ALL ABOARD A passenger train heading east arrives at the Manor’s O&W station, circa 1920. Across the tracks was a general store, the post office, the Livingston Manor Times printing facility and the Livingston Manor Lumber Company. livingstonmanor.net photo
When whistles sounded and rails ran to the Manor
By Edward Lundquist | Manor Ink
It is the time of railroads. Coal consuming beasts of metal and heat, chugging along through our tiny towns and bringing with them prosperity and culture. For Livingston Manor, it was a livelihood. Coming down the tracks is a locomotive, carrying with it the mail, workers, goods for the shops, animals, and taking away with it bowling pins, table legs, baseball bats (produced in a factory on Sherwood Island, where the hamlet’s school is today) and people. When the screech of the brakes sounds and the whistle echoes through town, people mill around the train, removing items and replacing them just as soon, like ants.
AN ERA PASSES Workmen remove a section of track adjacent to the manor station following the dissolution of O&W company. livingstonmanor.net photo
In Livingston Manor today, people know that trains ran through our town, on tracks vaguely parallel to Pleasant Street, on the corner of which and Main Street can be found the Walk In restaurant. They ran midway between Pleasant Street and the original Livingston Manor Firehouse, what is now our local library. On the side of the tracks facing the library was the station, a long, narrow building with a roof that stretched over the whole platform. Almost directly behind the station itself was a coal station.
That lot was originally a stone yard run by H.L. Sprague, a name still present in our town today. But Sprague sold the yard to F.W. Cartig and Sons, where it became a building material and coal business. It was known as the DuBois Coal Building.
Apparently, at this time, it was common for local boys to dare each other to climb up through the towering coal elevator until they reached the top. In the 1950s, the coal building burned. All the youthful dares and challenges previously undertaken by the children would be no more, as the entire elevator went up in flames.
Preserving the past
If you know any more about the railroad in town, or traveling on the rails, or anything at all about our town’s history, do not hesitate to contact us at editor@manorink.org, which will inspire future Manor Ink articles about the history of our town.
Not long after, in 1957, the O&W Railway Company was split up, and the railroad ended service to our town. When it did, and its rails were torn up from the earth, the town was changed. Perhaps, though, it changed for the better, evolving into the Manor that we have today.
The old station was, to my understanding, behind the Washing Well Laundromat on Main Street, but I doubt anything can be found of it anymore, which is the case with many of the railroad-related buildings and businesses originally found in our town.
