(The following story by Brian Howard appeared on The Journal News website on December 20.)
YORKTOWN, N.Y. — By the time Engine 823 rolled into the Sedgwick Avenue station in the Bronx on Dec. 26, 1947, 8 inches of snow had already fallen.
And when 19-year-old railroad fireman Jimmy Morgia of Croton Falls hopped aboard with engineer John Rooney for the return trip to Lake Mahopac, “You couldn’t even see the rail,” he said, for all the snow coming down.
It was the day after Christmas, and the Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad was running on a light schedule. Eight people boarded at Sedgwick Avenue and the last passengers got off at Yorktown Heights at 3:30 p.m.
The steep incline leading to the old bridge at Commerce Street was too much to mount, and deep snowdrifts kept the train from backing up. They would remain there for the next 20 hours.
“I can recall getting stuck there with John Rooney,” Morgia said this week at the Yorktown Museum. “You were marooned, and the only communications you had was with the station agents.”
But the Yorktown Heights agent had left a half-hour before Morgia and Rooney pulled in.
“It was cold, but you had your firebox,” he said of the coal furnace that powered the mighty steam locomotive and which had to be tended closely. “You might have gotten out a couple of times to walk back to the coaches, but you had to tend your fire.”
Morgia had just joined the railroad in May. He later became a conductor and retired 10 years ago from Metro-North Railroad after 50 years on the job. He described Rooney as a retirement-aged engineer, nervous but a good railroad man. He said the two passed the time that night 60 years ago simply by waiting.
There was little else to do.
“I’m sure we dozed off a little,” he said, “but you were so wound up you didn’t sleep.”
An account of the Blizzard of ’47 and the stranding of Engine 823 is detailed in Mahopac author Joe Schiavone’s new book, “The Old Put…” Schiavone grew up in Granite Springs, and the book is his homage to a lifelong passion for the defunct Putnam line.
Schiavone and Morgia will be on hand at the museum next week for a 60th anniversary commemoration of the event, timed to coincide precisely with Morgia’s and Rooney’s rescue by conductor Harold “Smitty” Smith.
Schiavone is sure next week’s event will draw a crowd, as have many of his presentations since the book’s September release.
“People love local history, and when you bring up a 60th anniversary of an event like this, people start recalling their fathers and grandfathers,” he said.