N.H. Trap Rock Co. 43
by Gary Keesler
Title
N.H. Trap Rock Co. 43
Artist
Gary Keesler
Medium
Photograph - Digital Art Photography
Description
New Haven Trap Rock Company 0-4-0T Saddletank Locomotive No. 43
"Trap Rock," obtained its name from German quarry workers because it broke into steplike blocks, the German word for step being treppen, which became corrupted to "trap."
Trap Rock, a dark steel-gray in color and very dense and fine grained, featured a peculiar interlocking crystalline structure that caused it to fracture in a manner which created an angular gravel that, when used for paving purposes, tended to interlock in such a way that it made an exceptionally stable paving material.
It also proved to be a very tough rock, not easily pulverized, and its strength also made it an outstanding material for use in foundation blocks for buildings.
There seem instead to have been several over threads of history which, once interwoven, created the Branford Steam Railroad.
An entrepreneur named Louis Fisk had built, probably in the 1890s, a trotting park for horses called the Branford Driving Park in Branford, Connecticut.
To connect it with the tracks of the Shore Line Division of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, Fisk built the three-mile-long Damascus Railway.
Meanwhile, creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission of New York and New Jersey forced the closing of basalt quarries along the Hudson River, creating an increased market from Connecticut quarries.
This same Louis Fisk decided to get into the quarrying business by opening a quarry on Totoket Mountain in North Branford.
On March 19, 1903, Fisk got the Connecticut State House of Representatives to authorize incorporation of the Branford Steam Railroad to take over the property of and succeed the Damascus Railway.
In the 1980s the name "Branford Steam Railroad" suggested some short tourist-carrying railroad featuring the use of an antique steam engine, because the use of the term "steam" in a railroad's corporate title generally appears in that context, but this railroad's owners' inclusion of the term steam in 1903 allowed them to use the name Branford and yet distinguish their firm from the Branford Electric Railway, a streetcar system operating in that vicinity.
As for the steam locomotives, Nos. 38 and 43 apparently rested in retirement in North Branford until 1962, when the Steamtown Foundation acquired them.
When New Haven Trap Rock Company, in 1971 it merged with the firm of Angelo Tomasso, Inc., losing its historic name in the process.
The Tomasso firm was a more recent company, founded during the 1930s, but that did not prevent the older name from being scrapped, and eventually the firm adopted the name of Tilcon Tomasso Inc., when it became a subsidiary of Tilcon, Inc.
Thus the Branford Steam Railroad, which antedated the creation of the New Haven Trap Rock Company, also outlived the quarrying firm, continuing to operate under a name now meaningless in the era of the diesel locomotive.
Steamtown National Historic Site 150 S Washington Ave, Scranton, PA 18503
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Uploaded
August 20th, 2014
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