The 6:18 train south Saturday evening on the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad left this city on time, in charge of that "old established" Conductor - Aiken. The air was calm, but the violets were not yet in bloom. At Adams Center a zephyr met the train, and more zephyrs kept following after the further south it went. At Mannsville, which was reached on time, the wind was blowing fiercely, and packing the loose snow upon the track head, so firmly that it would support a man walking over it.
Nobody suspected trouble, however, but when within two miles of Sandy Creek, the train came to a full halt. The freight train just ahead was struggling in the snow, and we couldn't pass it with any assurance of safety. So we stopped, and visions of missed connections haunted us. Spades with trumps at once, and the battle with the drifts, began to release the freight train. It would have been an all night's job had not the engine of the Rome train come up from Sandy Creek to the rescue. It was the "S. F. Phelps,:" manned by Phippin, and the prompt way that engine has of digging through snow drifts shows its good "bringing up."
The freight engine was speedily reached, and the train of ten freight cars pulled out two by two, until the whole were started. But now the freight engine wanted to "drink," and before she was satisfied the snow had made good headway, filling up the track in the rear of the "Phelps." On the retreat to Sandy Creek, the plow was found on the wrong end of the engine, and the shovels had to help the tender break down the stubborn drifts. The freight train was finally brought to Sandy Creek at 11 o'clock.
Then the two liberated engines returned to dig out Aiken's train. There were about forty wells of well distributed snow to get through before the "J.W. Moak" received her liberty, but at one o'clock we were at Sandy Creek only five hours behind time. Aiken made up his mind he could strike that special at Rome by Monday morning.
Superintendent Moak was found at the depot busy giving orders about snow
plows and holding trains, &c., and the industrious Stevens was making the telegraph
wires very talkative. A number of Watertown gentlemen were heard from on the
Syracuse Northern, snowed in between Pulaski and Sandy Creek, and they were
still snowed in when Conductor Mills captured the engine of the night freight,
the "Colby," which had reached Sandy Creek, and which he coupled to the "Phelps"
bound to reach Watertown if it could be reached.
Fears of trouble were entertained when we left for the north at 1:50 a.m. Once
or twice the train slacked and trembled as she met one or two of "those drifts,"
but they were all mastered, and Watertown was reached at 3 a.m. on Sunday, just
in time for a "nap" before church.