Rutland Ry. Slate Roofing

Views of Bill’s roof with Summit station slate used.

 While building my Rutland Ry. station I discussed the color of Rutland Ry. roof slate with Bill Badger that would help with my model. The following information and photos are by Bill Badger from our e-mail discussions combined into a short article…George Dutka

Along the Vermont/New York border is a rich high quality slate area (D&H served) and I suspect material came from whoever bid lowest. The industry really didn’t take off until the latter 19th century. Interestingly, unlike farmers, the railroad wouldn’t put slate roofs on older buildings that were not strong enough to handle it. The slate on part of my house came from the old Summit depot that was being dismantled. It is quite brown/orange from iron oxide and is very thin, which was the style at the time. Other examples are greyer.

Many of the quarries are still active so new slate is going on roofs, however, it ages and weathers over time and old slate looks different than new. I think acidic coal smoke accelerated the weathering process. One advantage to slate is that acid doesn’t eat holes in it like steel. And it doesn’t burn like wood. Until asphalt roofing, it was the best choice for railroad roofing. It’s just heavy. My structural engineer would always ask if there were going to be rocks on the roof. 

As mentioned, my home used some of the roofing that was saved from the Rutland Ry. summit station. Slate used on Rutland Ry. structure would have come from around the Vermont-New York border serviced by the D&H. Granville, NY in particular was a location a lot of slate roofing was produced. Slate is heavy so it would be cut as thin as possible to reduce the weight on the roof. The roof supports had to be engineered to support the weight.

Many of the Rutland Ry. structures have slate shingles that can range from a lighter gray to very dark gray and an iron oxide reddish-orange tone. The slate singles when new appeared as a tone of gray. Many of the shingles had a high iron oxide content which turned the shingles to a red-orange tone. When roofing my place with the repurposed slate shingles I noted those that were broken and chipped revealed the original gray tones.

Slate found in areas north of my place in Roxbury, Vermont seem to have a higher content of iron and would develop pin holes from rust and then leak. Not a great product for roofing...Bill Badger.

A typical slate roof on a small barn. Same size slate, some orange rust coloring and rust streaking from the metal cap.

Scrap slate in Middle Granville, NY showing raw color when new. Some greens and purple are seen from this quarry. Other quarries had more gray. All tended to weather toward gray.