The Ogdensburg & Norwood
and loving all things trains, what was not to like about this life?
Layout concept Once in college and even after college,
I moved away from the NYO&W proto- type memories as well as the O&N shortline action. I thought of a long- term future in this hobby, but then, what long term future? I wanted to mod- el the best of all my memories, but how? Then, in 1977, along came the Virginian & Ohio series by Allen McClelland in RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN and it opened up the possibilities of merging both influences. Today I think of how cool it is that Dawson Springs from Allen’s original V&O is in my layout! The next influence came from Jim Shaughnessy’s fascinating book, The Rutland Road. Until the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the late 1950’s, Ogdensburg was the eastern- most navigable Great Lakes port in the
A New York Central train southbound from Montreal holds for the O&N priority train at the diamond in front of the station at Tupper Lake (above). Beyond the diamond, the NYC line heads for the staging yard on top of the helix. Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks (below) is a busy vacation area with hotels, restaurants and the O&N station.
U.S. Financial speculators as early as 1830 saw the “cash cow” potential of a railroad running west from New Eng- land to a harbor at Ogdensburg. The Northern Railroad, built in the early 1850’s, eventually was absorbed into the Rutland with great promise of wa- ter/rail profits until 1915 with the Panama Canal Act. The factual story of typical-railroad-baron intrigue of New York Central’s divestment of control of
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the Rutland in 1915 is very interest- ing. This, combined with a federal law’s mandate of presuming to prohibit rail- road control or ownership of a water carrier, caused the Central to let the Rutland go. At this point, my “re-writing” of histo-
ry takes place. The Rutland, now with- out the New York Central’s deep pock- ets or a corporate sibling Great Lakes shipping line to feed traffic at the St.
Lawrence, decided that the tracks west of Norwood were expendable. Enter the Canadian Pacific, taking the opportuni- ty by its long-running car ferry crossing between Prescott, Ontario and Ogdens- burg, to form, purchase and operate that trackage as the Ogdensburg & Norwood. Over time, the O&N expand- ed across northern New York through construction and acquisition. In 1948, the O&N is a regional, Class
JULY 2013
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