align="center">Secretary, James G. Hopkins

Chief Engineer, Col. Charles L. Schlatter   Directors J. Leslie Russell, Canton   Anthony C. Brown, Ogdensburgh Charles Paine, Northfield, Vt.   Isaac Spalding, Nashua, N. H. Hiram Horton, Malone   Lawrence Myers, Plattsburgh S. F. Belknap, Windsor, Vt.   Abbot Lawrence, Boston J. Wiley Edmonds, Boston   T. P. Chandler, Boston Benjamin Reed, Boston   S. S. Lewis, Boston

Soon after the organization of the company, T. P. Chandler succeeded Mr. Parish (who was for many years easily the most prominent citizen of Ogdensburgh) as President, and steps were taken toward the immediate construction of the line. After the inevitable preliminary contentions as to the exact route to be followed, James Hayward made the complete surveys of the line as it exists at present, while Colonel Schlatter, its chief engineer and for a number of years its superintendent as well, prepared to build it. Actual construction was begun in March, 1848, in the deep cutting just east of Ogdensburgh. At the same time grading and the laying of rail began at the east end of the road—at Rouse’s Point at the foot of Lake Champlain—with the result that in the fall of 1848 trains were in regular operation between Rouse’s Point and Centreville. A year later the road had been extended to Ellenburgh; in June, 1850, to Chateaugay. On October 1, 1850, trains ran into Malone. A month later it was finished and open for its entire length of 117 miles. Its cost, including its equipment and fixtures, was then placed at $5,022,121.31.

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It is not within the province of this little book to set down in detail the somewhat checkered career of the Northern Railroad. It started with large ambitions—even before its incorporation, James G. Hopkins, who afterwards became its Secretary, traveled through the Northern Tier and expatiated upon its future possibilities in a widely circulated little pamphlet. It was a road builded for a large traffic. So sure were its promoters of this forthcoming business that they placed its track upon the side of the right-of-way, rather than in the middle of it, in order that it would not have to be moved when it came time to double-track the road.

The road was never double-tracked. For some years it prospered—very well. It made a direct connection between the large lake steamers at the foot of navigation at Ogdensburgh—it will be remembered that Ogdensburgh is just above the swift-running and always dangerous rapids of the St. Lawrence—and the important port of Boston. The completion of the line was followed almost immediately by the construction of a long bridge across the foot of Lake Champlain which brought it into direct connection with the rails of the Central Vermont at St. Albans—and so in active touch with all of the New England lines.

The ambitious hopes of the promoters of the Northern took shape not only in the construction of the stone shops and the large covered depot at Malone (built in 1850 by W. A. Wheeler—afterwards not only President of the property, but Vice-President of the United States—it still stands in active service) but in the building of 4000 feet of wharfage and elaborate warehouses and other terminal structures upon the river bank at Ogdensburgh. The most of these also still stand—memorials of the large scale upon which the road originally was designed.

Gradually, however, its strength faded. Other rail routes, more direct and otherwise more advantageous, came to combat it. Fewer and still fewer steamers came to its Ogdensburgh docks—at the best it was a seasonal business; the St. Lawrence is thoroughly frozen and out of use for about five months out of each year. The steamers of the upper Lakes outgrew in size the locks of the Welland Canal and so made for Buffalo—in increasing numbers. The Northern Railroad entered upon difficulties, to put it mildly. It was reorganized and reorganized; it became the Ogdensburgh Railroad, then the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain, then a branch of the Central Vermont and then upon the partial dismemberment of that historic property, a branch of the Rutland Railroad. As such it still continues with a moderate degree of success. In any narrative of the development of transport in the North Country it must be forever regarded, however, as a genuine pioneer among its railroads.

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One other route was seriously projected from the eastern end of the state into the North Country—the Sackett’s Harbor and Saratoga Railroad Co. which was chartered April 10, 1848. After desperate efforts to build a railroad through the vast fastnesses of the North Woods—then a terra incognito, almost impenetrable—and the expenditure of very considerable sums of money, both in surveys and in actual construction, this enterprise was finally abandoned. Yet one to-day can still see traces of it across the forest. In the neighborhood of Beaver Falls, they become most definite; a long cutting and an embankment reaching from it, a melancholy reminder of a mighty human endeavor of just seventy years ago. If this route had ever been completed, Watertown to-day would enjoy direct rail communication with Boston, although not reaching within a dozen miles of Albany. The Fitchburg, which always sought, but vainly, to make itself an effective competitor of the powerful Boston & Albany, built itself through to Saratoga Springs, largely in hopes that some day the line through the forest to Sackett’s Harbor would be completed. It was a vain hope. The faintest chance of that line ever being built was quite gone. A quarter of a century later the Fitchburg thrust another branch off from its Saratoga line to reach the ambitious new West Shore at Rotterdam Junction. That hope also faded. And the Fitchburg, now an important division of the Boston & Maine, despite its direct route and short mileage through the Hoosac Tunnel, became forever a secondary route across the state of Massachusetts.

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The reports of the prospecting parties of the Sackett’s Harbor & Saratoga form a pleasing picture of the Northern New York at the beginning of the fifties. The company had been definitely formed with its chief offices at 80 Wall Street, New York, and the following officers and directors:

President, William Coventry H. Waddell, New York
Supt. of Operations, Gen. S. P. Lyman, New York
Treasurer, Henry Stanton, New York
Secretary, Samuel Ellis, Boston
Counsel, Samuel Beardsley, Utica
Consulting Engineer, John B. Mills, New York
Directors
Charles E. Clarke, Great Bend		P. Somerville Stewart, Carthage