Steadily the Black River sought to improve its service. As it succeeded in so doing it became more and more of a thorn in the side of the R. W. & O. It touched that system at three points only--but they were important points. It was a slightly longer route into Watertown from the New York Central's main stem, but considerably shorter to both Philadelphia--where it crossed the R. W. & O. at a precise right-angle--and Ogdensburgh. At the first of these two last towns it developed an irritating habit of holding its trains until the Rome road train had come, in hopes of luring Ogdensburgh passengers away from it and getting them in to their destination at an earlier hour than they had hoped. Several times it was suggested that the roads pool their interests and work in harmony. For one reason or another this was accomplished but once--the R. W. & O. management almost always opposed such plans. It apparently preferred to play the lone hand. The Utica & Black River had a very considerable tourist advantage in reaching the St. Lawrence River at Clayton, in the very heart of the Thousand Island district, instead of at Cape Vincent, which was rather remote from the large hotel and cottage sections. It established its own boat connections with the _John Thorn_, as the flagship of its fleet. John Thorn's name and personality were again reflected in a fine coal-burning, Schenectady-built locomotive, which also bore his name (the U. & B. R. in those days had a decided penchant for the engines that the Ellises were building at Schenectady). Its motive-power was almost always in the pink of condition, brightly painted like its cars, which bore the same shade of yellow upon their sides that had been borrowed from the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. Like the R. W. & O., the locomotives were all named. In addition to the _John Thorn_, there were the _Isaac Maynard_, the _DeWitt C. West_ (named after a resident of Lowville, who was an early president of the road), the _Theodore Faxton_, the _Fred S. Easton_, the _Charles Millar_, the _John Butterfield_, the _J. F. Maynard_, the _Ludlow Patton_, the _A. G. Brower_, the _Lewis Lawrence_, the _D. B. Goodwin_, and others too. The road at the end of the seventies had a fleet of about twenty locomotives.