The Dangers of Riding the Rails
by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April 13, 2018.
“In the early settlement of the country, the want of good roads was a serious inconvenience,” related Nathaniel Shute in an article entitled “Travelling in the Olden Time” published in the Exeter Gazette in 1882. Sure, you could travel with relative ease by water, but over land was problematic. Spring and Fall were both ‘mud’ seasons when well-traveled roadways became nearly impassable. Shute relates (or perhaps re-tells) a story about Robert Metlin, a baker from Portsmouth. “He was a noted pedestrian, and usually bought his flour in Boston, and always travelled there on foot, performing the journey in a day, the distance being about sixty-six miles. The story is quite unbelievable, although there are numerous sources that indicate Metlin routinely walked from Portsmouth to Boston and back. The entire trip would take three days, with two full days of walking and one day to purchase his flour and load it onto a coaster for shipping to Portsmouth. Laugh if you want, but Metlin is said to have lived to the ripe old age of 115 by the time of his death in 1789.
Most people, however, weren’t willing to walk 66 miles to do business in Boston. Most took the various stage coaches, which, as Shute says, could take upwards of two days. The lines that would become the Boston and Maine began running between Exeter and Boston – with stops in Haverhill and Andover – in August of 1840. The Exeter News-Letter, only recently under new management, ran a quick story from the Boston Daily Advertiser, “The usual duration of the journey between Boston & Exeter is about two and a quarter hours, the distance being 49 miles. The road passes through a pleasant country, and a part of the route along the bank of the Merrimac River is extremely beautiful.”
Having run the piece, the editors decided in January that a first-hand account of the trip might be a good idea to lure more patrons. “A Railroad Trip,” authored by one of the three editors, we don’t know which one, ran in the January 12, 1841 edition of the News-Letter. The trip did not go well. There had been a typical New England driving rainstorm in the two days prior to the journey. In retrospect, this should have been cause for some caution, but rail travel was still new. “At six o’clock, the bell called us to our places, and the Iron Horse, after going through the usual ceremonies of wheezing, snorting and spitting fire, set out on its early journey.” Things went well for a while. “We moved at a quick pace about three miles, when our conversation and progress were suddenly interrupted by the running of our car off the track – and the running away of our locomotive. When carried at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it is a very easy thing to ‘keep moving,’ but we can assure our readers, from actual experience, that it is not remarkably pleasant while hurrying on with such rapidity, to be stopped of a sudden, and brought up standing – or to find one’s self sprawling on the floor of the car with a sprained ankle or a grazed skin.”
The passengers, none of whom were seriously hurt, quickly leapt out of the rail car. The locomotive and tender car, which had become uncoupled, continued toward Boston for some time before realizing the passengers had been left behind. They reversed course and the bruised and shaken passengers were loaded onto the tender alongside the firewood and taken to the Haverhill station, arriving at 8 o’clock. There was no passenger car at Haverhill, so a baggage car was fitted with chairs and the passengers – a trusting group – boarded to continue the journey to Boston. About a mile and a half down the line from the Haverhill station, there was another washout on the line that the engineer spotted just before disaster. “Believing it impossible to reasonably reverse or check the motion of the engine – and also that the passengers could go down that gulf quite as well without an engineer as with one, he sprung from his post to the bank, and was instantly followed by the fireman.” Some of the passengers managed to jump, but not the writer. “Those of us who were not apprized of the danger, had no time to inquire into it before the locomotive had gone over the brow of the precipice, and carried with it the car in which we were sitting. The passengers were thrown all together, and with great force, against the fore part of the car, and some of them at least were stunned for the moment, as well as bruised, by the violence of the concussion.” Amazingly, the passengers were fished from the wreckage, transported by carriage to South Andover and from there placed on another train to Boston, arriving just after one o’clock.
Throughout the entire episode, the writer remained convinced of the possibilities of rail travel. “We have no more doubt now than we had before the misadventure of Friday, that there is no safer mode of conveyance than by railroad, but we are more deeply impressed than ever with the importance of having careful, vigilant, calm and self-possessed men for engineers, conductors, and firemen and prudent and discreet men – men who clearly perceive and deeply feel the responsibility that is upon them – for overseers, agents and directors of our railroads.” Apparently, to the novice rider, two serious life-threatening accidents in one trip could be overlooked providing there was great customer service.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Advertisement from the Exeter News-Letter for the new railroad – here called the “Boston and Portland Rail Road” although the line didn’t yet extend north past Exeter. It would later be renamed the “Boston and Maine.”
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, April 13, 2018.
Most people, however, weren’t willing to walk 66 miles to do business in Boston. Most took the various stage coaches, which, as Shute says, could take upwards of two days. The lines that would become the Boston and Maine began running between Exeter and Boston – with stops in Haverhill and Andover – in August of 1840. The Exeter News-Letter, only recently under new management, ran a quick story from the Boston Daily Advertiser, “The usual duration of the journey between Boston & Exeter is about two and a quarter hours, the distance being 49 miles. The road passes through a pleasant country, and a part of the route along the bank of the Merrimac River is extremely beautiful.”
Having run the piece, the editors decided in January that a first-hand account of the trip might be a good idea to lure more patrons. “A Railroad Trip,” authored by one of the three editors, we don’t know which one, ran in the January 12, 1841 edition of the News-Letter. The trip did not go well. There had been a typical New England driving rainstorm in the two days prior to the journey. In retrospect, this should have been cause for some caution, but rail travel was still new. “At six o’clock, the bell called us to our places, and the Iron Horse, after going through the usual ceremonies of wheezing, snorting and spitting fire, set out on its early journey.” Things went well for a while. “We moved at a quick pace about three miles, when our conversation and progress were suddenly interrupted by the running of our car off the track – and the running away of our locomotive. When carried at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it is a very easy thing to ‘keep moving,’ but we can assure our readers, from actual experience, that it is not remarkably pleasant while hurrying on with such rapidity, to be stopped of a sudden, and brought up standing – or to find one’s self sprawling on the floor of the car with a sprained ankle or a grazed skin.”
The passengers, none of whom were seriously hurt, quickly leapt out of the rail car. The locomotive and tender car, which had become uncoupled, continued toward Boston for some time before realizing the passengers had been left behind. They reversed course and the bruised and shaken passengers were loaded onto the tender alongside the firewood and taken to the Haverhill station, arriving at 8 o’clock. There was no passenger car at Haverhill, so a baggage car was fitted with chairs and the passengers – a trusting group – boarded to continue the journey to Boston. About a mile and a half down the line from the Haverhill station, there was another washout on the line that the engineer spotted just before disaster. “Believing it impossible to reasonably reverse or check the motion of the engine – and also that the passengers could go down that gulf quite as well without an engineer as with one, he sprung from his post to the bank, and was instantly followed by the fireman.” Some of the passengers managed to jump, but not the writer. “Those of us who were not apprized of the danger, had no time to inquire into it before the locomotive had gone over the brow of the precipice, and carried with it the car in which we were sitting. The passengers were thrown all together, and with great force, against the fore part of the car, and some of them at least were stunned for the moment, as well as bruised, by the violence of the concussion.” Amazingly, the passengers were fished from the wreckage, transported by carriage to South Andover and from there placed on another train to Boston, arriving just after one o’clock.
Throughout the entire episode, the writer remained convinced of the possibilities of rail travel. “We have no more doubt now than we had before the misadventure of Friday, that there is no safer mode of conveyance than by railroad, but we are more deeply impressed than ever with the importance of having careful, vigilant, calm and self-possessed men for engineers, conductors, and firemen and prudent and discreet men – men who clearly perceive and deeply feel the responsibility that is upon them – for overseers, agents and directors of our railroads.” Apparently, to the novice rider, two serious life-threatening accidents in one trip could be overlooked providing there was great customer service.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Advertisement from the Exeter News-Letter for the new railroad – here called the “Boston and Portland Rail Road” although the line didn’t yet extend north past Exeter. It would later be renamed the “Boston and Maine.”
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