Trumbull's Train Stations Connected it to the World

This is the first of three articles about rise and fall of Trumbull's Train Station and how it shaped the town.

Since ancient Greece, urban planners have recognized that the success of a town or a civilization depended on its layout, architecture and proximity. Commerce could not thrive in Republican Rome unless there were roads that made transportation possible.

The most important Senate class politician could not visit Puteoli or his villa in Tusculum unless he had a horse. Aqueducts were constructed to transport water over large swaths of geography, over mountains and plains to urban places, for life cannot exist without it. So transportation can make possible the success or failure of a people.

The story of the prosperity of Trumbull's business interests and the old industrial mecca of Bridgeport are directly tied with the concerted efforts to build a railroad and incorporate the city, which occurred at the same time, essentially 1835.

Some of the businesses and manufacturing concerns that produced finished products — shipping them to New York, London and the new Republic created by Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton — included hat makers, furniture workers, sewing machines, machine tools, toy companies, paper box producers, brass and copper companies, table knives and cutlery, silk weavers, combination locks, musical instruments, coach and wagon parts makers and companies that made valves used for steam, water and gas, such as would be essential on a locomotive.

These industries would never have existed, never would have employed workers and provided them income without access to the marketplace made possible by the steamboat and railroad of the Housatonic. Also, people would never have been able to travel the great miles to get to their jobs without transport.

The story of the Housatonic Railroad is a fascinating tale of ambition and fate, and the wealth of Trumbull's residents are directly linked to its destiny. The railroad's decline and fall had the effect of preserving our town's exclusivity, by cutting off easy access to our train stations into the 1950s when affordable automobiles replaced public transportation and the rise of the post-war suburban dream gave real estate developers new incentive to zone, build and subdivide land here.

During this time of unprecedented change, contractors and property moguls made a mint and the town rose in population from 8,000 people in 1950 to its present of close to 36,018 persons. This meant greater tax revenue streams but also a shift from the quiet village of the past 300 years.

Few know that Trumbull had not only one rail station, Trumbull Church, a block from Daniels Farm Road and the old town hall, but a second stop at Long Hill not far from the convergence of Routes 111 and 25. The Long Hill station serviced the Parlor Rock Amuesement Center, which during the Victorian age, was our Lake Quassapaug.

A picnic center offered slides and rides that helped the working classes escape the smog filled city of Bridgeport, giving them a day of peace and calm in our rural area. It accomodated over 2,000 people and featured exhibits and scientific demonstrations including displaying the world of the future to our industrial ancestors.

This train system also created the possibility that criminals would use the cheap fare to come to the perceived rich suburbs and employ their trade. The Nichols murderers used the train to perpetrate crimes, attacks in Botsford, New Milford and Trumbull. So as is the case of human existence the entire spectrum of good and bad occurred during the Ousy's existence.

The first train began to run in February 1840 between Bridgeport and northern Fairfield County and the system stopped in 1931, following a cinematic history of scandals and the collapse of the New York, New Haven Railroad and the Great Depression. But its destruction was not mere accident; it was not personal, only business.

It featured both freight service and passenger trains and included the stops of Bridgeport, North Bridgeport (Lyons), Trumbull Church, Long Hill, Stepney, Pepper Crossing, Botsford and New Milford. The first train departed in the early years of promise at 6 a.m. from New Milford and arrived in Bridgeport in time for the first steamboat which at that time went directly to Manhattan.

But the bright future of the railroad, which was ironically one of the earliest in the United States and was chartered shortly after the introduction of the locomotive to this continent, was not to endure.

The Housatonic fell victim to whim of efficiency and the marketplace, following a history of tragedy, business intrigue, multiple change in ownership, political manipulation, federal legislation, greedy bankers and poor public relations.

But they couldn't take away the triumph of that first train which left Bridgeport on the Feb. 11, 1840, with over 40 rods of cars, decorated with old glory, bunting and carrying a band of musicians to play up-tempo patriotic tunes.

Everyone who was anyone was there, for it was an achievement in democracy, the success of human willpower and symbolized an age of possibility. The ghosts of that glorious day still echo across the dimensions of time and space.  

In the 1880s, railroad stocks were the equivalent to the modern IT securities, they held the most potential and we know what some people can do when money is to be made. Huge sums of money and reputations were made and lost by the barons and individuals in this story through the speculation of these companies and changes in technology.

There was an open feud between the Joy Steamboat company and another local railroad, for instance, with ships sinking mysteriously from Boston to New York. The brand new train station built by the Housatonic after they acquired the Norwalk-Danbury line burned to the ground early one night at Wilson Point in 1889 at 3 a.m. when a "lantern" caused the inferno.

The freight house and wharves along with the passenger station were destroyed causing $150,000 in damage, but as these events were par for the course for the little engine that could, the Housatonic put on a brave face and planned to rebuild, "as soon as materials were made available to them. Moving people around had become a big business that may have threatened the interests of others.

The short history is that the train company was founded by enterprising capitalists from the new city of Bridgeport, conceived of and designed by local political leaders, businessmen and bankers.

Bridgeport itself had serious business and credit market credibility for it was a city of banks, as Farmers bank, Connecticut National, then Peoples Bank and the Bridgeport and Commercial banks were all operating by the 1860s.

The original enterprise grew from an effort to build a canal from Saugautuck  to New Milford, and Bridgeport being incorporated as a city just a year later, 1836, loaned the corporation $100,000 in credit to the railroad. Two years later the city issued bonds, providing it with a large stake in the project.  

The engineer of the project was Alfred Bishop, a canal and railroad builder who relocated from New Jersey with his "groundbreaking" techniques for clearing earth. One of the first presidents of the rail was Democrat/Whig former Gov. G. Tomlinson.

In 1887, the railroad expanded its area of operation as it leased the Norwalk- Danbury line for $6,000 a year. The following years featured enormous competition as railroads started to consolidate into larger vehicles of profit and debt.

Later in 1887, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland signed into law the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was the first federal regulatory commission and held as its guiding premise "competition." The law that enabled it set demands on pricing and brought to an end the uncoordinated days of train travel.

A petition from the residents of nine towns in Connecticut was brought before the Railroad Committee of the State legislature asking that the Housatonic be granted permission from the State to expand into lower Fairfield County and New Haven to provide competition to the New York-New Haven line.

The market would be able to accommodate such change, thus giving them a share with the big boys. But the legislature, which was sitting in its permanent new capitol building in Hartford, either could not foster such business potential or chose not to, for within one year, Hartford native J.P. Morgan and his New York New Haven Rail Co. would be threatening to build lines parallel to the Housatonic unless they became part of his plans to control the integrated rail system in New England.

In 1889, the Housatonic capitulated and became part of Pierpont's Empire which extended to holdings in Europe and Eqypt.

Once the Housatonic ceased to be a separate entity, it was just a matter of time before it no longer served a purpose to the grand scheme of things. Then more than 20 directors of the newly-constituted Rail System were indicted. The Morgans were still on that board.  

Following the resignation of Pierpont's family successor came the Great Depression and the bankruptcy of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the Housatonic's parent company.

More than $70,000 in unpaid interest piled up on the Housatonic and it ceased operation in 1931. Abandoned by the big boys, the New Haven-based company applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission to disband, de jure, Trumbull's railroad. Axles went silent, the station closed and the track has since become a greenway trail.

NEXT TIME: A look at some of the bizarre and interesting stories of our ghost train.