Transcriber’s Note:
● Italics in the original are noted by _underscores_.
● Small capitals in the original are converted to ALL CAPS.
● Ditto marks (“) in tables or lists with train details have been
replaced with the text they represent.
● Obvious typos have been corrected.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDAVILLE
RAILROAD
by Linwood W. Moody
EDAVILLE RAILROAD
The Cranberry Belt
by
Linwood W. Moody
(_The photographs illustrating this book were taken by Cyrus
Hosmer 3D, 34 Chester Road, Belmont 78, Massachusetts;
Linwood W. Moody, Union, Maine; and Ellis D. Atwood, South
Carver, Massachusetts, and are credited accordingly._)
Published by
Ellis D. Atwood
South Carver, Massachusetts
1947
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: MAP OF THE EDAVILLE R.R. SO. CARVER, MASS.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
_Edaville Railroad_ isn’t a complete story of Ellis D. Atwood’s midget
cranberry line. It isn’t an all-time history of the odd and colorful
little roads that preceded it and of which the _Cranberry Belt_ is the
last and final survivor.
A while ago Mr. Atwood suggested writing-up his Lilliputian carrier for
the benefit of his host of visitors who aren’t as familiar as we are
with such abbreviated railroad sizes. Something concise yet generally
explanatory, answering most of the questions that might pop into your
mind. Something to give you a fairly good idea of what the Edaville
Railroad is and what its forebears have been. Something complete enough
to cover the subject in a cursory way and still be printed to sell for
the price of a ticket at Edaville, if he was selling tickets here.
No book has ever been written telling completely, in words or pictures,
the all-time story of these diminutive lines. Maybe sometime one will
be, and your reception to this booklet could be a deciding factor.
However, _Edaville Railroad_ will be a helpful guide-book for your visit
here and your ride on the Tom Thumb train. Or, if you aren’t already
down here, it will show you what you’re missing!
LINWOOD W. MOODY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
I don’t like this--prefatory pages in books. Why can’t we speak our
piece in the main text without expecting a feller to wade through
Forewords, Prefaces, and Prologues? We can, if our gray-matter is agile
enough.
But--my _Introduction_!
The world’s railroads aren’t all the same, you know. Width of track, or
_gauge_, varies. Standard gauge, as ’most everyone knows, is four-feet,
eight-and-one-half inches between the rails and there are plenty of
hypotheses about how it got that way.
A few roads are wider than standard--five-feet, and five-and-a-half.
Years ago you could even go all the way from New York to Chicago on
tracks six feet wide. England once made merry on some _seven_ foot
gauge.
Narrower gauge was much more common. Three feet and three-and-a-half
once claimed thousands of miles. Why! In Grandpa’s day there were no
less than thirty-seven different gauges of track in our fair land, and
Lord only knows how many the foreign countries had, with their
millimeters and other measuring sticks. Today, in North America, the
four-feet, eight-and-a-half-inchers have pretty well switched the
non-standard lines off the railroad map.
Of our own 227,000 miles of line 99-1/2 per cent is standard gauge, a
scant 932 being something else--724 of it the Colorado three-footers. On
only 380 miles is there a semblance of passenger service! Of Canada’s
42,000 miles, 90 is narrow gauge--the three-foot White Pass & Yukon
Route. Mexico, however, hangs onto her slim gauge a little better and
2,400 of her total 12,600 miles of road is three-feet wide. The 809 mile
Newfoundland Railway, three-and-a-half feet narrow, is likewise
prosperously content with its non-conformity.
Of the whole world’s railway mileage, 788,000--but let’s not get too
involved here. Anyway, foreign lands still consider economical
transportation more important than the distance between the rails, and
many miles of narrow tracks still thread hill and dale beyond the seas.
The very narrowest of them all, excepting some industrial tramway or
miniature freak, was the vaunted two-footer. Sixty-centimeter, they call
’em over there, which is just another way of saying twenty-three and
five-eighths inches. England had a few, and France has her famous
“decaville” railways. The far East, Africa, and Australia still run
generous two-foot mileage, and Latin America is pretty fond of the
little cusses.
Up here in our country, half a century ago, they blossomed like roses at
sunrise, bloomed lustily through the morning, but wilted ere there’d
been time for the winds of Fate to blow their pollen around in good
shape.
The top-puff midgets were the stout little virtuosi up in Maine. Their
bantam chests jingled merrily with medals they’d won. A few scattered
hybrids did some anemic bush-pushing elsewhere--one in Pennsylvania, one
in New Mexico, and a third in Colorado’s icy mountains. They weren’t
_real_ railroads, though. Either industrial outfits or kind of
street-carrish affairs. That’s why I skipped ’em here. Had to draw the
line somewhere.
The ten two-footers in Maine boasted about 212 miles of line. They were
built and run like the big railroads. Had freight, and passenger trains.
Were governed by the same laws and regulations. And were immensely vital
to the loves and lives of the neighborhood. Their smoky smells were just
as alluring and they could holler just as loud. I always thought they
were a bit more democratic and hail-fellow-well-met than the more
decorous grownups. Colorful, and kind of dramatic, too!
They passed, not because folks wanted all railroads alike. Not because
they didn’t measure up. Worse than that. They limped into the sunset
because people didn’t use them any more. Their _gauge_ made no
difference. Plenty of standard gauges puffed into the limbo too. Neither
could run without money. The two-footers stood it longer than their more
expensive relatives of wider size. No. Their narrow gauge wasn’t the
reason although the standardization tycoons beefed about non-conformity
and the cost of transferring freight.
The decade of the 1930’s saw them go. For a while longer the Bridgton
line and the little Monson were tolerated by some and cherished by a
few, but when clouds of Peace darkened the war-red sky they were
gone--the last two-footer had whistled off leaving only memory-trains to
scoot through the mid-regions of the past.
That’s why the Edaville Railroad stands out. Why it’s a splendid
anti-climax to an era of colorful midget railroading. Not so much
because it’s the last survivor, as I persist in calling it, as a
resurrection--an ideal risen from the ashes of Yesterday.
Here it is: not a synthetical reproduction but those very same engines
and cars that made railroad history for three generations, alive and
puffing again on Ellis Atwood’s eighteen-hundred acres. A seed from
history that now blooms with the cranberries, sprouting in that same
sand that perennializes faded shrubs from the Holy Commonwealth,
Plymouth Colony, America in the making.
That’s why I had to have an _Introduction_. All right?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDAVILLE RAILROAD
THE CRANBERRY BELT
Well, well, well; just look at this--
The Edaville Railroad. Eighteen hundred acres long and only two feet
wide!
Let’s look it over. There’s nothing like it anywhere. As if Plymouth
County and the town of Carver weren’t famous enough already, not to
mention Ellis Atwood’s model cranberry plantation, this little narrow
gauge railroad now vies with cranberry crops and _Mayflower_ packets in
spectacular “firsts”.
Plymouth, you know, is famous far and wide for being the stern and
rockbound coast where the Pilgrims debarked three hundred and
twenty-seven years ago. That’s Fourth Grade stuff. Also pretty well
known, this historical region is first in world cranberry growing. Yes.
Grows more little red berries on its pleasant, frugiferous acres than
the rest of the world combined. To top this off Carver boasts first
place among the cranberry towns, its 2,800 acres of bog harvesting
100,000 barrels a year--fifteen per cent of the whole world’s crop! No
argument about our list of “firsts” so far, is there?
While we’re firsting: ages ago, when Carver was the first iron producing
corner of the New World, the very first iron teakettle made in America
is said to have been cast here--from Carver iron, Carver smelter, and
moulded in Carver sand.
But, back to that corner of the town that’s Ellis Atwood’s own, private
first--eighteen hundred acre Edaville.
Edaville, 210 acres of actual bog, is the biggest privately owned
cranberry business in the world. Nearly 10,000 barrels of the sour
little things grow here every year.
All this, with ultra-attractive buildings and equipment, is enough to
set Mr. Atwood and his Thanksgiving sauce up as high as a block-signal.
But wait: his Edaville Railroad!
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
One of the first Edaville freight trains, with railroad fan John Holt
at the throttle of Monson engine No. 4.
]
The Edaville Railroad is maybe the most spectacular of all these
interesting “firsts”. It’s even more so because it’s the last--but we’ll
come to this _last_ part later. Let’s consider the _first_, first.
The first of all these famous Massachusetts cranberry lands to have a
real, he-man, tobacco-chewing railroad, complete to the last fishplate,
resplendent to the last parlor-car, and unbelievably efficient with its
excellent big-railed track, stout little engines, and wonderland cars.
Its importance as a plantation utility and, finally, the holiday fun it
gives you thousands of visitors who’re making it a Sunday spa and a
railroad fans’ Mecca.
That’s the Edaville Railroad, the Cranberry Belt: first of its kind, you
see.
It’s the last one, too.
A cloud of nostalgia dims the brilliance of Edaville lights when we
think of this side of the story. _Last of the two-foot gauges._ Final
survivor of the colorful midgets that once puffed around our
heterogeneous land.
Want to look it over? I thought so; Mr. Atwood is busy right now, and
why wouldn’t he be with the biggest one-man cranberry plantation on
earth, plus a little million civic and philanthropic affairs to see to?
I’ll show you around. Come on!
Here we are--the screenhouse. Cranberry bogs have screenhouses the same
as railroads have trains. These screenhouses, where berries are cleaned
and graded and prepared for market, may be anything from a rough shed to
this super structure here. This is the first one of its kind, too: a
big, yet compact, brick show-place housing not only the berry equipment
and the car shops, the company offices including Mr. Atwood’s own
private sanctum (most admired spot in Edaville!), but brimming with
storage space as well.
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
Mr. Atwood’s model screenhouse, the finest in the world, built in 1940
at a cost of--well, that doesn’t matter.
]
The railroad really begins here. Maybe that’s because the first rails
were laid into it for car repairing. There, clustering around like
chicks with Mama Hen, is the railroad station and most of the yards.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
No dieselization on the Edaville. Here passenger extra No. 7 sails
past work train on sandpit spur.
]
What a sight! Cranberry architecture and railroad artistry all mixed
together under the green pine trees. See the vivid contrast--yellow sand
and the bright blue sky. The red freight cars, and green passenger
coaches sporting their goldleaf name of _Edaville_ along the sides.
Eh? Those other names? Oh; Mr. Atwood restored these cars to their
original appearance and part of his pristine program was to letter
several of them as they were in the beginning. The parlor-car is _Sandy
River & Rangeley Lakes_, one ancient coach is _Bridgton & Saco River_,
and that other one once rolled over the old _Wiscasset & Quebec_ rails.
The idea makes a hit, too.
See--there are some trains scurrying about their cranberry work, while
that string of shiny passenger cars at the station, headed by the
impatient little homuncular engine, is waiting to take you for a ride.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
No. 7 hauls Mr. Atwood’s passenger train, loaded with a hundred of his
guests.
]
We’ll walk over. (No; that dog won’t bite.) Some station, isn’t it? Just
built this Spring. Thousands of people visit Edaville every week; I
guess lots of them hurry right by Plymouth Rock to come over here.
That’s why Mr. Atwood decided he needed a passenger station.
Yes, it’s quite a place; besides the usual station fixtures it has a
real Fred Harveyish kind of restaurant, a museum, waiting-room, and
social hall besides. That’s where they get together for club meetings,
speeches when some speechster is here, yarn-swapping, and to look at all
the interesting railroad relics and pictures on display there. There’ll
be some barracks upstairs someday, where visitors may bed down for a
night or two.
End of the line? No, not exactly. The tracks go right by the station.
That’s because it’s on a little loop encircling Mr. Atwood’s model
Edaville village--screenhouse, railroad, and all those cozy cottages
where his employees live--and joins the main line again half a mile
away. We’ll see the switch when we go out. Trains can go out of this
station three different ways. You’ll see.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Mr. and Mrs. Atwood smile beside of their de luxe coach “Elthea”,
named in her honor.
]
No. 7’s hauling the excursion train today. Want to see her? A trim
little pot, don’t you think? Baldwin built her thirty-four years ago and
she was the biggest two-foot gauge engine ever built then. Thirty-five
tons wrapped up there. Doesn’t look it, does she? Her outside frames
enclose four thirty-five inch drivers that can really roll. Hundred and
eighty pounds of steam, twelve-by-sixteen inch cylinders. You won’t see
it today but she can bat ’em off at a sixty mile clip!
Like most of this equipment No. 7 came from the Bridgton & Saco River,
up in Maine.
This tricky little car hooked to her tail was the B. & S. R.’s Railway
Post Office, Express, and Baggage car. Yes, they used to have a regular
mail contract, postal clerks and all. That was before the other war.
This coach, too, was a Bridgton car, the old _Pondicherry_. Laconia Car
Works built her and a mate, the _Mount Pleasant_, when the road was new,
sixty-four years ago. Of course, Mr. Atwood has refinished and renovated
them all. When we go out on the train please notice those coaches down
in the yard: the one with double windows and stained glass was a fine
idea of two-foot de luxe coach accommodations. She’s the _Elthea_, named
for Elthea Atwood, Mr. Atwood’s wife. A proper tribute, too, because she
works right with him in everything--cranberry business, railroad, and
all.
Now: this smooth little wagon on the rear here, _that’s_ the parlor car.
Ever hear of the old Sandy River parlor car? You must have! It’s been in
print ever since Jackson & Sharpe built it, ’way back when. In 1901, to
be exact.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Old Coach “Mount Pleasant”, identical to the “Pondicherry”, both built
in 1882 by Laconia Car Co.
]
Want to walk through it? We’ve got time. Here’s the smoking end: two
leather seats and a couple of chairs. And in here is the lavatory in one
corner and the car heater in the other--hot water. This spacious cubical
to your left is the toilet; no shoe-horn needed there, eh? Plenty of
room for the old bustles and hoop skirts to swish around.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Interior of parlor car “Rangeley”.
]
Now we’re in the parlor car proper: just see those swivel chairs with
their lush, green upholstery; the deep, filigreed carpet covering the
floor. Fit for the millionaires who used to ride in her, eh?
Each seat has a number, up over the window. Time was, years ago, when
you coughed up an extra simoleon to ride in this buggy. A colored
porter, who’d left New York the night before, stepped from his big
Pullman into this baby-carriage to brush off your dandruff on the
forty-seven mile run through Franklin County’s hills to Rangeley--a
swanky resort in those days.
_Rangeley_ was the car’s name, too: _Rangeley No. 9_.
When the Sandy River was abandoned in 1935 the little _Rangeley_, none
the worse for her generation of scooting through sunny valleys and
boreal storms, was bought by a doctor in Strong, Maine for two hundred
dollars. His big house was right beside the old main line and they left
the parlor car in his own dooryard, sitting on four sticks of
sixty-pound rail she’d rolled over so many times.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
With all the decorum of her wide gauge sisters the little “Rangeley”
trails the passenger train along the twisting dikes.
]
He died. Then a connoisseur of antiquity who just couldn’t see her sold
for a hen-house or a camp, bought her. Later on Mr. Atwood got her from
him. Came down here on a big trailer one twenty-below-zero morning.
Imagine a parlor car breezing along the highway!
Well, looks like we’re ready to go. Let’s stay here on the rear
platform. Good place to view the sights.
Starts smoothly? Sure: could be the _Federal_ leaving Grand Central.
These little trains ride all right. When track’s kept up you can’t tell
’em from standard gauge.
The enginehouse will be over there. Six stalls: four for the engines and
two for some of the motor cars. Motor cars? Oh yes, there are motor
cars. You’ll see some before we get back.
Look up there at the screenhouse: those big doors are the car shop
tracks. Holds six or eight cars in there. These are the main yards we’re
going through now; storage, mostly. See that track on the higher level
over there? Goes to the screenhouse door where berries are unloaded in
harvesting time. Screen and grade ’em in there. Stiff climb up that
bank, too. Makes the little engines grunt.
This is quite a yard. Confusing, too, until you get it fixed in your
mind. It’s like this: the track we’re on now is the original main line
out of Edaville--down through these yards and out onto the bogs. Now,
since the railroad was completed, it’s kind of an alternative cutoff,
I’d say.
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
In the shade of Mr. Atwood’s beautiful pine grove the baby cars enjoy
a Cape Cod siesta.
]
When Mr. Atwood surveyed the station loop (oh, he does all his own
surveying!) he branched it off this line about half a mile down from
here. That’s the switch I told you we’d see when we went out. A train
coming in off the bogs can go around the loop into the station, then
keep on going just as we’re going now, over this track, and back onto
the bogs again.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
A midget freight train puffs up the heavy grade back of Edaville
village.
]
Running to the upper end of the Atwood property the line swings east; to
our right, it’ll be. Circles down the shore of big Number Two reservoir
and, instead of re-entering the main stem again it comes into these
yards from a totally different direction--on that track to your left,
across the canal. A train coming in that way would head into the station
just the opposite to our direction. But she could proceed around the
little loop and come into the switch below us here and head onto the
bogs the same way we’re going.
Another way: if we’d left the station just now and thrown a switch at
the other end of this yard, we’d have branched across the canal onto
that track over there, and proceeded around the line just the other way
from our present direction. Confusing, yes; but you’ll get it
straightened out when we’ve been around. Western slants or eastern
perspectives, it’s still the last two-foot gauge we’re riding on!
We’re in the grove now. Pretty, isn’t it? Before the big wind of three
or four years ago this was a forest of beautiful pines. That gale played
havoc here as well as down on the coast; blew down over half of Mr.
Atwood’s pet pine trees. He felt pretty sorry at the time but now agrees
that maybe railroad yards are more pleasing than the whispering conifers
were!
How do you like the sound of No. 7’s whistle? Euphonious as any
wide-gauge tooter, eh? He’s blowing for Barboza’s Crossing. We’re
leaving the yards. See that cottage there--Mr. Barboza used to have a
big, ugly rooster; that hellion would attack trains and humans alike. My
shins used to be all gory where he’d clumb me and I strongly suspect
that under his bristling feathers there were black-and-blue spots, too!
No; the train didn’t mash him. We hoped it would, but he was too smart.
Barboza had to chop his head off three times before the tartar went down
for the count.
There: here’s your first cranberry bog, Number Six. Pretty, too;
especially when it’s in bloom. Looks like some strange kind of landscape
gardening. This embankment under us is all “turf work”. Ever hear of
“turfing”? Neither had I, until I came down here. It’s all right, too:
instead of expensive retaining walls or rip-rap they just cut a lot of
square sods and lay them in a just-so way; and there’s a strong,
dependable vertical wall. Looks neat, I think.
Right ahead now is the switch where the loop swings off to the station.
Right here--see! Pretty piece of track, isn’t it? Winding up through
those woods with sunlight and shadows playing across the rails. Over
here--see all those timbers? They’re old ties the New Haven took out of
their Cape lines. All creosoted and mostly hard wood. The New Haven and
the Boston & Maine have been pretty good about helping the Edaville, and
Mr. Atwood bought those ties for less money than the Maine cedar’s cost.
He saws ’em in two and gets a couple of four foot, three inch ties from
each one. Makes wonderful track for these mites to run on.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
A track crew, under the supervision of Foreman Hatch (third from
left), keeps the section clean.
]
We’re skirting the little Number One reservoir now. Cranberry bogs must
have plenty of water. Mr. Atwood has a system of ditches and canals,
controlled by floodgate-thingamajigs, that supply quick water to any or
all his bogs. This flooding may be for pest control or, in the late
fall, to cover berries as a frost protection. Remember how we often hear
radio reports in late September or October, telling what temperatures
can be expected on the cranberry bogs tonight? Run some water in ’em and
old Jack Frost is frustrated! More gates drain it off quickly when the
danger’s past.
This country is flat. All the water must be pumped into these reservoirs
from some pond or river. His pumping-station is up beyond the Ball Park;
two or three big electric pumps. I forget how many million gallons these
reservoirs hold. Enough to get you all wet, anyway.
Pretty along here; brown sand and blue water and green woods. We think
the narrow gauge railroad adds a lot to the charm, too. We’re blowing
for Plantation Center now. Will stop there probably. Want to get off a
minute?
The Atwoods are strong for landscaping; keep all their grounds so neat
and attractive.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Big Lorain-40 shovel ready to load sand.
]
There: this is the western side of the big, eighteen hundred acre loop;
track runs a couple of miles along the west bounds of Mr. Atwood’s
property and past several of the sand-piles and bogs. Bogs must be
sprinkled with an inch of sand every winter to keep their bed in proper
trim and to combat weeds and bugs. Sand also radiates heat to prevent
the vines from freezing in our cold New England winters. While vines may
freeze into the ice without harming ’em they mustn’t be chilled by the
cold wind, if you can figure that one out. Mr. Atwood spreads nearly ten
thousand yards of sand each year. He’s got a lot of grit, wouldn’t you
say?
This big bog--that’s Fourteen Acre; a record breaker. Shells out nearly
eighty barrels to the acre!
Where did that pile of sand come from? A mile up the line is his
sand-pit. A power shovel loads it onto flatcars and the train hauls it
to these different sand piles; there’s seven or eight thousand yards in
that pile there. When sanding time comes--but you aren’t interested in
all this; you want to see this pocket-edition railroad.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Berry-pickers swarm over 14-Acre Bog, scooping its 80 barrels per
acre.
]
Look ’way across the big reservoir there: that’s the railroad coming
down the east side. Remember I showed you where it entered the yards
just below the station? The smudge of smoke is a work train. We’ll meet
’em either at the Ball Park or the sand pit.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Loading a train at 14-Acre Bog. Here’s a season when freight trains
come before the passenger specials.
]
Ball Park? Yes; or more correctly, the _Atwood Athletic Field_. He built
a baseball ground, picnic spot, and a few buildings there. Plenty active
all summer, too. We’ll be up there shortly now.
Incidentally, it’s when we leave the Ball Park that the track swings
east and south again to go down the opposite side of this reservoir,
where the work train is now. It passes Sunset Vista, winds along the
lower end of the reservoir, and finally enters Edaville yard where I
pointed it out to you.
I guess we’re off again. Can you make it?
Isn’t Fourteen Acre a neat looking bog? Not all growers keep their bogs
as neat and trim as Mr. Atwood does. Sure, it costs. There’s something
satisfying in owning the finest cranberry plantation in the world. When
the railroad’s completed and there’s some time to spare he intends to
erect signs around the bogs and at different points of interest,
explaining about cranberry culture, history, production, and how bogs
are built and cared for. Like a self-conducted tour your ride’ll be
then.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
A passenger train smokes across the dike and along the shores of the
big 300-acre reservoir. 60-pound rail from a White Mountain logging
road, supported by ex-New Haven ties, makes a wonderful track.
]
We’re crossing a corner of undeveloped swamp now: just plain mud and
bushes. Potential bog land, though. Clear that jungle off, dig out some
of the mud and dump in clean sand, set out the cranberry vines--as you’d
plant strawberries or rosebushes--and presto! A new bog.
New bogs cost close to three thousand dollars an acre. You must wait
four years before the berries come, too. In the end, though, it pays
off: a well built, properly kept bog, like these around here, should be
good for pretty nearly five hundred dollars an acre every year. Yes,
there’s gold in them swamps, but you and me needn’t conjure up dreams of
owning any. It’s a complicated and expensive proposition. Takes years to
learn. More men have gone broke in the swamps than ever got rich out of
’em.
What do you say: want to walk up through the train and see who’s riding?
Yes, this parlor car sure is cute. Mr. Atwood’s pet, too. (Look out!
don’t fall over that woman’s feet; she’s spread out there like a
pumpkin-vine.) He had painters and repairmen working half the winter
restoring this car to her school girl complexion. Most of her’s solid
mahogany. She would cost a queen’s dowry to build now: all those inlaid
woods, the filigree designs on her ceiling, the brass lamps, expensive
upholstery, plate glass windows--the splendor of the legendary Nineties.
Can’t buy those things for a song now. Notice how contagious it is--that
traditional humor of those old days. Seems to have infected our carload
of passengers today--even the old girl with her feet clear across the
aisle!
Careful now: watch your step when we cross from the _Rangeley_ over to
this coach ahead, the _Pondicherry_. These little puppies can nip off
your leg as quickly as the wide gaugers can.
Quite a car, the _Pondicherry_, isn’t she? That was the name she had
when she was new in 1883, up on the Bridgton & Saco River. Pondicherry
was the original name of the town up there; changed it to Bridgton
later. I don’t know what it means but somehow I seem to think of it
along with County Down, Galway, or Connemara. Could be Swedish or an
Indian name, though.
Thirty people can sit in these little one-butt seats. Notice the carved
wood and old fashioned windows. Mr. Atwood’s renovating job was about
perfect, wasn’t it? She was some little hack in 1883; still is, too.
Look into that nut-shell toilet--that’s where you need the shoe-horn!
These cars don’t sway much, do they? Steady and serene as a Shore Line
job. Edaville track is just as good, too, comparatively speaking. This
big rail--mostly fifty-six pounds to the yard--is heavier in proportion
than the New Haven’s big hundred and thirty pound steel.
How fast are we going? Oh, about twenty-five, I guess. Sometimes when
he’s feeling extra kipper the engineer inches her out a bit and No. 7’s
two-bit drivers will really roll. Mr. Atwood doesn’t approve of that,
with a train load of his guests aboard.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Little Monson No. 3, en route from the junkyard to Mr. Atwood’s
railway empire, will soon be repaired and scooting around the bogs.
]
Well, let’s go up into the baggage car now; watch your step again!
Cute little rig, isn’t she? See the mail-racks; and the slots in the
doors where you could mail a letter once upon a time. Some of these
philatelist fellers think it would be a super idea for Mr. Atwood to
arrange with the Postal Department for a one-day Railway Post Office on
the Edaville; mail clerks cancelling letters _Edaville & Cranberry Bogs
R.P.O._ or something like that. Gosh! We’d pay off the national debt
with stamps that day. You know how wild stamp collectors get about such
things?
Up here from the head platform, or blind end, as it used to be called,
you can get a closeup of No. 7 batting off the rail-joints. See how
she--Oh! here we are at the sand pit. He’s stopping. Let’s drop off and
see where all that sand comes from.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Here’s how the flatcars were trucked down from Maine; loaded
three-deep on a C. E. Hall & Sons diesel trailer.
]
Wonder why everyone else is jumping off? I see: that work train’s got
in; they’re loading sand to grade the Sunset Vista picnic ground, a flag
stop down the east side. Their engine, little No. 3, came from another
of those Maine roads, the Monson. They had two just alike, No. 3 and No.
4. Mr. Atwood bought them from a concern in Rochester, New York, where
they’d been taken when the Monson road was scrapped in 1945. Yes, she’s
lots smaller than No. 7. Weighs only eighteen tons. She has inside
frames, like wide gauge engines do. No. 7 and No. 8’s frames are
_outside_ the wheels, you know.
The Monson engines were built by the Vulcan Iron Works down in Wilkes
Barre, one in 1912 and the other in 1918. Their cylinders are much
smaller, too; only ten by fourteen inches. Carry a hundred and sixty
pounds of steam. The inside frames, which make a narrower support for
their balance, makes ’em ride different from the big engines. Slop
around more. They’ll scare you, too, until you get used to them.
Actually these inside framers are as safe as the others; it’s just that
their equilibrium is kind of emotional. Nearly all the early two-foot
locomotives had inside frames and they’re the ones that hung up most of
the slim gauge speed records.
See: the big Lorain shovel over there is loading sand onto the flatcars;
ten cubic yards to a car, about fifteen tons. There’s usually a work
train out, doing routine plantation work along with construction and
maintenance duties. That’s what she’s doing: building the station
grounds at Sunset Vista.
Wish you could have seen those flatcars when they first landed here.
Ready to fall apart. Sills rotten, flooring gone, and not a brake
working. Mr. Atwood hired Roland Badger, a millwright up to Walter
Baker’s; Badger is quite a railroad fan himself, has built lots of
little scale models for 0-gauge outfits. He was planning on buying a
pasture somewhere and making himself some quarter-scale iron colts to
run in it. However, the Edaville fits into his dreams pretty well. He’s
repaired or rebuilt about every car here: new sills and floors, and got
the brakes to working.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
A work train at Sunset Vista. The tricky caboose, built by the Maine
Central many years ago, adds a realistic touch to Mr. Atwood’s
pint-sized railroad.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Passenger train in the deep cut at the Ball Field. The elegant coach
“Pondicherry” brings up in the rear.
]
They’re going out ahead of us! See how easily little No. 3 snakes her
train out of the pit. That tricky little caboose they’re hauling came
from the Sandy River, like the parlor car. When the Maine Central owned
the Sandy River, thirty years ago, they built a number of those cabooses
in their Waterville shops. About as perfect a molecular reproduction of
a wide gauge buggy as anything could be, eh? I like that cupola. It’s
quite a treat to ride up there surveying Mr. Atwood’s eighteen hundred
acres from such a vantage point. We’ll see the work train again at
Sunset Vista. Let’s go on to the Ball Park now.
Are you especially interested in railroads? This may not mean much to
you, but if a standard gauge car was built to these same proportions it
would be nearly twenty feet wide and twenty-two feet high! Actually
they’re only ten feet wide and around twelve or thirteen feet high.
Shows you how large, in proportion, these two-footers are. An overhang
on either side that’s greater than the gauge of track! Still, they don’t
feel like you’re riding a tight rope, do they? Personally, I think what
this country needs is more two-foot gauges!
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
As fine a consist as any “Empire Builder” or “Minute Man”, if you only
have eyes to see it!
]
The Ball Park! We’re two and a half miles from the screenhouse now.
Pretty well to the farther end of Mr. Atwood’s cranberry empire.
They’re having a ball game up here today; South Carver Sunday School
playing the West Wareham Firemen--seems to be an appropriate analogy
there, don’t you think? Sunday Schools usually do oppose people who’re
heading for the Fire! Two hundred people watching that game; came up on
a special train right after dinner. Those people ’way over at the edge
of the woods, they’re Plymouth Kiwanians having their annual clambake.
They’re great for clam bakes down here; say it makes ’em tough.
Oh: you wanted to see one of the motor cars. Here’re two of them. This
Model T touring car I like best; Sandy River built her in their Phillips
shop. Master Mechanic Lee Stinchfield designed them all. He ought to be
with Electro-Motive; he’d design diesel locomotives better’n they have
now! They’re the neatest little rail cars I’ve ever seen. Mr. Atwood has
two of these T Models; this touring, and a canopy body truck. They have
a wholly different rear-end arrangement: kind of a “take-off” idea; put
a little lever in forward gear and they’ll scoot away in high. Put it in
back position and you fly backwards in high! This touring car was
Superintendent Vose’s private car; he thought nothing of dropping down
from Redington in twenty minutes; sixteen crooked, hilly miles. In
winter he’s often pushed snow ahead of her radiator. They saved the
Sandy River lots of money when otherwise a steam train would have gone
out with fire-fighters or a repair crew. They save Mr. Atwood a lot.
Quicker and cheaper than a pickup for cranberry men to run around in.
This other one here, the G4, is quite a wagon: something like the big
gas-electrics on wide gauge roads. She seats fifteen people and used to
haul a four-wheel trailer for mail and express. In summertime the Sandy
River ran two of these rail-buses in place of steam passenger trains.
Mr. Atwood occasionally uses this one to carry some visitors over the
road but it’s mostly a sort of de luxe work car for his own crews.
Well, there goes No. 7’s bell: must be we’re leaving again. Want to ride
the engine down to Sunset Vista? Mr. Atwood won’t like this if he sees
us as it’s strictly against the rules; insurance company, or something.
All settled? Keep off that steam pipe or you’ll be settled in Doc Nye’s
office down to Wareham.
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
Cold nor snow can stop the midget Edaville trains from scooting like a
field-mouse among the bogs.
]
Here we go. You can see lots of bog from here. Nearly half the whole
plantation’s in sight. There’s the big reservoir, Number Two, three
hundred acres. Holds millions of gallons. Water is all pumped in from
the river over back of the Ball Park. Fish come in through the pump,
too, believe it or not!
These are new bogs he’s building; started ’em last year. Aren’t the
pitch-pines pretty along the shore there? This ride down the east side
is better scenery than we got coming up. Nights this whole shoreline is
twinkling with little bug-lights where people are fishing for bass; come
from miles around.
Sunset Vista’s about a mile down here. They called it Ridge Hill before
the railroad came. Mr. and Mrs. Atwood used to come out here and sit in
their Packard to watch the sunset. They enjoyed it. Said it was so
restful and quiet. Must have been kind of a sacrifice, too, when they
gave it up so others could enjoy it. Certainly is nothing restful nor
quiet around here now, since everyone and their inlaws took it over for
sunset picnics. Trains drop ’em off late in the afternoon and pick them
up again along in the evening. There’s even talk of band concerts. It’s
here that the Atwoods will probably have their big Christmas pageant
this year--but maybe I’m letting the tabby out of the bag. Well, we’re
almost there. He’ll stop, because that work train is out ahead of us.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The Edaville has everything the B. & A. has got: speeding passenger
trains, grade crossings, and camera-minded girls who take pictures
of it!
]
How did No. 7 ride? Like it? Ever on a midget engine before?
You said awhile ago that you wanted to take some pictures. Movie camera?
Good! Here’s what we can do: one of Mr. Atwood’s pickup trucks is here
at Sunset Vista. We can take it and run ahead of the train to Edaville,
about a mile. Want to? The railroad and Mr. Atwood’s auto road are side
by side along the foot of the reservoir. All right: you climb in back of
the pickup and get your Hell & Bowell flicker-box ready for action. I’ll
keep just far enough ahead so you can shoot the whole train. Ready?
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
In the quiet shade of the pine grove No. 7 backs sleepily onto her
train, ready for the daily grind again.
]
Hang on! This tipcart doesn’t ride like _Rangeley No. 9_. She should
make a dandy picture back there--smoke rolling up over the pitch-pines
and the three varnished cars glittering in the sun. See ’em swing
through that reverse curve!
See this big iron along here? Seventy-five pound steel, biggest ever
laid in two-foot track. Proportionately it’s equivalent to about
two-hundred pound rail in wide gauge track: heavier than anything made
yet.
Getting some good shots? I hope the reflections in the water show up
clear; reservoir’s like a mirror.
Take a quick peek over ’cross there: that’s Plantation Center station,
on the line we just went up over. Remember? The two lines are hardly a
hundred yards apart right here. Sometime Mr. Atwood may lay a connecting
track across this dike. Only a stone’s throw. Notice this big fill here:
all new grade across the corner of the swamp. Kind of sags in the
middle; will be filled and raised sometime. See No. 7 puffing up out of
there!
Look: we’re beside the canal now. There’s the grove and yard ahead.
We’re coming in on that line I told you about--from across the canal.
There’s the work train’s smoke. She came in ahead of us and it looks to
me like No. 4 engine is out there too. Where could she have been when we
left town?
Take it easy: I’m trying to stop this jalopy. We’re back in the yards
again. Quite an array of power, eh? No. 7; the work train; No. 4 engine;
the railbus which beat us down from the Ball Park; and there’s even
little Plymouth No. 14 with a string of bog dumpcars. You couldn’t get
so much action short of North Station.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Look out--stand back! Here comes a freight train, cuffing the wind up
Mt. Urann with the little red kiboose lurching and swaying behind.
]
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
The switch by the little reservoir, where trains may go left through
the grove, or around the curve through the woods to Edaville. No. 7
is about to swing through the switch for the climb up the hill.
]
All set? Then take a look at this Plymouth: all right, isn’t she? Mr.
Atwood bought her up to Quincy a year or so ago. Alec MacLellan, a
railroad fan, told him about her. You should have seen her then: about
the sorriest little mill you could imagine. No cab, no bell, no nothing.
Mr. Atwood’s crew took over and, patterning their dream-engine after
those big he-Plymouths, they built her into this trim little
cock-sparrow!
For real economy she puffs black all over the ledger. Will haul two or
three cars like nobody’s business; will do shifting and light work as
well as a steam engine. One man can run her without continually getting
down to tend his fire. Has her limit, of course; but she weighs only
four tons.
There: the work train’s going out; the passenger is hauling up to the
depot to swap passengers for her next trip; I think that No. 4 is going
out around the Edaville loop into the station that way. Why don’t we
ride in on her?
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
John Holt and Charlie Smith have invaded the sacred precincts of
pullman cars by bringing the sooty freight train right into Edaville
station--and see the crowd stare!
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
But those passengers hadn’t long to wait; the passenger train came in,
and see ’em pile aboard the open excursion cars for their ride
through Mr. Atwood’s blooming lands. It isn’t unusual for 3,500
people to ride in a single day; sometimes 600 to a single train!
]
LOOK OUT! Oh, heavenly days; _look_ at your shirt!
Well, people just have to learn that an engine full of water will spew
that black slush all over you. Gosh! What a mess. Married?
Jump on: and be careful not to spatter your shirtful all over me.
Sit up there on the fireman’s shelf. There; how does this engine ride? A
little more jerky than No. 7 but still no worse than lots of wide gauge
pots I’ve been on. She’s got steam brakes. No. 7’s and 8’s are vacuum.
Those two-footers used all kinds of things for brakes, from modern air
to such childish devices as brakemen dragging their feet. They always
managed to stop, though. And now they’ve stopped for good--all excepting
the Edaville.
There’s the parlor car, for instance: got air and vacuum both on her.
She used to run over the Sandy River and the Phillips & Rangeley, so
when they built her she had the kind of brakes used by each road--vacuum
and Westinghouse. No. 4 can pile you through the front window, with
those steam stoppers of hers!
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The excursion train is ready to leave.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The new station at Edaville is swarming with expectant people; No. 7
puffs across No. 2 Bog to disgorge her crowd and take a new load on.
Often 600 automobiles are parked here at one time.
]
Yes, these little pigs did a lot of work up there in northern Maine. You
should have seen them settle down to dragging a train of slate up the
hill. That Monson road always used link-and-pin couplers, too; never
changed over to automatic. I don’t know how they sidestepped the
Government laws, but they did. Common carrier, at that. Link-and-pin
couplers, stub switches, and hand brakes; just about as modern as a
ramrod rifle. Far as I know it was the last road left that hadn’t turned
the century.
Here’s that switch again: he’s throwing it for the loop. In a minute
we’ll be backing up through the woods and into the station. Two tracks
there; we’ll clear the passenger.
Quite a trip, wasn’t it? Have a good time? Everyone does; even old
timers who’ve railroaded for years. Mr. Atwood’s Edaville Railroad’s got
something they never saw before!
We’re back. See the crowd on the platform! Soon’s the train is unloaded
there’s a fresh batch to take out. It’s like that all the time now. Lots
of folks keep getting back on again, riding all day. Mr. Atwood doesn’t
mind as long as there’s room for the new-comers. Wouldn’t some big
railroads enjoy a passenger trade like this? It sure costs plenty for
the Atwoods to give everyone these rides, but they’re like that: never
satisfied unless they’re doing things to make other people happy--kind
of sharing their good fortune with the world at large, you might say.
It’s not lost, though: all adds up to good cranberry advertising, and
cranberries is what makes Edaville the top-pucker plantation in the
world, and this manikin railroad a lucky survivor of a less lucky kind
of railroad design. Let’s go into the station.
Why! Good afternoon, Mrs. Atwood; where’s the boss--Oh; I see him.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
The Plymouth Locomotive leaving the screenhouse with a supply of berry
boxes and a carful of pickers. Harvesting season, during the fall,
is a busy time on Mr. Atwood’s estate.
]
There’s Mr. Atwood sitting up to the lunch counter with the boys, eating
steamed clams. Wonder that man doesn’t turn into a steamed clam.
Personally, I’d just as soon have baked chicken. Here: we’ll sit over by
the fireplace with those yarnsters, until the clams are gone. I’m tired,
anyway. Notice those things more after forty.
Is it supper time? In half an hour the _Sunset Special_ will pull out
for her curfew run. That’s a pretty train. Sunset seems to show up
better out there where there’s plenty of room. We’ll stick right here
so’s not to miss it.
See that headlight up on the wall? Big’s a boxcar. Came off one of the
old Bridgton engines when they changed to electric glims. This one’s
oil. Mr. Atwood has lots of relics in here. You’ve no idea what a show
he’s got! Only difference between he and Phin Barnum is that Atwood
isn’t trying to kid anybody. His is the real McCoy.
Yes: ten little railroads all switched into one: the Edaville. Did you
ever stop to think why he named it that--_Edaville_? Can’t you guess?
Sure, that’s it: his own initials, E.D.A. Pretty cute, eh?
Wait ’til I light my pipe ...
Those old two-footers were some roads. Many of my happiest recollections
are of rides I had on the Wiscasset road and the Sandy River. Never saw
so much of the Bridgton line until the last year it ran. The Kennebec
Central checked out before I checked in, although I used to see their
tiny trains when I was a kid. I knew the little Monson--_the Two by Six_
they called it, two feet wide and six miles long--but only after it got
kind of dilapidated. I’ve seen ’em all. And here’s the last one: using
the very same engines and cars that I used to ride on years ago. Seems
funny, too: to come down here and find ’em resurrected again. Those
little pikes tried so hard to climb up to the sun, and a bumping-post in
the sunset was the best they could do. The sunset of pint-size
railroads.
Funny: here’s this last one, here in eastern Massachusetts; and seventy
some years ago the _first_ one got its christening within a few miles of
this very spot. Up in Billerica, where the B. & M.’s big shops are now.
Someone must have swung the bottle too hard and konked the little cuss
on its pituitary gland. Anyway, besides being a baptismal ceremony it
was a death blow too.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
A baby boxcar is gingerly loaded onto a Hall trailer at Bridgton
Junction, Maine, for its 200-mile jaunt down the Pike to South
Carver. Forty cars and engines made the trip this way--without
mishap.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Bridgton Yard was a sorry looking mess in 1945. A marked contrast to
their condition in Edaville today. Roland Badger’s therapy soon
restored them to their original splendor, eh?
]