Hamlet’s fortunes rose, fell along the rails

ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — Technically, Dick Whalen is Rotterdam’s historian.

In actuality, he’s a walking encyclopedia of everything Rotterdam Junction, with an annotated appendix about the rest of the town’s lore. He grew up in the western hamlet during the Great Depression and only left it briefly during the Korean War, when he was a prisoner of war.

In the basement of his Main Street residence, Whalen stores door-sized displays of old photos and rail maps of what many locals simply refer to as the Junction. He can point to overgrown areas of the Junction and give a detailed history about the buildings that once stood there.

He pulls out a photo of the old Fitchburg Railroad grain elevator, which once loomed more than six stories over the old Erie Canal. Before it burned during the early 1900s, the towering structure could hold up to 484,000 bushels of grain moving between the east and west.

“The foundation is still up there,” he said, gesturing toward a wooded area near Turnbull Lane. “You can sometimes still see it during the winter.”

For nearly a half-century, Rotterdam Junction grew and buzzed with the industrial-era traffic that traveled along the canal and nearly three-dozen rail lines. But today, there’s a palpable divide between the hamlet and the rest of Rotterdam.

The only direct route to the town’s government buildings is along Interstate 890, which corrals the southeastern end of the hamlet between the Thruway and Mohawk River. Both Town Hall and the highway garage are nearly 8 miles away from lower Rotterdam Junction, while the police station sits roughly six miles away from the hamlet’s eastern-most portions.

For some residents, the Junction offers a balance between the best elements of rural and urban living. But others contend that this dichotomy sometimes results in the hamlet being overlooked and under-represented when it comes to town services.

“We’re the tail end of the dog,” said Dick Karp, a member of the town Planning Commission and the only Junction resident serving in town office. “And we certainly don’t wag the dog.”

Rotterdam Junction was never incorporated as a separate municipality, but not because of its lack of importance, said Don Rittner, Schenectady County’s historian. The area served as the natural break between the Adirondack and Allegheny highlands, making it a gateway to the west from the time the Mabee Farm served as an outpost during the late 17th century through the age of the railroads during the early 20th century.

Railroad boom

The first settlements of what would become the Junction sprouted from banks of the old Erie Canal shortly after the waterway opened in 1825.

Both Lock 24 and Lock 25 carried barges through the western edges of Schenectady County, prompting a small settlement to rise from the otherwise agricultural countryside.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the Junction earned its name. In 1884, the so-called West Shore line opened, connecting the fledgling settlement with the New York Central Railroad, New England and all points west.

“Reminiscent of Western towns that mushroomed almost overnight during the days of the gold rush, Rotterdam Junction was transformed from a placid farmland region into a flourishing, hustling village when singled out as the ideal location for a rail shipment center,” states an article published in the Schenectady Union-Star in 1948.

Shortly after the rail passage west opened, the Fitchburg Railroad was absorbed by the Boston and Maine Railroad, which then created a sprawling 30-track rail yard extending from near the Mabee Farm to the area that is now Route 5S.

During its heyday, the hamlet gave rise to a roundhouse, a passenger station, a tavern, a slaughterhouse, a school district, several hotels and even its own short-lived newspaper.

But prosperity was fleeting for the Junction. In 1916, the state Canal Corp. completed the county’s first “Western Gateway Bridge” and Lock 9 of the new barge canal, which led to the closure and eventual draining of the old Erie basin.

The big blow for the Junction came in 1931, when Boston and Maine announced it would transfer its rail yard and nearly all of its 550 workers to Mechanicville in Saratoga County. The announcement sparked fury among the hamlet’s residents, who petitioned to overturn the company’s decision and filled the local fire hall one evening to voice their disgust.

“They went home in the empty silent night,” states the Union-Star article. “Gone were the hum of rolling box cars, the din of drawbar striking drawbar, the snorting of yard dogs and all the familiar clamor which for half a century had been an integral part of the community’s life.”

Devotion amid decline

By 1935, trains from the New York Central passed through the Junction without stopping. Three years later, the roundhouse was shut down and crews began tearing up the abandoned stretches of tracks in the old rail yard.

“It popped up overnight, and it died overnight, too,” Rittner said.

Despite its precipitous decline during the mid-20th century, the Junction has remained home to a devoted population — less than 5 percent of the total town population of roughly 29,000 — that cherishes the hamlet’s unique identity apart from the suburban sprawl of Rotterdam.

“It’s definitely like its own little town,” said Dave Orologio, a lifelong resident of Isabella Street.

The perception among most residents isn’t that the town ignores Rotterdam Junction but that it just takes longer to get anything done. Brush collection doesn’t seem as frequent, highway patrols are sparse and it often takes persistent complaints to get small things fixed.

“Sometimes it’s not so bad to get left alone,” said Scrafford Lane resident Dan Hladik, who grew up in the Junction and recently moved back from Schenectady. “Other times it’s public safety that is at risk.”

But Rotterdam Supervisor Steve Tommasone said he’s made it his own mission to ensure that Junction residents are afforded the same services as anywhere else in town.

Having had a pair of grandparents who lived in the Junction years ago, he feels personally vested in helping the hamlet flourish again.

“This is part of our community that means a lot to me,” he said.

Water tank holdup

Many Junction residents point to the ongoing issue over the Junction’s aging water tank off Leggeiro Lane as evidence of the town’s generally cavalier attitude toward conditions in the hamlet. The 200,000-gallon tank was first identified for replacement in 2003, after a town study determined that it had been in poor condition for more than two decades.

Officials from the Rotterdam Junction Volunteer Fire Department also cited the inadequacy of the tank, which has just enough capacity to service the 577 users in water districts 3 and 4. They fear that any massive fire could rapidly deplete the tank and place the hamlet at risk.

The town has proposed building a 520,000-gallon tank on the SI Group property in the Junction and is expected to conduct public hearings on the $2 million water district-funded project sometime in the next two months.

But many question why the project lingered for more than five years in the first place.

“The price tag is not going to go down,” said Karp. “That’s a burden that is going to be shared by only a few folks.”

Tommasone said the water tank issue was not tackled by previous administrations. But he said that since he took office in 2005, the project has been at the forefront of the town’s concerns and has only been held back by needed engineering studies.

“It’s unfortunate, but things like this take time,” he said.

Feeling ignored

Others say there’s a lack of police presence in the Junction. Patrols through the hamlet are infrequent, causing some to wonder if officers ever make rounds to the area.

Calls placed to Police Chief James Hamilton were not returned last week.

Ambulance response can sometimes lag in comparison to other areas of the town. Rotterdam Junction Fire Chief Shawn Taylor said the hamlet’s distance from the nearest ambulance dispatch point can sometimes lead to long response times.

“They’re a fair ways away, and it does take a while to get out here,” he said. “Unfortunately, living a little more rurally, obviously it’s going to take a bit longer.”

Not all gripes are aimed at the town. Sometimes it’s big business that seems to ignore the plight of the west-enders.

At the end of Scrafford Lane, a clogged culvert running beneath the Pan Am Railways’ freight yard has left a segment of the old Erie Canal flooded with algae-covered water.

Absent the drainage, runoff collects behind a stretch of homes off Isabella Street instead of flowing to a wider stretch of the basin along the Mohawk-Hudson Bike-Hike Trail that is outfitted with concrete drains.

Several residents have asked for the railroad to clear the culvert, but it remains clogged. When the area received nearly four inches of rain over a two-day period, water from the canal crested over the old towpath and inundated a half-dozen properties.

Residents along the Pan Am tracks also contend with fumes from the trains that sometimes idle along the tracks for days on end. As with the culvert, complaints about the practice haven’t prevented it from occurring with any less frequency.

Situation looking up

Still Karp, the Planning Board member, said things are starting to improve in the Junction. Over the past five years, he said town leaders have taken a greater interest in bringing improved services to the Junction; the snow removal is prompt, and the streets are kept swept.

Over the past two years, the highway department has paved nearly a dozen town roads in the Junction area; it was the first time Karp could recall such improvements.

The Town Board also schedules at least one meeting a year at the Junction, bringing Rotterdam’s government to the hamlet’s residents for a change.

Tommasone said he’s made a concerted effort to try and bring the Junction back into the fold of both town services and prominence. Under his administration, the town secured a $150,000 brownfield improvement grant through the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop a land use strategy for 570 acres near the vicinity of the Mabee Farm and the Mohawk-Hudson Bike-Hike Trail.

The town also recently completed an Exit 26 and Interstate 890 land-use and transportation study. Town and state officials are hoping to use the study to develop guidelines and generate improvement ideas for the lower Rotterdam Junction area.

Tommasone anticipates that the grant and study will prompt new interest in the hamlet. He envisions everything from new sidewalks to creating a passive-use park along the old Erie Canal basin.

“You’re going to see a lot more improvements up there,” he said. “We recognize that area of our community holds tremendous value.”