Radio Script #583

Little Talks on Common Things

September 29, 1963

Let us examine today some more of those old papers found at the M.C.R.R. station in Waterville last spring.

One paper gives the schedule of freight rates on the A & K R.R., ‘beginning December 1, 1853. Mileage from Portland to Waterville is given as 82 miles. From Waterville to Danville Junction, where connection was made for Portland over the tracks of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence, it was 55 miles. On the schedule appears Kendalls Mills. That was because in the spring of 1853 the A & K had extended its line from Waterville to what is now Fairfield Village. When this rate list was published, there was no rail connection between Waterville and Augusta. The Portland and Kennebec had then come as far east as Augusta, but no farther. The old A & K freight rates were in two classes. Class 1 included apples, butter, carpets, chinaware, dry goods. fish, meat, oysters, stoves, tinware and wool. Class 2 listed beer and cider, coal and iron, livestock and groceries. lumber and leather. The basic rate between Portland and Waterville was 20~ cents per hundredweight, but there were special rates for certain commodities. Bricks were carried at five cents a mile per ton. and were reckoned at 1* tons per thousand bricks. Pianos. regardless of slight variation in size, were considered to weigh 3/4 of a ton. and sofas 1/3 of a ton. Empty hogsheads were, for some reason, considered in pairs, 80 pairs to the ton. In the same way, livestock was not weighed, but counted. The allowances were 1~ tons for a horse, one for an ox, half a ton for a cow, 100 pounds for a lamb, and 250 pounds for a calf. Plows were carried at 175 pounds.

Here are a few of the published shipping rules: “All articles will be at the risk of owners, at the several platforms on way stations, until they are taken into the cars. The Company will not be responsible for damage caused by storms, delays, accidents, heat, frost, or leakage. The Company will not be responsible for injury to cattle breaking out of cars. Matches, gunpowder and other combustibles will not be taken. Hay will be taken only if pressed, and loaded and unloaded by the owner. No freight will be received or delivered after 6 p.m.”

All this early freight information that I have just given was published in the form of a big poster, four feet by two, signed by Charles Morse, at that time the A & K superintendent. It was printed by Maxham and Wing at the office of the Eastern Mail in Waterville.

One of Maine’s great railroad promoters was John Poor, the man who succeeded in building the Atlantic and St. Lawrence from Portland to Montreal. Another ambition of Poor’s was to put a railroad through from Bangor all the way to Halifax. That plan depended upon British capital, and the promoters of the connecting road from Waterville to Bangor hoped to secure British money for their line, since the HalifaxBangor road would obviously need connections with Portland and Boston, and especially with John Poor’s Atlantic and St. Lawrence.

It was that unfulfilled hope of British investment that explains the delay in building the Penobscot and Kennebec, the name of the road that had been chartered in 1850, to extend the Androscoggin and Kennebec from its 1849 terminus in Waterville on to Bangor. Prospect of British capital was hopeful until the outbreak of the Crimean War stifled all new investment of British money in American enterprises. So even the European and North American, the name for the Bangor to Halifax road, had to be delayed.

From the beginning two conflicting interests had a Bangor terminus in mind. The prior claim was by those who controlled the Androscoggin and Kennebec, which at John Poor’s insistence had been built on the same wide gauge — 5 feet, six inches — as his Atlantic and St. Lawrence. So if those people, who had secured the Penobscot & Kennebec charter, had their way, the line from Waterville to Bangor would also use the wide gauge.

On the other hand, the Portland & Kennebec, then ending at Augusta, was built on the usual British gauge of 4 feet, 8t inches, the gauge that later became standard for all American railroads. When it was learned the British capital was unlikely to be invested in the Penobscot and Kennebec, the people who held the charter for the Somerset and Kennebec, originally planned to go from Augusta through Waterville to Skowhegan, had visions of building their road to Bangor, and they filed with the Railroad Commissioner a definite location between Waterville and Fairfield. That explains why the 1853 freight rate list of the A & K shows a station at Kendalls Mills.

To prevent the Somerset and Kennebec from laying tracks where they planned, the A & K exercised its prior claim and laid a line from Waterville to Kendalls Mills over exactly the same ground the S & K intended to use. After heated litigation, it was finally decided that the S & K should have the right to build up the Kennebec to Skowhegan, but must abandon their plan to build a line to Bangor. Furthermore the S & K was given the right to cross the Pen & Ken tracks at a point between Waterville and Fairfield.

Construction on the Pen & Ken east of Fairfield started in the fall of 1853, and in August, 1855 the first train reached Bangor. The Pen & Ken was immediately leased to the A & K and became a part of that road until both roads were consolidated into the Maine Central in 1862. Likewise the S & K was operated under lease to the Portland and Kennebec.

It is interesting to note who were the Maine men that promoted our early railroads. The first directors of the A & K included Timothy Boutelle and Jediah Morrill of Waterville, Samuel Taylor of Fairfield, John Ware of Athens, Lot Morrill of Readfield, Wyman Moor of Bangor and Reuben Durin of Wayne. Directors of the Penobscot and Kennebec were George Pickering, Samuel Strickland, Moses Appleton and Wyman Moor of Bangor, and Francis Smith, John Wood and John Poor of Portland. Somerset and Kennebec directors included Abner Coburn of Bloomfield, William Connor and Ezra Totman of Fairfield, Samuel Shaw of Waterville, Joseph Morrill of Augusta, and David Bronson of Bath.

When our first railroads were built, the fuel was wood, not coal, and it took a vast quantity of wood to operate trains in and out of Waterville. Wood was purchased from farmers within hauling distance of the tracks, and was by them stacked up along the right of way wherever the railroad went. The railroad would send out train crews to pick up the wood and stack it at scheduled stops where the locomotives were refueled.

A payroll for the wood train in April, 1852 shows that the men who handled that wood got 85 cents a day. In June, possibly because farm work then created competition, the rate was a dollar a day. As I said, there was a lot of wood, for most of the men on that June crew worked 26 days on that one job. Evidently those old locomotive fire boxes did not take a four-foot stick, because other payrolls were made up of men sawing wood, and they always got less than the train crews that handled it. In June, 1853, while those loaders were getting a dollar a day, the men who did the sawing got only 85 cents.

It is well known that much of the Waterville land once owned by Colby College was gradually sold to the railroad. One such sale is shown by a receipt preserved among the old railroad papers. It reads: “July 19, 1853. Received 6f Isaac Redington, Treasurer of A & K RR, $600, it being the consideration for part of the Newton lot, conveyed to the R.R.Co., with $93.20 interest on the same from 17 December 1850 to date. E.L. Getchell, Treasurer of Waterville College.”

When I examined the old railroad papers at the invitation of Mr. Higgins last spring, everyone at the freight office was stumped by one item that appeared frequently in the railroad accounts in the 1850’s. That item was “rubber springs”. In October, 1852 the A & K paid the New England Car Spring Co. $188.63 for 12 rubber springs. That would be at the rate of a little less than $16 a spring. Just what were those springs and how did they work? Surely, some railroad man must know.

In light of present wages in all industry, as well as the railroads. it is interesting to note what railroad men earned when the first trains were rolling into Waterville. Preserved is the A & K payroll for the month of April, 1850. The highest paid man was Loring Wing, master mechanic, who got $83.33 for a full month’s work. Three engineers — J.E. Rollins, Josiah Goodwin and John Philbrick — got $60 while the engineer of the gravel train got only $50. Three conductors each received $40 a month, brakemen got $30, machinists from $30 to $40. Passenger agents were paid according to the business of their depot, the highest paid being the man at Waterville, $40 a month. Lowest paid were the agents at Leeds and North Belgrade, each of whom got $8.33 a month. Next to Waterville, the best paid agents were at Auburn, Winthrop, Readfield and Belgrade — each at $30 a month. The night watchman at Waterville was paid one dollar a night, painters got a dollar a day, and switchmen 80 cents a day. Typical of the low wages were those for men in highly responsible positions on the railroad. By 1853 Charles M. Morse was general superintendent of the A & K.

Now let us take note of a letter which Morse wrote to the railroad directors about a year earlier, on December 18. 1851. It said: “The undersigned begs to call your attention to the following facts. I was notified by the clerk of your board that I had been appointed ticket seller at Waterville Station. Subsequently, in conversation with different members of your board, I was informed that my salary would be $300 a year, and that it was expected I would devote all the time that could be spared from the ticket office in the employment of the Superintendent and the Transportation Master, for which I was to receive an additional sum of $150 per year. In the above capacity I served the Company for nine months, and so far as I know to the entire satisfaction of all concerned.

“I received from the Company $25 per month, amounting in all to $225. I also received from Samuel Small, Transportation Master, $40 and from General Simons, the Superintendent, $25 — amounting in all to $290, leaving the sum of $47.50 my due as per agreement. I would therefore respectfully request your board to direct the treasurer to pay me that sum. Your obedient servant. Charles M.” Morse.”

Year: 1963