Getting to School Was Not Always Easy on the M&U - Part I
by Peter Brill

From the M&NJRHS newsletter Vol. 5 #1 “Unionville Flyer”

 

 

The Middletown &Unionville's Brill Model 55 Railcar was the culmination in the companies experiment with alternate passenger transportation by rail. It was purchased on 9/20/26 , the last in a series of railcars owned by the M&U.

 

    For a number of years, the M&U was contracted to transport high students from the towns along the line to Middletown in the Brill car. The towns had schools for younger children but used Middletown High School for the older children. On September 17, 1932, the M&U's General Manager recorded "High School started. 40 students on RR bus." The M&U accommodated the students with special multi-trip ticket books. The Brill car service was annulled in the summer when school was out of session; typical annulment dates were June 27, 1932, June 26, 1933 and June 21, 1940 which turned out to be the end of M&U passenger service.

 

    When the Brill car was out of service, the M&U substituted other equipment from the railroad or its bus subsidiary, the Middletown and Sussex Transit Corporation. On February 15, 1933, the Yellow Coach highway bus carried kids to high school. On February 9, 1934, the mercury plummeted to 25 degrees below zero and the Brill car froze up on train #2 at Slate Hill (morning east bound run to reach Unionville which then turned on the wye and started picking up students on its return. It was usually the first train over the line). Engine #5 left DG yard, Middletown, at 8:42 AM to tow the Brill back to DG and returned to DG at 9:38 AM. Engine #5 and the M&U's caboose then left DG at 10:05 AM to bring in the school children because both M&S Transit Corp buses had also frozen-up. Two M&U employees drove the tardy students to the Middletown High School when the caboose hop arrived at DG.

 

 

    On May 22, 1934, the M&U again substituted the steam train and caboose for the Brill car on trains #2 and #1 (the Brill car was frequently laid up with problems in her power truck). The school children responded by signing a petition that morning against further rides in the caboose. Two men, apparently fathers of students, met an M&U employee at the Main Street crossing in Unionville and said the children would not ride in the caboose anymore.

 

    The M&U responded by borrowing O&W coach 208 around noontime to substitute while the Brill car was out of service. On May 25, 1934, the M&U ran the Dodge bus out of DG yard in the morning on the Brill car schedule and picked up the school children at Westtown and Slate Hill while another bus started out of Unionville on the Brill car schedule and picked up Unionville and Johnson passengers. The children's (and parents') discontent with the caboose was not soon forgotten.

 

    On August 9, 1934, Westtown agent, H.J. Hockenberry, wrote a letter to M&U Superintendent, I.P. DeWitt. Hockenberry noted that the Trustees of the Slate Hill, Westtown and Unionville school districts had held a joint meeting and awarded the contract to transport their school children to Middletown High School to the M&U on the same terms as the prior year. However, the Trustees noted that the children had been transported in the caboose when the rail car was out of service and there had been complaints from the parents that the condition of the caboose (coal dust) had made it difficult for the children to keep their clothes clean and there was insufficient seating capacity in the caboose. The Trustees wanted assurance that there would be no extended period of caboose service.

 

    On October 2, Superintendent DeWitt sent a letter to Conductor E.J. Wyner wherein he noted the agreement with the school Trustees permitted the carriage of the children in the caboose if the Brill car was out of service "provided the cabooses are clean." DeWitt said the Trustees had complained about the filthy caboose last year and if the children have to use the caboose again and it's dirty, the Trustees will immediately stop using the railroad. Wyner is to clean the caboose thoroughly and keep it clean. On November 12, the Superintendent sent Conductor Wyner a second letter in which he referred to his prior letter of October 2 and noted the caboose was still dirty. The Superintendent concluded the letter as follows "Unless caboose is thoroughly cleaned by Monday, November 19, you will be subject to suspension from service for three days." As there are no further letters in the file, we surmise that Conductor Wyner cleaned the caboose.

 

    On February 6, 1935, the Brill car broke both drive shafts near O'Conners crossing, a farm crossing south of Slate Hill. The General Manager noted "School boys pushed her back to J station (Johnson Station). Steam train towed her back to DG." We wonder what the school Trustees thought of this situation?

 

 

Getting to School Was Not Always Easy on the M&U - Part II

by John Deserto

 

    After reading Peter Brill's excellent article "Getting To School Was Not Always Easy on the M&U" (vol. 5 #1) my appetite was whetted on the subject being that I'm a graduate from this district myself. After looking through Peter A. Laskaris' excellent history Middletown : A Photographic History, I noted that the High School on Academy Ave in Middletown closed in June 1940 and classes were switched to the brand new Grand Ave. school. The closing date of the Academy Ave. school seemed familiar, then it hit me, that was when the M&U's passenger service ended. While never confirmed by an outside source, I feel it safe to assume the contract the M&U had transporting high school students to Middletown was not renewed for the 1940-41 school year, or any other year, not because of any short-comings with the railroad or dwindling ticket sales but because the new Grand Ave. school was so far from the railroad.

 

    The original Middletown High School on Academy Ave. was formerly the Wallkill Academy. The Wallkill Academy was created on January 30, 1841 at the 1st stockholders meeting. The building would be 3 floors plus a basement, and construction started in August 1841. It was finished in October 1842 and fronted Academy Ave with Washington and East Ave's along its sides.

 

    One notable story from the Academy was that of a young female student who, after misbehaving in class, was sent to the principal. He decided that some time alone locked in the attic of the school would solve her problem. As the day went on the principal became engrossed in other issues and soon forgot about the wayward student in the attic. At the end of the day he walked to the nearby East Main St. Erie station and boarded the train for home. While on the train he remembered the young lady but had no way to return or contact anyone in Middletown in this pre-phone era. According to the legend, that night a fierce storm broke out over town and neighbors reported later hearing screams and shrieks coming from the Academy at the height of the storm. Early the next morning the principal returned to free the young lady from her attic prison, but after unlocking the door he found that she was gone. Later that day the girl's father came in to the school looking for his missing daughter, for she was not and had not been home since the previous day. She was never seen again.

 

    I can see an instructor relating this story to an unruly class. Be good, sit down, do your work or you'll get sent to the attic.

 

    The story about the demise of the Wallkill Academy was completely grounded in fact which makes it even more memorable. After a mere 25 years of service the Wallkill Academy was deemed obsolete and unsafe, a new centralized high school was clearly needed for the good people of the growing settlement of Middletown. The Middletown Board of Education, led by the Middletown , Unionville and Water Gap Railroad's President, Elisha P. Wheeler, wanted the lot currently occupied by the Wallkill Academy building. After negotiations with the Wallkill Academy stockholders it was evident that they were not going to let the Board of Education off easy. Well Elisha, a veteran of the rough and tumble world of railway promotion and finance in the Oswego Midland and MU&WG had more than a few tricks up his sleeves. He negotiated the Wallkill Academy property be put up for auction between all the interested parties. On the day of the auction the Academy stockholders strode into the office at the appointed time only to find Elisha walking out with the paperwork from a completed sale of the property. The clock in the office where the auction was held mysteriously ran very fast that day. Elisha who was representing the Board of Education offered the only bid of $1,400, well below the appraised value of the property. The transaction was completed before the Wallkill Academy stockholders even arrived.

 

 

    The excavation for the new "Academy Ave." High School started on April 17, 1896. The corner stone was laid on June 11, 1896 during a big celebration. The Academy Ave High School was opened for classes in September 1897. For the next 43 years this was the destination of all those students that the M,U&WG and M&U carried into town. At this point refer to Peter Brill's article on transporting the students. The Wawayanda: Our Town book by the Wawayanda Sesquicentennial Committee has some very interesting first person accounts, one of which is by Carl Hansen. He notes that in the morning students detrained from the M&U's rail bus (they had several different types) at Washington St. which was a mere two blocks from the school. In the afternoon they had time to stroll down to the East Main St. station and enjoy more of the hustle and bustle of downtown before boarding the bus back to their farms and the evening chores that awaited them.

 

 

The rhythm of the passenger traffic on the M&U is obvious in this 9/13/39 time sheet. The morning southbound trip from Middletown (Train 2) was empty, but the return trip (Train 1) that morning was crammed with 60 students coming from the outlying stations to Middletown High School. The process was reversed in the afternoon with southbound Train #4 again packed with 59 students and return trip (Train 3) was empty. This time sheet is from the M&NJRHS Archives.

 

    When I had first learned of the end of passenger service on the M&U in 1940 I assumed the end was like that of so many other passenger trains, after a bright beginning and yeoman-like service for many decades the passengers turned to the automobile and the ridership on the trains withered away. The last agonizing years saw a single rundown coach, empty, save for a conductor and a small handful of ticketholders. But like so many other things on this little railroad, what we assume and what really happened are quite different. M&U/M&STC (Middletown and Sussex Transit Corporation, a subsidiary of the Middletown and Unionville Railroad) Daily Time and Motor Reports from 1939 show that Train #1 from Unionville in the morning and Train #4 from Middletown in the afternoon were packed with kids taking the train to and from school. Their was rarely less than 50 kids on the bus, usually 54-56. On some days there were even more. On December 4, 1939 the M&U's Brill Model 55, which was also numbered 55, took Train #4 from DG yard east with 68 passengers. Conductor Fetherman and motorman Chas. Brown must have had there hands full that afternoon. Later that month on the 11th, Train #1 brought 66 passengers into Middletown. All this in a bus officially listed as having 43 seats. The latter part of the morning trip west, and the early part of the afternoon trip east must have been standing room only even with people in the baggage compartment.

 

 

 

On June 2, 1939, the #55 was having some engine trouble in the morning that delayed both morning trains. What ever the problem, it was taken care of by the afternoon trips. M&NJRHS Archives.

 

    Of note was the trend of increased ridership in the early part of the school year versus later in the year and also the severe dropoff in ridership in the last week or so of the school year. Financial, academic and behavior issues would account for a few less riders as the school year wore on. The dropoff at the end could possibly be due to final exams, and if a student didn't have any scheduled that day they had no reason to go into Middletown.

 

    The last day of school marked the annulment of the M&U's passenger service until the start of the next school year. This pattern continued all through the 30's until June 21, 1940. German panzers were swarming through France, the English Expeditionary Force was on the beaches around Dunkirk looking out to sea for salvation and the last passenger disembarked from the M&U's Brill car and ended passenger service on the line for six decades and counting. The culprit that robbed the railroad of passengers was not the automobile, or even freight conductor Wyner not keeping the caboose clean for those emergency trips when the Brill car was down, it was the building of a new high school on Grand Ave. about a mile from the M&U's closest track. While the students were used to walking long distances to the decentralized one room schoolhouses in Wawayanda and Minisink, this additional trek at the end of a walk to the M&U tracks would have been inconvenient and ripe with possibilities for a student with a "Tom Sawyer" attitude. Automobile buses could pick the kids up from their doors and deliver them to the front stoop of the new high school.

 

 

    When the Grand Ave. High School opened on the first day of school, September 4, 1940, the M&U's Brill car was still in an unbroken sleep from the previous June. The M&U eventually sold the Brill #55 to the Georgia Southern in August 1944 and she was shipped off on a flat car to her new home. The "old" high school on Academy Ave. was torn down save for the annexes that had been added to it over the years. These annexes were connected and the building served on as the Academy Ave. Elementary School. The "new " high school on Grand Ave. was itself replaced by a newer building on the hill across from the Orange County Fair Grounds. The Grand Ave. school was then used as a middle school until a new middle school was built on County Route 78.

 

Bibliography

 

Middletown : A Photographic History, Peter A. Laskaris.

M&U/M&STC Daily Time and Motor Report's from 1939.

Wawayanda: Our Town, by the Wawayanda Sesquicentennial Committee