Railroad Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 6, May, 1945, PP 34-37
Drovers’ Passes
By Watson B. Berry
The drovers’ caboose on the weekly livestock train that ran from Ogdensburg, N.Y., every Friday afternoon in the 1880s through to Boston, Mass., over the Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain (now the Rutland) and the Central Vermont was more glamorous to me than the model Pullmans which I rode years later. Those livestock trains long ago passed into history, as have the drovers who created them and whose activities colored the life in that section of upper New York State known as the North Country.
The New York towns of Lisbon, Madrid, Norwood, Brasher, Lawrence, Moira, Bangor, Malone and Chateaugay were the principal stations where stockyards were maintained by the O. & L.C. All added their weekly quotas to the train that had grown to thirty or more cars when it reached Rouses Point, N.Y., and crossed Lake Champlain on an old wood-pile bridge, thereafter only stopping for water or an occasional hotbox till it arrived at Bellows Falls, Vermont, or White River Junction, Vermont, opposite the weekend layover stockyards at Bethlehem or Cold River.
These thirty carloads of bleating, baaing, squealing, mooing and neighing calves, steers, sheep, hogs, cows and horses, to say nothing of the unforgettable compound of aromas, redolent of a thousand barnyards, gave ample notice of their trip to the population of Vermont, and New Hampshire, as well as the North Country.
Leaving every Friday, the train was timed to arrive on Saturday evening for the layoff at the Bethlehem or Cold Water stockyards. As the animals except horses, were to be sold by live weight in the great Tuesday morning Boston market at the Watertown stockyards, the drovers saw to it that they were well filled with food and water before being reloaded Monday afternoon into the cars for the short run to the market.
That ride to Boston in the drovers’ caboose loomed big in North Country boys’ ambitions. Country storekeepers, teachers, and even ministers considered those trips a great privilege. Shippers were entitled to a drovers’ pass with each carload of livestock. These magic pieces of green paper entitled the holder, when accompanying a load of animals, to a journey to Boston on the cattle train and were good for the return trip on regular passenger trains. If a drover was shipping three carloads, which was the average shipmen, he was given three passes. He or a trusted agent went along to look after the beasts. Thus he had two passes to bestow on friends who were not too snooty to ride a caboose.
On that occasion I was able to bring from Dr. Van Allen, principal of the old Lawrenceville Academy, a letter addressed to my father excusing me from attendance at classes for one week provided that I take along with me Loomis’s Geometry and come back prepared to demonstrate the problems taken up while I was absent. That was a tough deal, involving many painful hours of labor. Dr. Van Allen was a strict disciplinarian ; he exacted literal compliance with the terms of the harsh contract.
At last the great day came, a beautiful June afternoon in 1884. The day had been full of excitement attending the arrival of many wagonloads of lambs. Pens at the Lawrence stockyards were full of noisy
lambs, each of them given a red mark indicating my father’s ownership. The final “woolly” had been crowded into the upper deck of the last of the three cars, car doors had been sealed, and the livestock train had arrived; drawn by one of the new Mogul engines which E. H. Harriman, son-in-law of W. J. Averell, president of the O&LC, had purchased a short time before.
Our three carloads of lambs were added to the others. As my father and I climbed into the caboose we were greeted by the conductor, Abe Baldwin, and by drovers who had joined the train with their stock
a few stations back.
The caboose had been constructed in the company’s Malone shops, where the Machinist Wilder had designed and built the first refrigerator car in the United States thirty years before, as I explained
in the February ’38 issue of Railroad Magazine. It was extra large, containing a wash-stand, a barrel of ice-water, a wood-burning stove, chairs, a dozen open berths, and the customary cupola. The trainmen used a smaller caboose. All the drovers “chipped in” a few dollars for the crew’s services in looking after their car.
Rather crude by present-day standards, the hack was then considered something very special. At the wash-stand stood a small butter-tub filled with home-made, soft soap. We received a bad jolt when we were pulling into Malone and bumped into a work train. Air brakes would have prevented this, but we had only hand brakes. Baldwin, the conductor, was talking with a drover when the impact came.
Everything that was not fastened down was thrown about. The tub of soft soap shot up to the ceiling
and came down neatly, bottom side up, on Mr. Baldwin’s head, with a gallon of the strong soap running down through his hair and over his face. The skipper sputtered and swore, threatening dire consequences. But he got only a laugh and the nickname “Soapy,” which stuck to him.
Our train stopped for an hour at Burlington, Vt., where the hungry drovers piled into a big restaurant in the Rutland’s covered station. Gongs on the walls rang three minutes before the departure of trains. I have never forgotten the impressions I received when I first saw these covered depots in St. Albans, Burlington, Essex Junction and Rutland.
After eating heartily, we made a quick run to Bellows Falls, where several other similar trains pulled in from New England points. These were shunted over to Cold River, N. H., and unloaded into stock-
yards there. Drovers ate in an excellent country tavern at the foot of Fall Mountain. The station agent had a sort of concession whereby he supplied feed for the livestock. He was also a good penman and picked up a tidy sum each year by preparing copybooks which he sold to drovers to take home to their boys and get them started to writing legibly.
Everybody seemed to be having a good time on the trip. In that year James G. Blaine was Republican candidate for the Presidency and all the drovers that I knew were Republicans. It was not surprising
that the town’s selectmen presented large lithographs of Blaine and his running mate to hang up in the “cattle club,” as the drovers’ caboose was called.
Monday afternoon we loaded the stock again. Soon after daylight Tuesday we arrived without incident at Watertown, on the edge of Boston. Dozens of other similar trains were arriving from Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. An early breakfast was served at the Union Stockyards Hotel. There were no grapefruit, no tomato juice, no frills. It was a filling meal—oatmeal (the old-fashioned kind, cooked all night), baked potatoes and sirloin steaks.
I was sorry to leave the hospitable drovers’ caboose, but eager to see the mammoth lamb market. The drovers donned long linen dusters that came down to their heels, to protect their clothing from the smells and dirt of sheep-pens. Sales were put through quickly, and due bills were handed to the drovers, who cashed them at the buyers’ Boston offices.
Horse-drawn streetcars took us in to the big city, where we took in the sights. That evening at the Boston & Maine station we boarded a sleeper for home. No sleeping-car has ever seemed to me so wonderful as that one of sixty years ago. We arrived half an hour early. The washroom was palatial compared with the washstand in the drovers’ caboose. There was a hand pump at each basin. I started to pump-and was enjoying it when the conductor rushed in excitedly.
“Bub,” he said, “if you want to play with that thing wait till we” pull out. You’re running water all over the platform.”
I was deeply embarrassed. Well, we breakfasted in the St. Albans covered station restaurant, and by noon were back in our little village. Then I suddenly realized with dismay that I had not even looked at my Loomis’s Geometry. I knew I would have to pay for this sad neglect, but my ride on the drover’s pass was worth it.
