Trains and Willimantic.

 

    Sometimes a little thing can trigger a whole lifetime of memories. That happened recently as I was walking over the footbridge and saw two black and orange diesel engines idling in the rail yard below. It was a sight that pleased me for reasons I didn’t quite understand at first.

 

    Then it hit me. They were from the Providence and Worcester Railroad. The sight of those engines recalled for me the excitement of some 30 years ago, when the P&W was getting active as a freight hauler over the rails of Eastern Connecticut again after many years of inactivity.

 

    Many of us at the time thought Willimantic was in the midst of a renaissance in the rail freight business. And it was true, Willimantic was remaking itself in many ways.

 

    Some of that rebirth did, in fact, revolve around the rails. There was a coal business that began under the footbridge. They were using the rails to get their coal, and counting on the first “energy crisis” of the ‘70s to create a market. There were other businesses that used the rails to ship and receive goods in the Willimantic area. It seemed to bode well.

 

    I was excited about the P&W because it was a small rail company, and then, as now, I believed small was beautiful. I pretty much always root for and patronize the Davids of the business world over the corporate Goliaths.

 

    The P&W was a small, regional company that seemed in keeping with the grassroots development that was changing the face of our city. I wish them luck today.

 

    There are photos of crowds meeting US Presidents (Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, and Taft in 1915) visiting Willimantic on their “Whistle Stop” campaigns. Ulysses Grant was also said to have visited in 1880.

 

    There is a photo of the Liberty Bell on a flatbed car, touring the country and being cheered by hundreds of people at Willimantic’s Union Station in 1902. Another example of the excitement and life the trains brought to our city.

One of those photos pleases me particularly because I was part of it. It was a shot of hundreds of people crowding the train platform as the Montrealer, Amtrak’s Washington to Montreal train, was arriving  in Willimantic, the first train to pick up passengers here in almost 50 years.

 

    I was at that big party for the inaugural stop of the Montrealer. Many of us had been excited when the train was rerouted over the Central Vermont tracks through Willimantic because of track problems on the former route. I remember writing letters of support for making Willimantic a stop on that route. Thanks to a lot of advocating by folks in the area, Amtrak agreed and we were excited on that night in 1991 when the first train stopped.  

 

    In fact, I  boarded the southbound train for New York City later that same night. As I recall the northbound train came through Willimantic around midnight. That’s when we had the party. It was a different scene at 3 a.m. when I got on the southbound train to go and visit my son in New York.

 

    It’s funny the things I remember: I got on the dark train, full of sleeping passengers. I was still excited from all the merrymaking earlier in the evening. I turned on the little overhead light and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind,  given to me earlier that night by my friend Jeff Beadle, then and still the Executive Director of the Windham Regional Community Council.

 

    Ferlinghetti’s poetry was well-suited to the surreal trip in the mostly dark train passing through the familiar, but somehow altered terrain along the Shetucket River between Willimantic and New London.

 

    The Montrealer’s presence here lasted only a few years, before Amtrak eliminated the stop in Willimantic, but I rode that train many times. It was a great way to get to the city for a day trip or weekend visit. We would board in Willimantic at 3 a.m. and arrive at New York’s Pennsylvania Station at about 7:30 a.m., just in time for breakfast. After a day in the city, we would board the northbound Montrealer at Penn Station, about 8 p.m., and arrive in Willimantic around midnight.    

I felt like that train was our direct connection to the world. One time, Sarah and I  went to Italy, starting out at 3 a.m. in Willimantic, boarding our good old Montrealer, which took us to the NYC Subway system, which took us to JFK Airport, and the next thing I knew we were trying to figure out how to find the bus into Rome!

 

All this – and more, believe me –  came to mind as I stood on the footbridge the other day, enjoying that little taste of early Spring sunshine, and watching the P&W engines idle in the rail yard below.

 

Like I said: Trains and Willimantic!

Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. They can almost see the tracks from their shop window!

By Mark Svetz

This way to Italy

WILLIMANTIC –April, 2007