could travel to Boston and New York City to meet investors and solicit stock subscriptions. In 1848, Orville Hungerford and Major Edmund Kirby from Brownville, N.Y. managed to raise enough capital via subscriptions to complete the railroad, which cost $15,000 a mile to build. Hungerford then began placing advertisements in regional newspapers soliciting bids from contractors for grading, bridging, and masonry services along with the provision that "[t]estimonials in regard to the character and responsibility of the persons proposing, who are not known to the undersigned or chief or resident engineers, will be required." Actual work on the railroad began on the Rome, N.Y. end of the line in November 1848. Orville then acted as the first superintendent for the railroad overseeing the construction. The Watertown & Rome Railroad commissioned the Taunton Locomotive Works in Taunton, Massachusetts to manufacture its first engine, Pierrepont, which was delivered September 7, 1850. The Taunton Locomotive Works delivered the next engine Rome on November 20, 1850. The Taunton Locomotive Works delivered another engine Adams on February 5, 1851. Prior to 1854, the Watertown & Rome Railroad also purchased an engine Northstar delivered by the Taunton Locomotive Works to the Connecticut River Railroad on July 5, 1848. Unfortunately, Hungerford never got to see a train complete a journey to Watertown because he died shortly before the inaugural run on May 29, 1851, covering the 53-mile stretch between Rome to the hamlet of Pierrepont Manor (originally called Bear Creak). The Hon. William C. Pierrepont, who owned the property where the railroad initially ended, followed Orville as president. At 11:00 p.m. on September 5, 1851, the first train steamed into the temporary passenger station on Stone Street in Watertown. The railroad posthumously named its fifth engine, Orville Hungerford, in honor of its first president. Delivered to the railroad, on September 19, 1851, this engine, built by William Fairbanks in Taunton, Massachusetts, was twenty-one and a half tons in weight. Furthermore, the board of the railroad, appreciative of Orville Hungerford's efforts, provided free annual train passes to his widow Betsey Hungerford and their daughters. By December 1856, the railroad stretched 97 miles, "terminating at Rome upon the Erie Canal and N.Y. Central R.R., and at Cape Vincent upon the St. Lawrence River, in good order, with ample accommodations at each end, in the way of storage ground, docks, warehouses, elevator, and with sufficient equipment for a large and