BRATTLEBORO — Dave Allen knows a lot more about making and marketing calendars this year than he did last year.
Although the inaugural edition of the Windham County Railroads calendar was a modest success, selling nearly 300 copies, the West Chesterfield, N.H., surveyor and history buff says he learned one important lesson.
“One shopkeeper told me last year that if you want to sell calendars, you have to get them in the stores in October, when people still have money to spend and are looking for early holiday gifts,” Allen said. “Last year, the calendar didn't get done until November.”
The 2014 Windham County Railroads calendar is now in stores around the area, and features a new batch of vintage photographs from all the railroads that served Brattleboro - the Central Vermont, Boston & Maine, and the West River Railroad - as well as other county railroads, such as the Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington (the “Hoot Toot and Whistle”).
In addition to learning he needed to get the calendars into the stores earlier, Allen also learned that it never hurts to ask for help.
“People love trains, and train nuts are everywhere,” he said. “I'm not as much of a train nut as I am a history nut who likes old photographs. The help I get from the train buffs is a godsend.”
This year's calendar features several photographs by Porter C. Thayer, a Williamsville native who was a prolific Vermont photographer in the early 20th century. Many of Thayer's photographs were archived in digital form by the University of Vermont's Center for Digital Initiatives.
“I got permission from his grandson to use his photos, and got some high-resolution images from UVM,” Allen said. “He took a lot of railroad pictures, and the UVM collection is just a small fraction of what he photographed.”
Another interesting element of the 2014 calendar is the photo used for April of Eugene “Gene the Gateman” Ferriter.
In the days before automatic crossing gates, the railroads used gate guards at busy crossings. Ferriter, who was born in Holyoke, Mass., came to Brattleboro with his family in 1858. He lived in Brattleboro until his death in 1928, and worked for the Central Vermont Railroad for more than 50 years. His last job for the railroad was raising and lowering the crossing gate on Bridge Street near the train station.
“I found his great-grandson, Tom Wells, on the Internet, and he had all kinds of information about him,” Allen said. “Eugene was a well-known, and well-loved, fixture in Brattleboro for years.”
One of Allen's favorite photos of the 2014 calendar is an 1886 photo of a train wreck on the West River Railroad near the site of today's Veterans Memorial Bridge on Putney Road in Brattleboro.
“The West River Railroad got a worse reputation than it deserved when it came to wrecks and derailments,” Allen said. “It had no more than most railroads did at the time, but the '36 Miles of Trouble' nickname (also the title of a history of the railroad written by Victor Morse in 1959) stuck.
“Considering it lasted for more than 50 years (1880 to 1936), longer than other short lines in Vermont, I think the railroad deserves more praise than it normally gets.”
The captions for the photos were written with the help of railroad history buffs such as Glenn Annis of Dummerston and Brian Donelson of Rowe, Mass., the author of “The Coming of The Train,” the two-volume history of the Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington.
Allen said he's already thinking about the 2015 calendar.
“I really would like to get more action pictures, and to find photos that haven't been published before,” he said. “I can't help but think there are thousands of images out there that people haven't been seen in decades. I hope we can track some of them down.”