Weird Island

36. ABANDONED: The Railroad that Went Down with the Titanic

Episode Summary

We’re heading to Woonsocket this week to check out a mural painted on what was an unassuming concrete wall you wouldn’t think twice about. But this concrete wall actually has an incredibly interesting backstory, one with ties to the Titanic. To Visit: Cass Ave, Woonsocket, RI - across from Woonsocket High School

Episode Notes

To Visit: Cass Ave, Woonsocket, RI - across from Woonsocket High School

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Since starting this podcast, I’ve been paying closer attention to the things around me. I ask more questions. Like, what’s that building? Did it use to be something else? Is there a story about it? I stop and read signs I see around, and read the names and descriptions of monuments. I look at people’s homes and wonder how long they’ve been there and what stories they might have been a part of. In fact, I look at people’s houses and yards way too much while I’m walking the dog. I’m kind of surprised no one has called the cops at this point.
But in starting to pay attention, I realized how much I really didn’t question or think about or notice before. Like, I got fixated on these outdoor stone fireplaces all over Pawtucket. I couldn’t figure out what people were doing with these fireplaces in their backyards. What purpose did they serve? Or, I noticed that sidewalks are marked with little bronze pavement markers noting who made the sidewalk and when. And I wondered why? And could I find the oldest sidewalk around my house? And I started noticing structures that didn’t make sense. A single remaining wall from an old abandoned building, with another house built right up against it. An elegant granite cornice from an old art deco style building, now plopped on the ground, I guess marking the place where the building once stood?
The 2010 census estimated there were something like 19 Million abandoned properties in America. 19 million. And that number only scratches the surface. Because an abandoned building is easy to track. But abandoned structures, fragments of something no longer whole, they go more unnoticed.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about an unassuming concrete wall that you wouldn’t think twice about - and the incredibly interesting backstory of that wall and a railroad that never came to be.
We’re heading back to Woonsocket today. To Cass Avenue, near Woonsocket High School. And on this street, there’s an old concrete wall. Pretty boring, right? But the truth is, this concrete wall represents a vision, a dream, a railroad that was supposed to have been built, and never was. And to tell that story, I’m going back to the early 1900s.
In the golden age of railroads, almost no one in the northeast could contend with the New Haven Railroad. Officially known as the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, it operated in the New England region from the late 1800s through the 1960s, and was initially formed by the merger of two converging railroads: the Hartford and the New Haven. As the company expanded and leased other lines, it eventually formed a virtual monopoly in New England rail transportation.
This caught the attention of New York investor, J. P. Morgan, who was himself a Hartford, CT native. J. P. Morgan was known for his ability to assemble and finance consolidations in other industries, like steel, electrical power and banking - and with the New Haven, he saw an opportunity to create a transportation monopoly as well.
Morgan gained control of the railroad line around 1900, and in 1903 he installed a president with his same vision, named Charles S. Mellen. Morgan and Mellen worked together to achieve a complete monopoly of transportation in southern New England by arranging the acquisition of other railroads, steamship lines and a network of electrified trolley lines. New England as a region depended on the main lines of other railroads to provide connections to other parts of the nation. But Morgan and Mellen believed if they held a monopoly in New England, they could obtain the best rates possible from what were called “trunk lines” which were essentially main lines that handled long-distance through traffic.
By roughly 1910, Mellen and Morgan assumed they had eliminated all major competition. They had secretly taken over their biggest competitor, the Boston & Maine, and assured their control over southern New England transportation. Or so they thought.
But they had forgotten one, key player. A Canadian company called the Grand Trunk Railroad. Admittedly, at the time, the Grand Trunk’s only presence in New England was this one line from Portland to Montreal that served a handful of communities in New Hampshire. And the company wasn’t doing well.
It was a time of economic depression in Canada, and the performance of the railways had been disappointing for years. So it’s easy to see why Morgan and Mellen underestimated the company. But what they might not have expected is that the Grand Trunk Railway had brought in a new leader to turn things around, a stocky man with a neat beard and keen eyes known as “the little American.”
Charles Melville Hays was born in Illinois, and started working on railroads at the age of 17. He quickly rose through the ranks of several different railroads, and in 1896, he moved his family to Montreal and became the general manager of the Grand Trunk. The company intended for Hays to introduce “American” methods of management, which were seen as more aggressive than those of British systems, and he dug in, starting by restructuring the railroad’s administration and operations. Instead of relying on reports written up by senior administrators, he went right to the operating staff on the railroad for their opinions and advice. He quickly began introducing reforms that enabled him to bring the Grand Trunk from a point of near bankruptcy to one of moderate success.
After stabilizing the business, Hays believed the next steps towards success was expansion. He wanted to extend the Grand Trunk West, and he also wanted to expand the Grand Trunk’s presence in southern New England. This meant that Hays would be going head-to-head with J. P. Morgan.
Hays chartered this New England endeavor in 1910 and called it the Southern New England Railway, and it was envisioned as an ambitious effort to link the Grand Trunk Railway with Providence to provide the northern railway lines with a crucial all-weather seaport - or essentially a port that doesn’t freeze over during the winter, so business can operate year round. The main route was planned to go from Providence through Woonsocket into MA to a Grand Trunk depot in Worcester. The railroad would avoid CT altogether, to minimize direct conflict with the New Haven Railroad, but just the presence of the line in New England would challenge the New Haven’s monopoly on both rail and water, and this line had the potential to transform Providence into a serious competitor to cities like Boston and New York.
Hays envisioned this line as an airline. Which is confusing because airline now means something very different. But this airline would have been a more direct, shorter route instead of an easier route - so it would have required trestles, high fills and other infrastructure that would travel above any existing rails.
And in 1910 and 1911, construction on that infrastructure started and Hays ordered two state-of-the-art steamers. But by the end of 1911, the Grand Trunk was $100M dollars in debt as Hays pushed forward construction of the Southern New England railway, another major line called the Grand Trunk Pacific (which was that line heading west across Canada) and a chain of luxury hotels.
Hays knew he needed the help of the board of directors to turn things around. So he planned a trip to London to meet with the board and convince them to spend the company out of debt. Essentially the argument was, “Spend more. This spending will pay off.” And while in London, Hays planned to accomplish a couple of other objectives. He would spend time studying European hotels and learning new ways to manage them. And he would use the time to vacation with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.
But once in Europe, Hays became anxious to get back. He had received news that one of his other daughters back at home was having a difficult pregnancy, and on top of that he was excited to make it back for the grand opening of his first luxury hotel, the Chateau Laurier. So he cut the trip a little shorter than planned, and booked passage back to New York for himself, his wife Clara, his daughter, his son-in-law, his secretary and a maid on a brand new passenger liner operated by the British White Star Line. The ship was the largest afloat at the time, and was outfitted with first class accommodations designed to be the pinnacle of comfort and luxury. There was a gym, a pool, there were libraries and high class restaurants and high-end suites. And the first voyage of this new ship would include some of the wealthiest people in the world on board, as well as hundreds of emigrants making their way to America.
First class accommodations were incredibly expensive, and would be something like $100,000 per person in today’s dollars. But Hays and his party were special guests of J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, and were able to stay in four first-class cabins on the promenade deck. For four days, the party enjoyed premium accommodations and entertainment, and Hays and Ismay discussed a potential deal between White Star and the Grand Trunk that would promote White Star as the preferred ocean line and the Grand trunk as the best way to travel across Canada.
On the fifth evening, on April 14, 1912, Hays may have relaxed in the Gentlemen’s Smoking Lounge with a couple of other prominent men on board, and chatted about the technological advances in transportation. One of the men he spoke with was Colonel Archibald Gracie, who later wrote that Hays, while complimentary of the magnificence of the ship, expressed concern over the race to build bigger and faster passenger liners. “The White Star, the Cunard, and the Hamburg-American lines,” he said, “are now devoting their attention to a struggle for supremacy in obtaining the most luxurious appointments for their ships, but the time will soon come when the greatest and most appalling of all disasters at sea will be the result.”
This would turn out to be a shockingly prophetic statement. Because this ship was operated by the White Star Line, but the specific name this vessel that Hays and his family traveled on was the Titanic.
That night, at 11:40 PM, as most of the passengers were settling in to sleep, the Titanic collided with an iceberg. The collision caused plates along the hull of the ship to buckle, and five of the ship’s sixteen watertight compartments opened and started taking on water. Had it only been four of the watertight compartments that took on water, the ship might have survived. But it soon became clear that the Titanic was going down, bow first, with water rushing from compartment to compartment as the angle of the ship became steeper and steeper.
The protocol was that women and children would be loaded into lifeboats first. Hays helped his wife and daughter and maid into one of the ship’s 20 lifeboats, all the while assuring them that the Titanic would stay afloat for at least 10 hours and he would be just behind them. As his family’s lifeboat bobbed through the dark, his wife Clara called out to every other lifeboat they encountered, hoping Hays would be on board one of them.
But just a little over 2.5 hours later, the Titanic sank with Hays still on board. About 710 people survived the disaster. 1,500 lost their lives.
In many ways, we all know the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic. The arrival of the survivors in New York led to a media frenzy. Just one month after the disaster, the story had already been made into a silent film, starring an actress who had been on board and survived. And since then, a number of movies and shows and documentaries have been made - including the 1997 film that still makes the list of top five highest grossing movies of all time (it’s at number 3 right now, following Avatar and Avengers Endgame). The sinking of the Titanic absolutely fascinates people - so much so that the term Titanic Mania has been used to describe the rampant fascination with the disaster in the years since.
But though many people feel they know all about the Titanic, with 1,500 people lost in the disaster, it’s actually impossible to really state the far reaching impact of the tragedy and how it affected individual lives around the world. Those were 1,500 people who never made it home to their families. 1,500 people who never got to do the things they had planned to with their lives. 1,500 people who died too soon. And like in the case of Charles Melville Hays, there were projects and dreams that died as well.
The Southern New England Railway never became a railway. After Hays’ death, construction continued for a few months until about November of that year. It’s said progress stopped due to financing, but it’s also possible the New Haven had something to do with it.
When Hays died, a man named Edson J. Chamberlain was chosen to replace Hays as president of the Grand Trunk. Chamberlin happened to be a long time friend of Charles Mellen (remember him? President of the New Haven?) and the Southern New England somewhat mysteriously never got completed. Mellen and Chamberlin would later be indicted by a federal grand jury for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act - which would be followed by a number of lawsuits against the New Haven to halt their attempts at a monopoly. J.P. Morgan passed away in March of 1913, almost a year after the sinking of the Titanic and Mellen resigned from his role as president later that same year. And between lawsuits and financial difficulties and a number of disastrous wrecks, the New Haven also began its long, drawn out decline.
Some construction on the Southern New England Railway would later resume in Massachusetts, largely because the contractor hired threatened to sue if he wasn’t paid for work. But in Rhode Island, work never really started back up. But pieces of the infrastructure can still be found in Woonsocket, other parts of the Blackstone corridor, and in Providence.
And this one concrete wall, an abandoned and never used railroad abutment in Woonsocket, on Cass Ave, captured the attention of a local art teacher. The kind of rare soul who sees a plain old cement wall and wants to tell its story.
Well, my mother grew up in Woonsocket and she told me that there’s a story behind that wall. And she said that it had something to do with the Titanic. And I was like, what? What do you mean the Titanic?
This is Diane Mayers, and she’s the reason I’m telling this story today. Because her mother told her the story of this wall.
I don’t know if she was told about it or if she had seen something in a newspaper or whatever. But she was just saying that she knew that wall had something to do with a man who had died on the titanic.
And then Diane shared that story with her students. And she and her students decided to share that story with the rest of the town.
So what happened was that wall is supposed to be an abutment for a bridge, so a train was supposed to be put there and it was supposed to go over Cass Avenue. And there are other abutments in different places.
I ended up becoming an art teacher and I taught art at the Woonsocket high school, and I was asked to put a mural on that wall.
When the town asked Diane to envision a mural, she remembered that story her mother had told her. The one that had something to do with the Titanic.
If we’re going to do a mural, why don’t we tell the story of the wall.
So she had her students design a mural. But before they could be artists, they had to be historians. They had to do some research and stitch the story of the wall back together, piece by piece. And then they had to collaborate to bring that story to life.
One of my students Sebastian actually designed the mural
I had another student’s father come and he fixed the wall up a little bit for us because it was in rough shape. It was falling apart.
Students who didn’t like art could clean up the wall.
Everyone had a part to play in telling the story. Even local reporter, Joe Nadeau, who saw the students working on the wall and wanted to tell the story.
I didn't even ask him to come. He was just so excited. That he drove by and he seen us working on it, and he was like Oh, what are you doing? And when it was finished, he came by and he took the final picture of it all finished and everything.
By the end of the project, it really became a multi-faceted and multi-generational effort to bring the story to life.
I ended up retiring before we could finish it. But what I ended up doing is I have a little art shop here in Blackstone MA, just over the line from Woonsocket, it’s called the Artful Dodger, and I had some of my senior citizens that take painting classes with me. I had them actually go and put the finishing touches on the wall so that it was finally done.
Now that you know the story, you can go check the mural out and see how Diane’s students of all ages brought that story to life.
It’s a sad story, but it’s kind of like the story of Woonsocket, you know, we just keep plugging on.
And maybe that’s what I like about it. Things don’t always turn out the way they’re planned. This abutment was intended to be part of something larger, part of this railroad that would transport people and things. It would allow people to come together, or send them racing apart to new lives. And the reason behind why that never happened is tragic. But the wall itself did bring a community together. A diverse community of those special people who can see a story and a history in a forgotten, blank wall.
Thanks for listening! And a big thank you to Diane Mayers. If you feel inspired, you can take art classes at her studio, the Artful Dodger. And a big thank you to Melanie for suggesting this topic!
If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!