Rome Sentinel, Tuesday May 7, 1878
R.W.& O. Shops - The Work Going on There
- The New Car "Genesee" -
"Lame Phil," the portage of the shops - some reminiscences.
During a stroll about the R.W. & O. R.R. shops in this city, by a Sentinel ambassador, considerable activity in the various departments,\par especially in the car shops, was observed. The splendid passenger coach "Genesee," which was built here last summer, has been overhauled and refitted, and is now running on conductor Bangor's train, which leaves here at 5:50 a.m., and arrives at 9:25 p.m. This coach is elegantly upholstered and finished. The windows are of plate glass. there are two large double windows in the center of the car on each side. In one end of the coach is a separate apartment for the use of the brakeman. A full description of this coach appeared in the Sentinel at the time it was built.
The old machine shop - department is now used for repairing freight cars. three lathes were left at the time of the removal, and some repairing and machine work is still done there. The book-keeper's and master mechanic's office is used as a storeroom.
In the car shop - three new coaches and a baggage car are being built, which are to run between Niagara Falls and Ogdensburg. These are to be summer coaches, having slat seats instead of upholstered ones. More men are employed in the wood department than have been for some time before. The employees of the paint shop are quite busy painting and improving old and new cars and coaches. Lame Phil, the Ward of the Shops.
Among the fixtures about the R.W.& O. R.R. shops is "Lame Phil." He has been there since the first shops were built. His name is John Philip Shillenberth, and he is said to be about 57 years old. He looks to be at least ten years younger than that. He is lame in the right leg, having been afflicted with a fever sore since early boyhood. Some people say that Phil's people turned him out of doors in freezing weather, when he was a boy, and otherwise misused him, but Phil denies that vigorously. It is certain that the shops have been his home - since they were first built.
He formerly slept in the cabs of the locomotives, and the employees of the shop furnished him with food and clothing. His lame leg has always unfitted him for work. Late years he has lodged in the paint shop, where a good bed of cushions, &c. is provided for him. The men in the shops and benevolent people about town still furnish him with food and raiment. Phil is getting to be an old man, and his lameness increases.
Unless he gets help he cannot live many years. In appearance he is about the same as he was twenty years ago, except that his hair is turning gray. Some accident or other misfortune befel him when young, and unseated his mind, and he has always been called simple, if not foolish.
Although he has no idea of time, his memory is wonderful. - He can recollect accurately occurrences in Rome thirty and forty years ago, but is as apt to say that they took place sixty or seventy years ago as anything else. Phil is as harmless and good natured a fellow as there is in the world, and will talk for hours about the old times and old associations at the shops and on the road.
A Sentinel representative had a little talk with him Saturday in the office of master car builder sessions. On being asked the name of the first locomotive which was run on the road, he promptly answered, "Camden; and then" he said, "Came the Montreal and the Roxbury." He called up reminiscences of "Darb" Wickwise, George Langham and others, who were among the first engineers on the road. He remembers J.L. Grant, the first master mechanic of the shops (now of Auburn) perfectly well.