Alton Train Depot Then. Photo courtesy Sandi Saracen

Alton Train Depot building still exists today as a private residence. Photo Courtesy of Edith Farrington

The Alton Train Depot located on RT. 14  dates back to around 1872. In that year, the R.W.&O (Rome, Watertown & Ogdensberg) Railroad opened. The depot provided both passenger and freight services. In the early 1930’s, passenger service was discontinued. The Alton Canning Company was a major freight shipper from this depot.

Memories of the Alton Depot from the 1950s:

Barbara B. Erway

When my grandmother would go to Florida in the winter from Sodus Point, we would ship her trunk (from this depot). She would ship us citrus fruit.

Larry Eiseman

 In the late 1950s, my ‘Uncle Pete’ lived in a home on Route 14 a few houses north of and down the sidewalk from that depot building. (The (former?) Sucher family home was and is across the road from where he lived.) Sometimes my uncle and my two older brothers and I would walk south down the sidewalk to that depot building and the railroad track. My fading memory (now nearly 60 years later!) indicates that for much of that time the depot building already was no longer in use, but I do seem to remember at least one time peeking in a front window and seeing people inside. — Sometimes my uncle and brothers and I would ‘time’ our walks to be near the track to watch the afternoon train, which typically consisted of a single engine, a few boxcars, and a caboose. Usually the train would stop, such as to drop off or pick up a boxcar from the railroad siding track of what was then the Curtice-Burns canning factory, or to let canning factory workers unload empty food cans from or load packaged food can cases into a boxcar. Sometimes a train person would step off the caboose, unlock the trackside telephone box, and call somebody to announce “we just arrived in Alton”. — And sometimes, before the train arrived my brothers and I would place pennies on the track, then retrieve the squashed-flat pennies after the train had run over them and departed. — Sigh…great fun for a then ~ 5-year-old little kid (me!), and great memories now.