Twin Lakes' William Miles made a valiant effort to retain train service to small resort in the 1920s

From 1871 until 1927, Salisbury had six railroad stations. While it is true that Salisbury is among the largest towns in Connecticut in terms of area, six stations is a large number for any town.

The Connecticut Western railroad started at the state line and went to Hartford. The first station heading east was Ore Hill, which was then a village in its own right due to the large number of miners and support workers who labored there. It was also a source of considerable freight traffic, shipping thousands of tons of iron ore each year to the hungry furnaces in East Canaan.

Lakeville and Salisbury had stations because they were population centers and generated a steady volume of freight and passenger traffic.

Likewise Chapinville (now Taconic) had its iron furnace, quarries, ice houses and creamery to generate freight traffic. Less than a mile to the east, on Between the Lakes Road, was the Twin Lakes station, which offered full passenger and freight service to the lakes and to Frederick Miles’ farm.

A farm with a station

The Twin Lakes station did not serve the boarding houses on East Twin Lake all that well, as they were located across the lake from the station, not adjacent to it. Those establishments would have been better served by the sixth and final rail stop in Salisbury, the Washining station, which was on the east side of the lake.

Washining, however, was no more than a flag stop, a small open shed with a flag that would-be riders could wave to stop trains.

So, how did the station on the Miles farm get to have full service ?

The answer to this question would be lost to history if not for the preservation of some of the records of the Central New England Railroad (CNE), successor to the Connecticut Western Railroad, which built the station.

By 1923 the CNE had become part of the New Haven Railroad. The New Haven management had little interest in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. When the Ore Hill mine and East Canaan iron furnaces closed in 1923, the railroad had little reason to keep the CNE division open, and they began a process of service reductions that culiminated in total abandonment by the late 1930s.

They had to contend with one Salisbury resident who was not ready to give up without a fight: Twin Lakes resident William A. Miles, son of Frederick Miles.

It’s the farmer, not the farm

In October 1923, Miles wrote a letter to General Passenger Agent F. C. Coley of the New Haven Railroad regarding passenger service to the Twin Lakes station. In it he said, “I am ... compelled to beg for your consideration of this matter, also to call your attention to a certain contract made with the Connecticut Western Railway when it was built. That all trains should stop to land take on passengers at Twin Lakes.â€�  

Contract? What contract?

The railroad officials were surprised (to say the least) to hear about any contract mandating service at such a remote station. How could this be?

The railroad immediately launched a search to see if there was any record of such a document. Given that the Connecticut Western records had passed through several reorganizations of the railroad, it is not surprising that the search was a tough one.

Eventually it was determined that the envelope containing the deeds for all railroad property on Twin Lakes was missing from the files.

A search of town records turned up nothing at first, because the New Haven’s lawyers searched in North Canaan, under the impression that Twin Lakes was part of that town.

When they finally looked in Salisbury they found a settlement agreement filed in the Salisbury land records that indicated Miles had submitted a claim for compensation for land taken by the railroad in arbitration in 1870.

The settlement mentions “a flag station on said land heretofore agreed by said Company ...� Clearly there had been some sort of agreement, and it had been made prior to 1870, more than 50 years before William Miles wrote his letter.

The search for the elusive document went on for more than a year. It is not clear whether trains were stopping at Twin Lakes during this time or not, but since there is no indication of further correspondence from Miles they probably were.

Follow the money

In due course, the railroad finally found the agreement. It was in the stock subscription book that recorded those stockholders who furnished the original funding to build the railroad.

When Frederick Miles signed up for 50 shares in December of 1868, he added the following note to his subscription: “This subscription is on the express condition that a flag station for passengers be maintained on my farm in Salisbury.�

Miles’ motive for this request is not known. It could be that he wanted to encourage tourists to camp on his farm by supplying easy access via rail. It is also possible that he hoped to profit from both campers and families coming for picnics. Profit seems to have been a factor, as the 1870 arbitration agreement specifically instructs the arbitors to ignore any possible profit Miles could derive from the station as part of his compensation for the land the railroad took.

It’s not as if Miles needed more income. As owner/operator of the Copake Iron Works, he probably had sufficient income to meet his needs.

It was because of this stock agreement that the Twin Lakes station was built between the lakes on Frederick Miles’ property. It served the region for more than half a century, bringing tourists from cities up and down the east coast to spend time at the lakes as campers or boarders. Picnic groves were established nearby, along with a store and post office, making the area into a small but busy hamlet each summer.

Defining ‘reasonable’

While the agreement was indeed there, it was a bit less compelling than William Miles had hoped. A flag station, like the one at the nearby Washining stop, would not have regular service, so there was no requirement that all trains stop there.

The railroad seized upon the flag-stop requirement and in December 1924 issued its findings to Miles. The company informed him that they were only required to have trains stop at Twin Lakes based on giving reasonable service to the traveling public. The definition of “reasonable� was based on train schedules, patronage and the necessity of the neighborhood.

Needless to say, the railroad company concluded that it had been providing much more than “reasonable� service all along and had no need to alter its service to Twin Lakes.

It is not clear why William Miles pushed to keep the rail service going at Twin Lakes, anyway. By 1923, the number of tourists using rail transportation to get to Salisbury had already declined. Even so, he did his best to keep the service alive.

And the question of service at Twin Lakes soon became moot,  as the New Haven Railroad discontinued all passenger service on the Central New England route in 1927, ending rail travel to Twin Lakes and the rest of Salisbury.

Ironically the rails across the lakes stayed in use long after the railroad itself was abandoned. Used to supply oil, lumber, coal and other items to the Community Service (now Herrington’s) store in Lakeville the rails remained in service until 1965.

Today the only sign of rail service to Twin Lakes is the old railroad bridge, now used as a driveway, that once carried the trains across the connection between the east and west lakes.

Local historian Richard Paddock resides in the Twin Lakes section of Salisbury.