A crowd of eager onlookers scurried from the Next Stop Tupper Lake Depot to lean over the tracks and eye down the incoming locomotive. There were smiles on everyone’s faces. Trains were finally back in Tupper Lake.

After stepping off the rumbling train, Next Stop Tupper Lake Chairman Dan McClelland said he’s been waiting 20 years to shout “Next stop, Tupper Lake!” from a train. A mile out from the station, he finally got his chance.

Around 20 years ago, he said NSTL! and train advocates Jim Ellis, Al Dunham and Bob Hest worked to get the train station rebuilt with hopes that one day, it would greet a locomotive.

“Our thing was just to build the station and they will come,” McClelland said.

rolled into Tupper Lake on Tuesday wave to onlookers and the chug out of town. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Now, he hopes, Tupper Lake will be a new hub for travel — it’s the end of the line for the railroad and the start of the rail-trail to Lake Placid.

“2022 is the 130th anniversary year of the first passenger train operated by the Mohawk and Malone Railroad that arrived in Tupper Lake on July 16, 1892,” according to the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society.

“We’ll be corny and call it a ‘moving experience,'” ARPS President Frank Kobliski said of the train arrival on Tuesday.

In earnest, though, he said he was so grateful for all the volunteers who donated an estimated hundreds of thousands of hours toward the railway, all the leaders who pushed to make it happen and people in the Tupper Lake community, for supporting the train.

At the event, Kobliski announced that on Oct. 16, the first public revenue train will travel from Utica to Tupper Lake. He hopes seats for this train will sell out. After that ride, the train will resume service up to Tupper Lake next season.

Sudjai Bentley snaps a selfie as a locomotive rolls into Tupper Lake on Tuesday. Bentley lives along the train tracks heading south out of town, and followed the train into the Junction after seeing it pass her house. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Jim Ellis said, for him, Tuesday’s train arrival was 48 years in the making. He’s been trying to bring trains here for a long time. In 1974, he said his uncle asked him, “What are you doing with that railroad? Are you crazy?”

“He said, ‘When you have roses growing out of the telephone poles, the train will come here,'” Ellis said.

On Tuesday, Ellis tacked two red roses to a telephone pole along the tracks by Main Street.

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“Relentless”

Nicole Swann, left, and Megan Goff prepare trays of food and pour glasses of wine on the train which chugged into Tupper Lake on Tuesday. “You’ve got to have your sea legs,” Swann said of pouring red wine in a moving train. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

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Tupper Lake village Mayor Paul Maroun said Ellis was “relentless” about bringing the train to Tupper Lake.

“I got sick of it at times,” Maroun said, with a laugh.

Ellis listed a series of “body blows” the Tupper Lake community was dealt in the 1960s — the closure of the Sunmount Veteran’s Hospital, the closure of the Oval Wood Dish Corporation, other closures too long to list, but one of them being the closure of the railroad.

When the I-87 Northway was built, it took huge numbers of motorists on their way between New York City and Montreal away from roads through Tupper Lake to a highway.

Cliff LeMere, left, and David Dechene grin and show off the quarters, pennies and dimes they placed on the rails as an Adirondack Railway Preservation Society train rolled out of Tupper Lake on Tuesday. They were giddy over seeing how flat the massive weight of the train squashed their coins, while maintaining their ridged edges. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

“Tupper Lake was dying, and the census figures showed it,” Ellis said.

He saw the declining population in his former position as a principal at the school district. TLCSD used to see graduating classes of 160 — now, he said, it’s closer to 50.

Now, he said, the town’s got another shot. He framed the day as a “rebirth” for the community.

The train is not a “silver bullet,” Ellis said, but it is part of a broader solution to the town’s economic state.

“Momentum baby. That’s what I felt today,” state Assemblyman Mark Walczyk, R-Watertown, said. “It takes a lot of work to get a train rolling.”

Harry Lenz, in red, was enjoying the view from the glass-encased bubble atop a train car on the train which pulled into Tupper Lake on Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

He was using an analogy to compare the town and its economic development to the train. Though momentum takes a while to build up, Walczyk said, when a train gets rolling, it builds speed and momentum.

“It’s hard to stop a train,” he said.

Walczyk’s son, Atticus, was the youngest rider of the train Tuesday. He is 1 year old. Atticus’ mother, Jessica Piatt Walczyk, said it was his first train ride and he loved it.

In the last weekend of September and first two weekends of October, Kobliski said a private group will be taking motorcar excursions on the rails — these are railroad support vehicles, which ride on the tracks.

Then, after the Oct. 16 ride, the rails will shut down for the season to allow snowmobilers to ride the tracks on the snow. After the snow melts, Kobliski said work will begin to reconstruct the Tupper Lake depot area with a new platform, new tracks, a train turn-around and expanded parking. He also said ARPS has a loan with the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency to replicate a historic ticket office in the Next Stop Tupper Lake! building, complete with period memorabilia.

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Scenes from the arrival of the train

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A large crowd gathered around the tracks on Tuesday, gazing at the hulking locomotive, taking in the oily smell of the smoke and wheels, and feeling the ground reverberate below their feet.

Village police directed traffic on Main Street as the locomotive came in. The railroad crossing gates have not been re-installed there yet.

The train tracks run right behind Sudjai Bentley’s backyard near Arab Mountain. For months, she’s been seeing the construction going on behind her home and got to know the workers well as she took photos of them. On Tuesday, she got one more photo — a selfie with the approaching train in the background.

Bentley works at the Wild Center and said she believes the train will be a big deal for the nature museum. She’s loaned several historic railroad items from a personal collection at her home to the train depot to decorate its walls.

Employees from the companies who did the rehabilitation work were there to watch. Robert Wilson from Tartaglia Railroad Services and Adam Storer from Storer Excavating were standing by and grinning at the excitement the train seemed to be bringing to the town.

“It was just another job to us, but now we’re seeing how much it means for everybody,” Wilson said. “We don’t usually get to see this. We just do the work and leave. It’s nice to see it actually matter to somebody.”

This was the biggest job either of them had ever worked on. It was a “relief” to see the rails running trains, Storer said.

Mark Jessie, who co-owns Raquette River Brewing in the Junction, rode the train all the way from Thendara Tuesday and planned to take the return ride back. Jessie said it was a surprisingly smooth ride, lasting around two-and-a-half hours.

On the way, he drank a RRB beer. Just a month ago, he worked out a deal with ARTA to have his brews sold on the trains.

Behind the bar, in one of the bubble-roofed cars and surrounded by mirrors and glass, Nicole Swann and Megan Goff prepared trays of food and poured wine and beer. Swann said she’s been with the railroad for a month. She loves people and has a lot of energy, so she said it’s a good job for her.

Goff said she’s been in the food and beverage industry for 27 years, but this was her second time working on a train. She said she likes the scenery and is getting used to pouring drinks in motion.

“You’ve got to have your sea legs,” Swann said, planting her feet solidly on the bar floor.

Upstairs, in the glassy-roofed bubble of the car, Harry Lenz sat in a booth, reading a copy of the Enterprise. He is a former board member at ARPS and the current president for the Utica and Mohawk Valley Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. He said this was a different way to enter Tupper Lake. Usually, he drives here. Sitting at a table with a 18-foot high view, he said this was a much more comfortable way to arrive.

After the train pulled away from the station, Cliff LeMere and David Dechene walked over to the tracks, giddy to find the quarters, pennies and dimes they placed on the rails were flattened smooth by the massive weight of the train, but with the edges still maintaining their ridges.

“Been a long time since I’ve put a penny on these tracks,” LeMere, 64, said. “Back in the old coal trains days.”

Dechene, a Tupper Lake native, was celebrating his 83rd birthday Tuesday.

“I go back a long way,” he said. “I remember when the trains were coming in here, hauling (wood) pulp out of here.”

The two were feeling a youthful energy, though, as they gleefully poured over their self-pressed pennies.

“Haha! Score!” LeMere said.

He plans to punch a hole through his change and wear it on a string around his neck.

As the train left town, it crossed Underwood Bridge, where it could be seen across Raquette Pond and heard blowing its horn.

Tupper Laker Garrett Kopp was out in a boat on the waters, hunting geese. He said he was startled — but excited — to see the train chugging by.

Passengers, including Raquette River Brewing co-owner Mark Jessie, in red, wave to a crowd at the Tupper Lake train depot as they roll into town on the first passenger train in a long time, on Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Nicole Swann prepares to pour a glass of wine on the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society train which chugged into Tupper Lake on Tuesday. Swann said she loves people, and she has a lot of energy, so the job is a fun time for her. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Megan Goff works in the dining car of the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society train which rolled into Tupper Lake on Tuesday. She has 27 years in the food service industry, and this was her second time working in a moving bar. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)