the homeowner’s money was hidden. Dewey served two years of a sentence of five to nine years and was employed in the packing room at the prison. At that time the prisoners manufactured shirts, which were shipped out in wooden crates weighing about 400 lbs. each. He devised a way of securing himself inside one of these boxes after removing enough shirts to equal his weight. A guard and trustee prisoner hoisted this crate onto a truck loaded with similar crates and hauled it to the Wethersfield railroad station where they transferred it to a boxcar standing on the siding. After the guard and trustee prisoner drove off, Dewey released himself from the confines of the shipping crate and made good his escape. A little schoolgirl thought she saw a person of his description in the Griswold section of Wethersfield but an intensive search turned up nothing.
The original Wethersfield freight house (modified after the passenger station burned) still exists today. It is located on the east side of the track about 150 feet north of the Church Street grade crossing and was first sold and used as an antiques shop. The first owner had the building moved completely off the original foundation piers and onto a poured concrete basement. It was next used as a bicycle shop. After setting dormant for a while it was bought by Carol Kober-Narciss and converted into Narcissus Chocolate Café. In 2012 Rod and Tamatha Wolfel bought it with the intent of turning it into a coffee and sandwich shop.
The South Wethersfield Station was built on the northwest corner of the Mill Street grade crossing. It was a one-story building used for both passengers and freight and it was probably the only station on the line that operated a mail crane (a device that positions a mail bag to be pulled aboard the mail car of a moving train). Today, it is the most changed station area on the Valley Line. Now there is multi-story housing just off the right of way at this location.
Providence & Worcester Train, February 25, 2005. Locomotive 3903 pulls its train past the former Wethersfield railroad station. This part of the line was re-opened on January 19, 2005. PHOTO: JOHN WALLACE.
Northwesterly View across Mill Street Grade Crossing of the South Wethersfield Railroad Station, June 15, 1917. In 1925 New Haven Railroad Building No. 6227 (shown here) was equipped with a mail crane (a device that positions a mail bag to be caught and placed upon a moving train). The building was sold for $20.00 and removed in October 1935. COURTESY DAVID PETERS, SR., PETERS RAILROAD MUSEUM.
ROCKY HILL
The first passenger station was on the east side of the track a few hundred feet north of the Glastonbury Avenue crossing. Milo Sauls lived about a half mile from the Rocky Hill railroad station. In 1873, as the story goes, he trained his Newfoundland dog to go to the station upon hearing the morning train, and wait for the baggage master to throw off a newspaper. The dog would fetch the paper and carry it home to his master. Somehow the dog learned to meet only the morning train: the dog simply ignored any other.
As of November 28, 1891 the freight house on the east side of the track north of Glastonbury Avenue was moved north to the old passenger station site. Construction of the present station then began at the first location of the freight house. The original passenger station was razed after the new passenger station was put into service on January 5, 1892. Burt Spencer bought the first ticket sold in the new building.
The passenger station still exists, but the freight house finally met its demise in 2011 when a series of unusually heavy winter storms caused the north end of the roof of the freight house to collapse under an extreme snow load. Rocky Hill town officials quickly condemned the building and ordered the owner to raze it.
Charles H. Yeager, n.d. The assistant station agent at Rocky Hill from Oct. 1909 to Mar. 1917, strolls southward on the wooden passenger platform in front of the depot, which sports a box train order signal. The freight house is in the background. COURTESY MICHAEL MARTINO.
Northerly View of the Glastonbury Avenue Grade Crossing and Rocky Hill Railroad Station and Freight House, October 26, 1927. The wooden passenger platform had been replaced with a cinder platform earlier that year. The roof of the freight house in the background collapsed under the weight of excessive snow in February 2011, resulting with the building being razed. COLLECTION OF THE AUTHOR.
A wooden passenger car (originally wooden combine No. 144 from the Old Colony Railroad, and then New Haven combine car No. 2501) was used as a station in the Dividend section of Rocky Hill. Wason Car built the passenger car-turned-station house in 1892. This car was on the southeast corner of the Belamose Avenue crossing and served the employees of the nearby Hartford Rayon Corporation, which later became the Rocky Hill plant of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. Once condemned for service, the car was placed at Dividend in 1925 and was used until retired on March 25, 1929, after which a wrecker dumped the car over the bank at a different location and it was burned.
CROMWELL
In Cromwell, when the line was first opened, maps indicate a temporary station in a brick building north and east of the Middlesex Turnpike. Soon a wooden station was completed close to the northwest corner of the Middlesex Turnpike crossing. On August 11, 1890 the passenger station was moved several hundred feet southward to avoid stopped trains from blocking the highway. The freight house was erected in 1895. Later, the railroad constructed a smaller building between the station and the freight house to store baggage wagons. The Hartford and Middletown trolley left the west side of the Valley Line north of the depot and followed the Middlesex Turnpike northward. This station would become the scene of a violent attack on the night of February 3, 1923.
New Haven Combine 2501, October 22, 1925. A southerly view at Dividend Lane (now Old Forge Road) showing New Haven combine No. 2501 when it was set off its trucks and used as Belamose passenger station. This photo was taken during a railroad commissioner’s inspection. COLLECTION OF THE AUTHOR.
Julius Land, a black man, shot and killed two white men after they had assaulted him in a racial incident outside a trolley car on the Cromwell railroad station platform. Walter R. Thorell and Arthur E. Swanson of Cromwell died when each received a single pistol-shot wound. The tragic series of events started in Middletown and reached their climax in Cromwell where Land had mistakenly taken the Hartford trolley instead of the intended Meriden trolley. He left the wrong trolley to seek the correct one. Land was defended by William H. Lewis a famous black lawyer from Boston, and found not guilty of a second-degree murder charge on April 19, 1923. The jury saw the killings as self-defense. It should also be noted that Julius Land was shot to death in Middletown on March 3, 1924 when he became involved in a domestic dispute.
Cromwell’s passenger station was eventually sold to Monnes Dairy Farm on Washington Road, Cromwell and they completed dismantling it on February 9, 1940. The material was moved to the farm and used to make an equipment shed. The railroad sold the freight house in 1949 to Frederick Nordberg; and he had it moved about 100 feet west of the track and converted it into a feed and grain business. Later he expanded the business to include hardware. Glen Johnson bought the building in 1974 and until recently used it as a gift shop and real estate office and operated ice cream sales from a box car on the siding behind the station. Now he uses it solely as a real estate office.
Southerly View of the Cromwell Station Area, October 9, 1922. This photo shows the Middletown to Hartford trolley track joining the Valley Line from the right. The small peak roof structure partially
