The history of the CNE Railroad and the Twin Lakes causeway

To Salisbury residents, it must have been like a miracle. Seemingly overnight, travel to North Canaan village became a 20-minute ride over smooth steel rails instead of an hours-long trek on foot, horseback  or oxcart over rutted dirt roads and steep hills. Fresh milk from Salisbury farms could now reach markets in Hartford, as could iron from  the forges in the Salisbury village that is known now as Taconic (then called Chapinville), lead from Ancram in New York State and, within a few years, anthracite coal all the way from mines in Pennsylvania. 

It was Dec. 21, 1871, and the railroad had finally reached Connecticut’s Northwest Corner.

There has been a disagreement over whether a Twin Lakes rail causeway, once part of a rail lifeline vital to New England’s growth, should be removed. In that conversation, it’s worth understanding the transformative impact that the Central New England Railroad (or CNE) had on local lives. 

Just two years earlier, America’s East and West coasts had been joined by rail at Promontory Summit, Utah — a triumph of engineering comprising thousands of miles of trestles, tunnels and track. 

East-west railway visionaries

East-west railways in America had always posed a challenge: In contrast to north-south travel following the gentle descents of major waterways, east-west routes had to overcome steep mountain ridges and needed lengthy trusses to cross wide rivers. 

Visionaries saw promise in linking the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, but according to an account written in 1967 by Charles Milmine, “in going across the state, the steep grades and circuitous routes necessary made a railroad seem impracticable.” Steam locomotives hauling trains struggled to ascend 3% grades, ones that today’s automobiles climb with ease. 

Among the railway visionaries was former Connecticut Gov. A. H. Holley, who lived in Lakeville. He joined with Egbert T. Butler of Norfolk and other investors who, after obtaining a charter from the state, tasked surveyors to find a suitable east-west rail route across northern Connecticut. A team from Lakeville set out in November 1867 to survey from the New York state line to Winsted. A similar survey team blazed a trail to Collinsville. 

The rail venture broke ground in October 1869, and the first train from Hartford arrived with great fanfare in Lakeville on Dec. 21, 1871, carrying 20 passengers and their luggage.

Freight trains would come to dominate traffic on the new line, with three-fold greater tonnage carried from west to east then vice versa. Suddenly cheaper coal, cattle, lumber, grain and flour from the West were available to industry and families in Salisbury, North Canaan, Winsted, New Hartford and points east as far as Boston. 

With the opening of the magnificent Poughkeepsie Rail Bridge in January 1889 — the first to span the Hudson below Troy, N.Y., and the second-longest bridge in the world at the time — Hartford was connected via CNE rails without interruption to points south of New York City, shaving hundreds of miles and many hours off southward journeys. 

Shopping trips and summer fun

Rail meant recreation as well as commerce. On the passenger side, access to Twin Lakes and Lake Wononscopomuc in Salisbury  and Rudd Pond in Millerton by rail made these places highly desirable destinations for day-trippers eager for picnicking, boating, camping and other outdoor opportunities. 

The CNE advertised special train excursions to the lakes. Besides stations in Salisbury and North Canaan, CNE stations were built at Taconic and Washining, which is the easternmost Twin Lake and is known as East Twin. The western lake, known as Lake Washinee, is known as West Twin. 

A website devoted to train history says that, “In regard to the Washining station … about 1910, the east shore of Twin Lakes experienced a building boom and several influential men built quite elaborate cottages and landscaped their grounds. Among them were two wholesale druggists from Philadelphia and an insurance executive from Hartford, Charles S. Blake. 

“During the construction these men persuaded the railroad to install a siding and many cars of materials were unloaded at this point, which was adjacent to the highway leading to the east shore of Twin Lakes from North Canaan at the crossing.”

The Washining station wasn’t even the biggest station, according to Twin Lakes resident and railway historian Richard Paddock. 

“Twin Lakes station was the station that served the majority of the summer trade,” he said.
“The Washining station was only a flag stop — a small shed where one could put out a flag to signal a train to stop. 

“Twin Lakes station (on Between the Lakes Road) was a real station, complete with a siding for freight. Nearby was a store and a seasonal post office that formed the center of the summer colony.”

Shoppers saw new opportunities by riding the rails. A Connecticut Western News article said, “People from this region can now go to Hartford in the morning and, having five hours there, can return to their homes in the early evening.” 

The news of the world

Perhaps as important as passengers and freight, however, was news that now raced along the CNE corridor. Mail trains brought newspapers as well as correspondence, and townspeople followed mail bags from train station to post office to get the latest. Telegraph lines erected for rail traffic management also brought news of election results, horse races, international catastrophes and other events to our small towns with unprecedented speed. For the Northwest Corner, CNE rail shrunk the world.

The trestle over West Twin Lake

One of the widest bodies of water the line needed to traverse was Washinee, the westernmost of the Twin Lakes. The solution engineered was a long trestle. A Nov. 4, 1965, article by Geoffrey Merriss in The Lakeville Journal noted that, “For many years there was a wooden trestle bridge connecting the Taconic and Twin Lakes stations, and one of the largest construction projects of the CNE took place in 1904, when work trains filled the trestles with a cinder causeway across Lake Washinee,” or West Twin. 

This viaduct combined with a much shorter bridge at the bottom of Washining (East Twin). 

With as many as 10 passenger trains and more freight trains passing through each day, these structures saw constant use. From his perch in the “kitchen” of his locomotive as it crossed the causeway, an operator was the first to see and report the fire that burned the storied Scoville mansion to the ground in 1917.

Today, all that remains to honor the vision of the CNE’s creators and their achievements is a line of grass-covered roadbeds, with a stone bridge abutment or archway visible here and there, and the echoes of the steam locomotive’s whistle in the memories of a few local nonagenarians (and the imaginations of the many rail buffs who live here or make history pilgrimages here). 

The line never achieved financial success, enduring a series of bankruptcies, mergers, name changes and eventually abandonment as a victim of excessive competition, robber-baron capitalism and the triumph of the automobile. Passenger traffic ended in December 1927.

 The final freight haul crept along Salisbury’s remaining rails in 1965. Still, visitors to the causeway today can imagine crinolined picnickers descending from wooden coaches, dusting cinders from their hats, and marveling at the ways their world was changing before their eyes.

Special thanks to the Salisbury Association, whose publication “The Central New England Railroad” (1972), still available, provided much of the information for this article. 

Oral histories recorded and archived at the Salisbury Association Historical Society include reminiscences by local residents about the railroad era and its impact. Historic issues of The Lakeville Journal and Western Connecticut News can be found online through the Scoville Memorial Library at https://scoville.advantage-preservation.com.