The Story of the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg RailroadHungerford, Edward
History
The Story of the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg Railroad
Hungerford, Edward
Railroads -- New York (State) -- History; Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad Company
E. G. Russell was cast in a somewhat gentler mold than Van Etten. Thorough
railroader he was at that, a man of large vision and seeking every
opportunity for the advancement of the property that he headed. For
remember that in all these years at Watertown these men were virtual
General Managers of a goodly property, in everything but actual title.
Upon their initiative, upon their ability to make quick decisions--and
accurate--in crises, to handle even matters of a goodly size the huge
division rose or fell. Theirs was no job for the weakling or the hesitant.
Mr. Russell was neither a weakling nor hesitant. On the contrary he risked
much--even the friendship of the organized labor of the road--when he felt
that he was right and must go ahead upon the right path. Eventually his
policies in regard to labor forced his retirement from the R. W. & O.
division. He went, capable railroader that he always was, to Scranton
where he became General Superintendent of the Lackawanna. From there he
went to one of the roads in lower Canada, and finally to Michigan, where
he met his tragic death late at night on a lonely railroad pier in the
dead of winter.
* * * * *
After Russell, Dewitt C. Moon; a man with an unusual genius for placating
labor and getting the very best results out of it. Mr. Moon succeeded Mr.
Russell as Superintendent at Watertown, April 1, 1899, leaving that post
September 1, 1902, to become General Manager of the Lake Erie & Western, a
Vanderbilt property of the mid-West. He had been schooled in that family
of railroads, starting in as telegraph operator on the old Dunkirk,
Allegheny Valley & Pittsburgh, which was gradually merged, first into the
Lake Shore and then into the parent reorganized New York Central of
to-day. Before that reorganization, he had become General Manager of the
former Lake Shore in some respects the very finest of the old Vanderbilt
properties--at Cleveland. At Cleveland he still remains, as Assistant to
the Vice-President of the New York Central in that important city. He is a
railroader of the old school, trained in exquisite thoroughness and with a
capacity for detail, not less than marvelous.
Moon's great forte, however, was and still is, coöperation. Men like him.
He likes men. A big and genial nature, a quick sympathy and understanding
have proved great assets to a railroad executive. These assets Moon has
possessed from the beginning. Upon them he had builded--and upgrown.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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