Tales of the Rails

Tales of the Rails. Stories. , A Local Recollection , Lifelong resident Shirley Bouchelle remembers life when the Camden and Amboy rail line was still running. As a child, she remembers trains passing through Windsor carrying soldiers in World War II. They would wave to Shirley and her family and throw letters to her and other people by the tracks, asking the residents to mail the letters for the soldiers. Also, homeless people would walk down the tracks with a sack of their belongings tied to a stick. They would come up to her back door and bang on the side of the house to announce their presence. Shirley's grandmother would make them lunches consisting of sandwiches and coffee, and she would use special plates and cups for them. Following lunch, they would bang on the side of the house a second time to signal that they were leaving, and head on their way., Before the Railroad , Although it has not been confirmed, it is told that a farmer named Hammell that lived on a farm (the one on Church Street) was approached by three Hessian or British soldiers when he was coming home after the Battle of Trenton in 1776. They demanded money from him and threatened to kill him after they tied him to a tree when he refused. He told the soldiers that if they untied him he would be able to get the money from his house to give to them. One of the soldiers went with him, and when they got to the house, Hammell got his gun from inside the house and shot the soldier with him. The other two soldiers ran away shortly after. It is said that the body of the soldier is buried somewhere on the farm., A Shaky Start , On November 8, 1833, a train was traveling just north of Hightstown (on present day Brick Yard Road) when a wheel rim of one of the passenger cars pierced the floorboard after it came unraveled. Because he was busy attending to a fire on board, the conductor did not slow the train down to lessen the crash. To make matters worse, the train was travelling 30 mph, moving five miles faster than the speed limit. The crash that followed killed two passengers. However, two passengers may sound familiar. One was John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, who managed to escape the crash. Cornelius Vanderbilt, railroad and shipping tycoon and father of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, was not as lucky as he was injured and ultimately traumatized by the crash.