Short Stories
All Short Stories on sayrehobbyshop.com are written by author: Frank M. Evans
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Frank M. Evans is not only an exceptional Model creator and Model Kit visioneer, he is also an amazing historical short story writer. Take some time with a good cup of coffee or tea and read his fact-based, original stories! Some of which he has published in chapters of book, "Twenty-Five Years At The Junction", which features the railroad history of Sayre, Athens, Waverly, and surrounding areas from 1865 - 1889.
Sayre, Pennsylvania...A Railroad Story
"The din of the Valley assailed one's ears. Beyond the Roundhouse loomed the massively huge bulk of the big shop where steam locomotives were submitted to major operations and stirred back to life. The Sayre yards were choked with railroad cars, the sounds of hammering and banging, all of which would reach one's ears along with the hissing of tortured flames in the blacksmith furnaces. A rhythmic clangor indicated the drop-hammer was in motion creating parts for another Sayre-built locomotive. Switchers wheezed and snorted as they shuttled car into car with much bustling racket. Their air pumps, exhaust, and whistles squeaked, bellowed, and piped incessantly. Now and then above all this fantastic noise, was the piercing preemptory ringing of bells. The powerhouse stacks reared their authoritative heads shooting large clouds of smoke that would dominate the sky above. The iron trail received some of its finest iron steeds from these Sayre shops. Ranked high upon the list were locomotives that pulled crack passenger trains such as the "Asa Packer", the "Maple Leaf, the "Star", the streamlined "John Wilkes" and the equally stunning and beautiful "Black Diamond". Sayre was a railroad town in the finest tradition. Craftsmen and Laborers alike from many different cultures and countries, all speaking the language of railroading, worked together in their daily efforts. The magnitude of their hard work was their equalizer that removed conflicts and replaced such with an extraordinary pride in their work."
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Author's Notes
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Sayre, Pennsylvania is a railroad town named after Robert Sayre who was a man of rare moral character and ability.
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Sayre, Pennsylvania is a borough which was born out of necessity due to the tremendous coal traffic foreseen, and developed, under Robert Sayre's supervision.
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Sayre, Pennsylvania, the borough, was to develop and prosper in all ways akin to Robert Sayre's life, even leading to the development of a hospital, a training school for nurses, metal casting facilities, and a transportation center.
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Robert Sayre was a man who developed this town and left a legacy to be proud of.
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​Part 1​ - Coal
In mid-1845, several buildings huddled at the base of a high and rocky hillside known as Stoneport. The Village was built by James Stone and Son from Mansfield, PA and consisted of a storehouse, canal grocery store, and a canal barn with loading and unloading docks. Stone and Son was engaged to build canal boats for the river and canal trade. The first boat they constructed in Stoneport was called the "Colonel Clover". Mr. Stone also built a canal boat called "Gazelle".
Hopes were high as the Barclay Mountain and Long Valley "Fernwood" (a.k.a., coal), shown by some friendly local Indians to hunter Absolom Carr in 1812 who later made it commercially available to towns north of Towanda PA, came to Athens and fifty Erie Steam coal hoists in Buckville (Chemung), New York (NY). The Chemung River was intensely busy due this development. The canal fee from Towanda to Chemung cost each flat, or coal boat operator, $1.56 plus additional cost if the note needed weighing. (This as indicated if it was noted by the boat sitting lower in the water than other boats.)
For many years prior to river travel, coal was brought down the mountain by wagon loads to the Towanda Canal Basin and loaded on to canal boats. These boats traveled at a lightning speed of 4 miles per hour! In 1856, the Barclay Railroad was completed to the Towanda Canal Basin which increased the volume of coal shipments northward, and also required additional canal boats to be pulled by mules along the junction canal towpath to Buckville and Elmira NY.
The Buckville, NY canal basin was the business dock on the junction canal. It was 181-feet in length. Here the towing animals were cared for, fed, and bedded down while buckets of coal were transferred to awaiting 5-ton Erie coal "jimmies". Large quantities of timber by the cord was also hauled, cut, and stacked by local farmers at $3.00 to $7.00 per cord as the Erie Railroad still had many wood-burning locomotives.
Enterprising folks along the canal were anticipating shipping of produce and goods through the availability of new markets. By 1845, fire grates had been greatly improved to allow both burning of wood and coal in the home. Fireplaces, hearths, and industrial furnaces eventually replaced wood as the major fuel. This coal boom opened up northern PA and NY as a whole new, fast-growing market. People's lives were improved as no longer did they have to awaken in cold, damp morning air since coal would burn warmly all night with just a stirring of hot coals would start the new day's fire. Locomotive fireboxes were able to produce hotter fires for longer - increasing boiler pressure. In turn, this caused the engine to pull more railroad cars. Master mechanics were then able to develop larger and more efficient locomotive engines. Coal was quite a discovery and valuable resource for the time.​
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​Part 2​ - A First Love
But alas, with the excitement which coal brought to the area - I am getting ahead of myself as I want to tell you about Stoneport, PA and particularly a young resident named Evan Stone who tells his story here.
"In 1846, my family lived tightly tucked beneath the hillside. Directly behind our home was a commanding, panoramic view of the Chemung River and fronting us was Athens PA through Villemont NY (later to be known as Waverly NY) - the three and a half mile area between referred to as "All Woods".
The homestead and boat building yard at Stoneport was situated perfectly for our family's needs. We always had fish, clams, deer, rabbit, boar meat, and wild berries around our area. Fresh spring water from the hillside allowed Mother to have running water to keep our food fresh, cook with, wash our clothes, or bathe. I had such a great variety of food that I grew strong and tall for my age. Father said that even though I was becoming five years old, I looked to be seven or eight!
My fifth birthday was upon us and Mother made a mixed-berry pie. Father and Grandfather had made me my own special hand tools, a hatchet, and an axe. Grandfather showed me how to safely swing the axe as well as how to sharpen it. He always said, "Let the tool do the work, don't work the tool." I would sit beside Grandfather Stone on work breaks, listening to the sounds of axes chopping - seeing and hearing the falling of trees on the new Erie Railway through "All Woods".
As I was now tall and strong enough, my assigned work was lower pit saw man as I could pull down harder and longer than Grandfather. We sawed local trees into lumber sizes which Father could use in our canal boat building.
Time passed consistently by and on a beautifully bright and warm July 5th, 1856, Grandfather, Father, and I worked on sawing and notching timber for a canal boat, noticing the canal was extra busy with many boats backing up the line to our boat yard. Mother and Father were always eater to listen to ay information or news about or around the canal, so since we had enough food left-over from July 4th, Mother invited the family on the canal boat near our landing to come to shore and share a meal with us. As they gathered around, their young girl (about my age of 14), tended to their towpath mules. I was smitten! Smiling and staring...stumbling for words as I was introduced to Sarah Springer.
After our meal, Sarah and I sat on the bank talking, watching for the boat congestion to ease while keeping an eye on the mules as they rested.
​As the Springer family responded to the horn that loudly announced the canal lock was fixed and boats could pass through again, I felt something I had never experienced before and I was sad they had to go. With my heart beating alongside my very tied tongue, I bid Sarah goodbye and expressed hope I would get to see her again. I looked over at Mother and she smiled. Her boy was experiencing new feelings because of a smile from a very pretty young lady.
The Springers visited our home several more times that summer and for the following eight years as they traveled back downriver. Sarah and I became close friends during those visits as we shared our thoughts and secret dreams on the future, laughing over silly things, and sometimes just quietly sitting on the riverbank.
The last time Sarah's family visited, which was the day before the canal was to close navigation for the winter, one of her wishes was for a good marriage and children. I told her she would be a good Mother because she had driven and cared for two mules for years now. She laughingly said, "I could see you replacing those two mules." I feigned insult and disappointment saying "You think my stubbornness would only take the place of TWO mules?" We both burst into laughter. Then Sarah reached for my hand and held it while adding a gentle squeeze. The universe could not contain my joy!"
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​Part 3​ - Chemung River Rising
Near midnight, February 17th 1865
"The last time the sun had risen over the hillsides to our East was 3-weeks ago. The rain has been steady and unrelentless, increasing the height of the Chemung River a little each day.
My Grandfather, Father, and I had another of our customer-ordered canal boats very near completion in our canal boatyard at Stoneport. Our hillside cave, behind and above our cabin was our main storage. Located about twenty-five feet above the rear of the cabin was where we stored bundles of kindling, fireplace wood, excess lengths from boat timbers after we had trimmed and shaped them as well as dried meat, bear fat, fruit, vegetables, and wild berries. Apples were kept in homemade wooden barrels packed in wood chips and sawdust. We also stored clothing material that was worn but not useless because Mother would use them in late fall and winter to make warm quilts. Having the material layered in barrels with cedar, oak, or hemlock wood chips were then covered with oil cloth would keep these items well.
My dog, named "Star", was making an urgent but low growl while pacing and whining as he went to the rear door of the family home. My first thought was something or someone was getting into our storage area in the hillside cave. I opened the door and Star darted out as fast a possible up the path to the cave. I threw on my coat and hat while catching hold of the hatchet I kept handy by the door, not knowing what I'd meet. I followed right behind Star - careful to mind my foot holding on the wet path in this pitch-dark.
After reaching the cave Star kept whining and shaking uncontrollably which is something I'd never seen him do before. I didn't see any threat and kneeled down to offer comfort to him.
It was then when Star and I heard this unearthly sound of thumping, grinding, ripping and tearing. This dark monster was growing and destroying everything in its path. When the spray from the Chemung river's floodwaters quickly rose within a foot of the cave, I hugged Star close - being in total shock and horror as I realized that Mother, Father, and Grandfather had just been swept downriver by this monster of nature.
Due to the rain, the river had been rising slowly and raising no immediate alarms to any of us. But when under cover of heavy dark clouds in a seemingly heavy and dark night, ten inches of rain fell upriver in mere minutes causing the hillside streams and Chemung river to join forces. This caused water to rise so fast that it caught most everyone sleeping. The Chemung river meets the Susquehanna river at Tioga Point two miles to the south. The sound and fury of the flood amplified, the sound alone was akin to scouring the land from trees, crops, bridges, grist mill boats, homes, fences barns, and chicken coops as far as the eye could see in this darkness leaving nothing but a thick layer of mud behind.
Toward morning, I felt full of grief and exhausted by guilt. I fell asleep next to Star in the back of the cave where it was cold - but safe. As Star and I awakened and looked out over the landscape, the devastation was total for miles in each direction. Debris was strewn everywhere. The landscape that was once so beautiful and full of life was now frozen and empty. I realized it would be weeks and maybe more before anyone could attempt to cross or navigate the Chemung river to observe the extent of this damage.
With my heart sore and tears still falling, I knew Star and I had to eat something for strength and also start building ​wind-breaking panels to help shield us from the cold and wind. I grabbed any thing branches and vines I could gather to build a fire, keeping it at the cave entrance so as not to spoil the stored food because the cave had now become my and Star's only lifeline. I knew trying to climb along the wet hillside any distance above the swiftly moving debris filled river would be foolhardy. It would leave me exposed to the biting cold with no assurance of finding any better shelter than we currently had. Besides, if I or Star were to become overheated we would run the risk of freezing.
As I traveled uphill of our cave and gathered what firewood I could find, my foot felt a large rock. After using my hands to wipe it clean of dirt, leaves, and twigs I found it was about four inches thick and about five feet wide. From the amount of debris on it I figured it had been lying here for years unseen.
Recalling what Grandfather and Father said about fulcrum leverage when trying to move something large and heavy, I was able to find large tree limbs which, with great effort, allowed me to slowly and carefully move and twist this large object down to the cave entrance. Once a small fire was built at the front of this large rock, it would provide heat toward me and Star inside our cave as well as deflect the cold, February wind so we could stay warm.
Icicles from the springs in the side of the hill were something I could pull down and melt for our water.
I knew I had a couple cold months of weather ahead of me but had to think about leaving Stoneport as soon as the Chemung became navigable again. Due to the flooding, the Chemung was about a mile wider than normal and had everything under the sun floating southward toward Tioga Point and the Susquehanna. Our cave supplies would diminish some every day so it was imperative I do something. As the area slowly dried around me, I gathered enough to build a log cabin-type of front for the cave which provided an area for storage of gathered wood that could be dried while inside. I could build a sturdy river raft from it and also use the front of the log cabin for more needed wood when the time came.
Star and I had been sheltering for about 60-days before the Chemung returned to its original, prior-to-the-flood level. My eyes could not believe the damage that had occurred. My first mission was to erect three crosses made of oak on the hillside about 15-feet above the water. After saying prayers and talking to my lost family, I turned toward the task of building Star's and my river raft. I was prepared to float south and find some form of work as all the saved wages I and my Father had were taken by the flood waters as well. I completed the raft in a day. The following morning, I loaded my axe, hatchet, cave-crafted shovels, food, clothing barrel, cut timber remnants, and Star, and headed southward.
By afternoon we approached Towanda PA. I stopped at the first homestead I saw and a kind, elderly woman and her husband answered my knock at their door. I told them of my plight and asked if I could shave and clean myself up in their barn. They welcomed me and provided clean clothes the husband had worn when he was able to work on the farm. The clothes fit me very comfortably. They insisted on Star and me staying for supper and listened intently as I told them about losing my family, staying in the cave, and adapting for a while to the surroundings and living situation. They told me about their son who had left the farm in the 1840's for life in Philadelphia PA, but who had unfortunately died there.
I stated I hoped to find work building houses, barns, out buildings, boats or cutting cord wood for cooking and heating. As they talked late into the evening, the couple insisted I and Star stay in their son's old room. the husband said he had heard that the new Pennsylvania and New York (P & NY; Lehigh Valley) Railroad coming through town (and moving beyond) was advertising for men who could cut oak or hemlock railroad ties for the railroad's use. Eighty ties a day (equaling 8 per hour) earned a dollar wage. The farm had many oak and hemlock trees on their property which the couple hoped to sell to the railroad. From the work Grandfather, Father, and I did, I knew that selling the hemlock tree bark to the tanneries would also bring money and help the elderly couple since they couldn't keep up on all the farm work.
The next day, I awoke early, did some chores by cutting wood and stacking it so as to help repay them for the meal and lodging they had so freely provided. Star had become an immediate companion for the couple due to the many belly rubs, feeding, and petting of him. They took Star in and kept them at the farm with them while I left to seek work. If I could secure the tie-making work, it would benefit not only the railroad, but also the farm and me. I set out on foot to downtown Towanda and the railroad office.
As I was walking downhill toward the center of town, I saw a somewhat familiar form walking a bit ahead of me. I thought to myself, "This simply could not BE!". Before reason could take hold of me, I yelled out, "SARAH!" The form stopped and I shouted again, "SARAH! It's me - Evan!" Sarah turned and waited for me to reach her, then said, "It took you long enough. Where have you been?" I replied, "A herd of mules and a river flood got in my way." Sarah said, "Is that all?", then reached for my hand as we continued to walk to town. Again, the universe could NOT contain my joy! Life seemed to be heading in a great direction as now I had my first love back and great potential with a new P & NY railroad life ahead of me.
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Amazing and frightening at the same time...
We had only dreamed of traveling faster than horses, not realizing all the patience, effort, and skill needed to do this hour after hour.
Endlessly, my fireman and I built pine knot fires on the floor of a short, flat car inside a three-sided box closest to the locomotive. This was pushed along by our steam locomotive, furnishing the only light on our steel track ahead.
We travel at six-hundred and twenty-feet per minute in what seems to be a never ending tunnel of darkness. After a while, that speed felt like you were falling into a dark hole. Constantly scanning for deer, bears, and other animals - also checking our steam pressure, water levels and listening for unusual mechanical sounds and broken rail joints make the trip seem shorter.
What we did not need tonight, or any other night, is to have dense fog added to our task of hauling freight stock cars from Owego, New York (NY) to Villemont (Waverly) NY, which was the end of the Erie Railway.
Our train cars carried dynamite, gun powder, and provisions for the Erie men who were blasting along the hillside to enable this railway to extend its track on to Elmira, NY.
Because our nightly trip, which started at 12am and ended at 6pm, was to last several months, we were grateful for farmers who felled, hauled, and corded the word on platforms built along the tracks high enough to allow easy transfer from platform to our locomotive tender. Wood and water was accessed every eight miles to satisfy the appetite of this railway construction locomotive.
We did this because the locomotive would be uncoupled from the train to allow running the locomotive up and back the track helping the water pump keep the boiler full while supplies were unloaded. If we did not load to full, being low in water or fuel could delay us for hours - making us dump the fire while we foraged for wood and water, then rebuilt the fire to make steam as we were paid by completed trips regardless of delays or weather.
My school teacher said she had a treat in store for us today. She said we were going to see history being made! We had never seen history being made before.
We finished our morning lessons from our McGuffey Reader, then she told us to line up, hold hands, and she would take us for a walk,. We went outside and crossed the stagecoach road, then trekked down the path in the direction of the combination canal barn and grocery store that was run by Henry Shaw. (Henry Shaw was soon to become the first station agent in Ulster, PA).
When we arrived, some of our parents were there and everyone was in a festive mood! People were chatting about travel, produce shipments, seed, lumber, tobacco, and al other types of shippable items. Every time these words were mentioned, "by rail" seemed to be connected. One of the men put his ear to the railroad track and said, "She's coming!"
Just then, the telegraph sounded in the canal boat that had been turned into a railroad office, and was tied up in front of the canal grocery store. Mr. Shaw came out and said, "She's due any moment!"
The noise level in the crowd raised in excitement, and necks were craned so they could be the first to get a glimpse of this event in history.
A rider on horseback came up fast and announced it had reached the south end, doing about 10 miles per hour, he reckoned. "She's a beautiful sight!", he exclaimed. "Listen!"
Sure enough, something was coming. Gray and white marbleized clouds of smoke were billowing up and outward through the trees. Steady jabs of steam exhaust hit the sky as though it was to make a permanent, new path in the air. The exhaust smoke lingered along the path of the locomotive emphasizing that fact.
As the locomotive approached, we could see people standing on the cow-catcher on the front. They were waving banners, flags, and having a grand time! The smoke-belching monster of a steam locomotive named "Hornet" came to a halt in front of the canal boat railroad office and was a grand sight for all to see. What a great arrival in a special moment of history!