The Directors of this magnificent enterprise are pushing it on towards completion with an activity commensurate with their means. Already has a single line of rail been laid from the Troy Water-works to the distance of a mile or more to the north of our village and now at morning and evening may be heard the whistle of the dirt train going out and returning from its labors.
On Saturday last some fifty of its hopeful friends, by invitation went up in extra dirt cars to view the “Depikill.” By stage and steam, and foot, they reached at last that pretty stream, admiring as they went, the panorama of valley, hill and river stretching westard and northward away, returning, as the Troy papers say, “delighted with their trip.”
It was a mere pleasure party, a preparatory celebration of the opening of the whole road—an exhibition of deep cuttings, embankments and solid masonry, to some sturdy stockholders who wondered where all their money went to.
They came back satisfied, and if they doubted before as to the expence and the time of the final opening of this road, the opening of that sixth section, laid all those doubts to rest. Still however, the directors do not despair, and though to others it may seem uncertain and far distant, yet with them, there is a lively anticipation that an other season will behold the great public traveling up and down this “winding way” in great profusion.
We hope their anticipation will not break down, and that every promise made to toiling workman or deluded stockholder will be fully met. We would like to soften if we could the laugh so common at the funny route they have chosen for this road, and the wisdom shown in putting it through. What though it be crooked as a sinful path! the engineer is a man of taste, and made it so because he loved the grace shown in the bending of a horn. What though it runs along the hills inaccessible to our village? The Directors put it there that we might look at it and admire and moralize on the strength of petty pride and power and spite.
What though great sums were lavished uselessly and foolishly in its construction? It was only to exhibit the financial skill of its Directors, and to test the stength of their individual credit.
We wish the public could think that they the Engineer and Directors were all men of taste—wise men—honorable men, and that this, The Troy and Boston Rail Road will ever in the course of human events be a public utility, but the public have a commonsense way of looking at things and we don’t believe they will.
Lansingburgh Gazette. October 21, 1851: 2 cols 3-4.
[By Ball Mountain, Bald Mountain might have been meant, or Rice Mountain – the point seems to have been that the railroad would go through Lansingburgh without (at that time) a depot until Melrose (then known as Junction).]