Railroad History Archives, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut

A Tribute to Union Station of Canaan, Connecticut

Essay

Canaan’s Once Magnificent Station, by Leroy Beaujon

By my not having become a living being on this planet until the latter half of the year 1929, vivid recollections of the presence of the once magnificent station in my hometown of Canaan, Connecticut, did not really become apparent until the start of my teen years. At
the time, I was just starting my high school education. My interest in trains, however, had already begun developing with the purchase by my parents in 1935 of a new home; the property of which abutted the old Central New England Railway yard west of town. It was living in this house and it's proximity to the still somewhat active rail yard that helped to make me a confirmed "railfan" for life and, eventually, a railroad employee besides.

The railroad scene in Canaan began in the very early year of 1841 with the arrival from the south of the Housatonic Railroad. The station in Canaan that many of us knew, however, was not built until one year after the arrival of the Connecticut Western Railroad from the east which occurred in 1871. From that date on, Canaan was always known as "a railroad town." The railroad workforce in Canaan probably peaked in the early 1900s with a hundred or more people being on the payrolls of both rail lines at the time. Even as late as when I began to work at the Canaan Station (1947), there were still upwards of twenty or more people from town working in and around the depot.

Most memorable of these people was one Victor M. Coe. Vic was the first trick (shift) operator/ticket agent and he lived in East Canaan. Each and every morning five days a week he was known to have walked from his home (about three plus miles) to Canaan to begin work in the station at 7:00 a.m. and he would return home the same way each afternoon around 3:00 p.m. after finishing his shift. Vic was originally a Central New England Railway employee and prided himself by claiming to have started work on the line the day that the battleship "USS Maine" blew up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. In 1948, Vic received recognition from the railroad for his fifty years of service with the company and many of his old railroad buddies and several townspeople showed up for the ceremonies at the station that day. Vic Coe was only one of many people who made the Canaan Station what it was over the years. Others that were involved in and around the station during the years that I worked there were also very dedicated railroad employees. To tell the stories of each and every one of them would require the pages of a very good sized book.

The station that I and many other current and former residents of Canaan knew is now virtually destroyed. It was a, if not "the", village landmark for one hundred and thirty years. Let's hope that like the legendary Phoenix, this building too will somehow and some way rise from the ashes and once again become the magnificent building that it once was and again become the focal point for the Village of Canaan.

Leroy Beaujon, a resident of Roseville, California, was raised in Canaan, Connecticut. He is a historian of the history of the Central New England Railway and its locomotives and a collector of railroad memorabilia.