the end of the railroad era are many and complex. But the fact remains, that Newark is no longer the busy railroad center and many of our younger residents have no memories of this part of Newark’s past.
West Shore Station in Newark
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
Monday, June 29, 1953
Woman Rail Veteran Dies at 94 in Newark
____
Newark - Mrs. Martha E. Donk, one of Newark’s oldest residents and a retired telegrapher and ticket agent on the New York Central Railroad, died Saturday (June 27, 1953) in Newark Hospital. She was 94.
Mrs. Donk was born in Oswego, August 16, 1858.
She retired on Sept. 1, 1928, after 55 years and four months as telegrapher and ticket agent on the Central line, 54 years of which were spent in Newark. At the time of her retirement she was the oldest woman employee of the New York Central.
Mrs. Donk came from a railroad family. Three members of her family had served the New York Central for a total of 125 years. Her husband, Augustus, worked from 1865 to 1908 and he was pensioned. Her son, James, had been employed by the railroad for 35 years. He retired in 1944 on a disability pension.
Mrs. Donk, who was also a well known singer here, learned telegraphy at the Syracuse station. After three months in Syracuse, she went to Amboy, west of Syracuse, whee she spent five months, and then came to Newark in1874 at the age of 16. At that time the New work Central was building two additional tracks for a four-track road, and the locomotives burned wood.
Mrs. Donk’s maiden named was Martha A. Toissaint and she married her husband April 27, 1877. Mr. Donk was a freight agent at the time of their marriage but previously he had been a stationary engine in charge of the sawing up of the lengths of wood for the locomotives.
The late Mr. Donk was a veteran of the Civil War. Mrs. Donk was a member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and the former Relief Corps of the G. A. R.
Surviving are two daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth Doty of Newark and Mrs. Harry Wood of Oswego; one son, James Donk of Newark; two grandchildren, Mrs. Homer Gutchess of Cortland and Dr. James R. Doty of Lapeer, Mich., and four grandchildren.
Private funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow from the Stuerwald-Scott Funeral Home on West Miller St. with the Rev. F. W. Dorst, pastor of St. Mark’s Church, officiating. Burial will be in Newark cemetery. Friends may call at the Stuerwald-Scott home from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m.
