The Train that Never Came

I was on Peg Ellsworth's show on WIOX in Roxbury again yesterday, sharing the mike with Doug Kadow, President of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad Historical Society. We talked about railroads, with my focus being on the attempt to bring the railroad into Bovina in 1898. This effort, by the way, had as its main purpose of connecting Delhi and Andes by rail, but a 3 mile spur was planned to bring it into Bovina. Doug is very interested in this particular railroad that never was.

Over the past month, some research in the newspapers has led to answering some questions about the railroad - and bringing up others. And I learned a lot from Doug about these railroads. I'll be doing a series of blog entries over the next month explaining what I have found about this failed attempt. Did you know that much of the rail bed had been constructed - and in only 7 weeks? Did you know that workers went on strike and nearly rioted when they didn't get paid for their efforts? And what was unusual about the spur to Bovina?

And thanks to Tim Mallery, I now have information on further attempts in the early 20th century to bring the trains to Bovina. The 1898 failure did not end the discussion.

So be ready on the platform for when the next installment of "The Train that Never Came" rolls into your computer (sorry, I couldn't resist a clunky railroad analogy).