HILLTOWN RAILFAN HISTORY The lesser known Bowe switch leads from the Becket Quarry main trail (railbed) curving around the main pit crossing Algerie Road and the Turnpike to the Bowe Quarry (present day Allen Williams Granite Quarry).  “For the past few months they have been putting in a branch railway to another quarry that belonging to the Bowe company which lies to the west of the uppermost extremity of the line. For five weeks they were grading it, and recently they have been putting in the rails. The latter part of the work has been under he management of T. J. Sullivan, road- master of the Boston and Albany railroad, who knows how to lay rails, being at the present moment the long- distance champion rail layer of the United States. The regulation day’s work of a gang of rail layers was three miles until a few years ago, when after a struggle for supremacy with E. E. Stone, the present assistant engineer of the road, Mr. Sullivan established the mark of 10½ miles. It was done one Sunday about six years ago, be- tween Chester and Washington, and that little Sabbath day’s journey of Mr. Sullivan’s remains a record up to this time. For three days Mr. Sullivan had led his cohorts of 80 men up the mountain side to lay a mile and a half of branch and some 500 feet of side track on the Chester and Becket railroad. His forces and supplies were taken up on three comfortable old flat cars, handsomely upholstered with old rails, with an auxiliary supply of men and tools, which were towed on a hand car at the end of a long rope. When the top was reached the flat cars were propped up with a railroad tie, in much the same way a man props up a wagon on a side hill, and the cohorts set to work. A railroad is laid up a side hill much the same way an upholsterer puts in a stair carpet. First, a youth runs along with a shovei full of spikes and bolts and lays them at proper distances on the grade; then the men put down the ties; then the fellows with the rails come straggling painfully along, dragging the rails In the tongs between them; the rails are spiked on, the whole is straightened by men with crowbars, and the whole is ready to be filled in. The trouble is that on this side hill you have got to hold your hand cars full of rails and ties by your teeth, so to speak, while you are tacking down your carpet.”

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