The Hartford and Connecticut Western Railroad was formed in 1881 from the remnants of the bankrupt Connecticut Western Railroad, which was formed in 1868 and ran from Hartford, Connecticut, into Litchfield County, Connecticut, and on to Pine Plains, New York . After 1881 the H&CW purchased the Rhinebeck & Connecticut Railroad to extend the line to Rhinecliff, New York . In 1889 the H&CW was absorbed into the Central New England & Western Railroad, which was created after a bridge was built over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York, to facilitate coal freight and passenger traffic from Pennsylvania and eastern New York into southern New England . In 1892 the CNE&WRR was purchased by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad to become the Philadelphia, Reading & New England Railroad .
In 1898 the Philadelphia, Reading & New England Railroad became the Central New England Railway . In 1900 a branch line was formed from Tariffville, Connecticut, to Agawam Junction, Massachusetts . In 1904 the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad purchased control of the CNE in order to obtain the Poughkeepsie Bridge, but the CNE was operated as an independent company until it was totally absorbed by the NYNH&HRR in 1927.
Leroy Y. Beaujon was born in 1929 in Canaan, Connecticut, and worked for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad from 1947 to 1957 (excepting the years he served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1956) in station and tower service. He started working in the travel industry in 1957 and moved to California in 1973, where he currently resides.
From the guide to the Leroy Y. Beaujon, Railroad Collection, undated, 1868-1971, (Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries)
