Dear Members:
I am sorry for sending this a second time but I forgot to include a very important photo of Tom Girard….My apologies, Ron Vassallo
I couldn’t help thinking about Clyde Conrow’s account of the last train from his “Memories of Pop & the O&W Railway” when reading Joey’s piece on the closing of the O&W 66 years ago. Clyde recalled the story of General Manager Tom Girard calling Norwich Operator Ray McElligot to send the last train from Norwich and asking the operator to make several copies of the final order for posterity.
Girard, a second-generation O&W man, had a great sense of history and served as Historian for the City of Middletown for decades. In his call to McElligot he asked the operator to bring the duplicate train orders to Cadosia on the 30th and to unscrew and bring the dispatchers phone that had received the final call. Here is a photo of the phone that formally closed the railway. The original train order and clearance card from the last run was donated to the society by Engineer Hank Cortright years ago but duplicates like the one in Joey’s piece have slowly filtered onto the collectors market.
The Utica and Binghamton papers “pooled” a reporter for a round trip from Middletown to Norwich returning on the last train. The reporter interviewed the crew on their way to Norwich and rode back to Middletown on the last train. His multi-page article is on file at the archive and should be reprinted sometime in the future. Here as well is a photo of my friend and mentor Tom Girard on the porch of the Historical Society from May of 1973. Many years ago Fred’s son reached out to me and wanted me to have his father’s keys that rode along on that ride-a very high honor indeed!
Here are links to Engineer Hank Kortright and Trainman Fred Shild with photos from the article.
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Henry P. Kortright of Myrtle Avenue, Middletown, a retired engineer for the N. Y. O. & W. Ry. Middletown and a lifelong Middletown area resident , died Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1987 at Horton Memorial Hospital Middletown, after a brief illness. He was 95. The son of the late Henry N. and Estola Sager Kortright, he was born…
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Born on 20 Feb 1890. Died on 18 Feb 1965. Buried in Middletown, New York, USA.
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