Wheeling and Dealing the Trumbull Train Stations' Fate

This is the last of three articles about Trumbull's history as a railroad stop.

Part III: Ownership Changes Hands

The railroad was put up for sale a few times. One of note occurred in 1880, when the line was experiencing cashflow problems. Prior to a public gamble, a "capitalist" named Horace Bridgeman offered the trustees $130,500 for the line, which would have solved some of the issues with the profit-making company. But they thought that that they stood a better chance in a public setting and market interest would eclipse his bid (which was not to be). 

In litigation for more than six years at auction, the original bid was a lowballed figure of $50,000 by a George F. Mead. Mr. Dwight Studwell of New York then bid $111,000 of which he defaulted on paying his required 10 percent down payment.

Clearly it was some kind of strategem as he requested from the court overseeing the proceedings for extensions which they summarily granted, by this point the maneuvers made it look like the rail had no momentum and the other lines from New York across the west of the nation commanded greater interest.

This was the setting in which the Morgan-backed New York, New Haven & Hartford Co. took control a few short years before the panic that ended the existance of quite a few companies in 1893.

So had the Morgan consortium not taken them, they may have gone under earlier, but it equally as likely that they would have continued to muddle on. Either way the urban planning for the northern part of the county, including Bridgeport and Danbury, were severely affected. The closing chapter on the company had a lot less to do with the needs of Connecticut residents and the commerce in the region and more to do with the power mechanisms of a few men.

The Housatonic line became a pawn in the games between financier Morgan, Mellen, the New York line president and other competitors such as the Vanderbuilts and Rockefellers. It culminated in Justice Louis Brandeis' attack on the Morgan monopoly and a federal investigation following Mr. Morgan's death in Rome which sent many players to prison.

Morgan's game

Pierpont had as a goal the consolidation of the transportation network in the region and the power that meant for his other business interests. His grandfather, a resident of Hartford helped with the seed money that was necessary to the establishment of the New Haven line.

The family felt a special bond and obligation to the state and were instrumental in the creation of Aetna Insurance along with other interests. It was claimed later in federal documents that Morgan and William Rockefeller conspired and then bought control of New England by buying their entrance into New York City transport through the purchase of the Housatonic line.

This separate business entity then sold it at cost to New Haven to sink the Wilson Point venture, a competitor of the New Haven rail.

While it may have not happened that way, speculation has hovered over Morgan even after he entered his tomb.  It also may not have been explicitly illegal at the time as one of his former candidates Theodore Roosevelt had not yet risked his career to smash the robber barons.

But accusations still swirled amonst the rumor and there were Congressional hearings and the sort that hoped to distribute the influence which had been created in the largely unregulated industry.

In 1830, there were 40 miles of track in the undeveloped United States. It was a young country full of promise and opportunity.  By the 1880s there were over 80,000 miles of tracks around the nation, as the idea of Polk's expansion and Manifest Destiny caught on.

It was also a domestic political issue spurred on by the controversy between the states as the southern states worked to block western expansion fearing a loss of position. In 1862, the Pacific Railway act, with the South no longer a part of the Federal legislature, the west was opened and the rest is history.

Once it was realized that the money would be made on transportation and the amount of power of leverage that came with the rails, all the millionaires wanted a stake, and the size of new infrastructure would not be replicated until Eisenhower offered the highway system, once again revolutionizing the development of America.

As a reaction to the ICC, Morgan created his own consortium to try and wrest power back from government. In 1889, around the time the Housatonic lost its independence, J.P. held a summit of all the big rail men at his home and "black" library in Manhattan.

Most of his plans didn't last. It was simply impossible for one person or even a few to control the entire board. Ego wouldn't allow such utopian thinking.

With reporters milling about, peeking in windows of his home to see what they could about this important collection of men who held the fate of the economy and public transport in their hands, according to one source Morgan started the conference almost with a premonition.

"The purpose of this meeting is to cause the members of the association to no longer take the law into their hands when they suspect they have been wronged....no good reason exists why such a practice should continue among railroads."

Thus began the age of federal oversight. The market and the instincts of the business elite had failed, not just the Housatonic line, but in distorting the potential that existed for the development of America, and the market would not again be granted the opportunity that they squandered during the age of rails.

Echoes from Past

Railroads continue to suffer today.

Back when New York City was thinking of establishing a subway in the 19th century, the mayor of New York, Abram Hewitt, recognized the unique nature of public transportation as a business engine and accordingly felt that it deserved special status and public management.

He said: "It is evident that underground rapid transit cannot be secured by the investment of private capital, but in some way or other its construction must be dependent upon the use of the credit of the city of New York. It was also apparent that if such credit be used, the property must belong to the city."

Thus, the railroad and public transportation in general serve a greater good. J.P. Morgan and other creative capitalists understood this profit potential, and that this potential existed not so much in train fares but control and logistics, the monopolization of ridership and access to the marketplace.

The debate from the 19th centrury onwards continues as there are annual proposals to increase fares. The Connecticut Legislature recently passed an omnibus tax bill that postpones an annual one percent increase, which residents of New York have to swallow.

The problem is that democracy and the railroad have never been effective partners, for there is a false belief that transportation can turn a profit. Two things are constant throughout history, the first is that railroads have never made a profit.

The second is that you cannot accrue any revenue if you fail to provide customer service. Leadership, over time, changes, and knowledge fades away. The business decision that compelled a bankrupt New York New Haven Rail co. to close the Housatonic railroad was made in this context and was predicated in part on the argument that more money would be made if the Trumbull train didn't exist.

Such thinking had a major impact in the future of our area. Anyone who drives up Rt. 7 during rush hour knows what that impact was. Trains exist to transport people and goods from one place to another. It makes possible an economy that would be impossible without the train.

In 1904, when the New York subway opened and expanded, one advertisement quoted the possiblilty that existed when it claimed "from the Battery to Harlem in 15 minutes."

Such change has a great impact and unless you have forward thinking visionaries around the mahogany table, people that know what they are doing, plans can go horribly wrong.

Not long ago, a fare from Fairfield to Grand Central was a little over $7 round trip, now a jaunt to the City can cost over $23. New stations are opening for the first time in 150 years, new cars, manufactured in japan, create a different experience.

Ticket kiosks have replaced customer service and have ended some of the romance of train travel.

Is history repeating itself?  Will lines become defunct?  Is the same logic being employed in contemporary times as have been in the past, and will the change be for the better or worse?

Anyone who knows anything about the railway network knows this for a fact: Transportation will always be a work in progress, and only time will tell.