taken a trip over to Wales (coal-passing, most likely) and was pretty
well sold on the two-foot Festiniog Railway there. The Festiniog was the
very first of these flea gauges, and had been built fifty years before
George went back. He couldn’t see why they wouldn’t be just as
successful over here; kind of miscalculated on his grand-children’s
idiosyncrasies, though. George returned to the New World as full of
ideas as a New Dealer. You might say he’d got narrow minded--two-feet
wide. He bla-blaad to everyone who’d listen and when they stopped
listening he hired a hall and gave away a new Ford on the lucky ticket.
He talked two-feet gauge. He may have even drawn chalk pictures. He
built a sample railroad in his back yard with two-by-four for rails.
Named it the Sumner Heights & Somethingwood Valley. Luckily he didn’t
have an eighteen hundred acre lot or the Edaville would be just another
backyard railroad today.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
A heterogeneous passenger train--conventional coaches, open-side cars,
and the rubberneck-wagons on the rear; all loaded with folks having
the ride-of-their-life.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Engineer’s-eye-view of the narrow track as the passenger train rattles
through the woods toward the Ball Field.
]
The right people were impressed, apparently, because the folks of
Bedford and Billerica fell in with his tight ideas: and the first
genuine two-footer in the Western Hemisphere made the headlines.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
The Edaville R. R. has no bridges, but there are plenty of these
concrete pipes to cross during your ride. This “bridge” is being
installed near No. 1 reservoir.
]
That was in 1877. They built the Billerica & Bedford Railroad, two feet
wide and eight miles too long.
Its vicissitudes don’t mean much now excepting because it was the first
of these bobtailed scooters to puff into our history, and because that
christening wallop was so robust the little pike turned up its brogans
the very next year. Therein it suffered the doubtful honor of being not
only the first fly-speck choo-choo in North America, but also the first
one to ask official permission to abandon its entire line!
George, though, hadn’t been idle. Instead of staying home minding his
baby he’d been rusticating in the wilds of Maine talking convincingly to
the railroad minded folks up there. In fact, the spacious old Jim Hill
sold ’em not only the idea, but the moribund Billerica & Bedford
Railroad as well!
Yes: as a result of his glib missionary work the Sandy River Railroad
made a three point landing in Farmington, Maine, complete with the B. &
B.’s two forney locomotives, and handful of cars, and eight miles of
rail. That was the real beginning of down to earth two-footing. The
bantam railroad clicked up there, and it made good, too. Quicker than
you can spit they’d laid eighteen miles of track up through Strong to
Phillips, a good part of it on the seventy-four trestles that boosted it
over gullies and ravines, and forthwith began doing more business than a
beer-joint in Plymouth.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Rainy weather doesn’t dampen enthusiasm at Edaville, and plenty of
soggy folks enjoy (or seem to) their ride just the same.
]
Folks were wild about it. The two-footer got kind of wild, too, because
it made a record by operating on fifty-five per cent of its gross
earnings. Darned few wide gauge roads ever did that! Today--well, if a
road breaks even everyone walks around the table shaking hands and
passing out seegars.
Oh I could gab for hours about it: how those towns raised money to build
it on the express condition that trains be polluting the virgin air of
Phillips by November 20, 1879 or not one blankity-blanked penny would
they pay. And how, the night before, track still lacked half a mile of
the town line--but maybe all this moldy lore of sixty-eight years ago
doesn’t interest you as much as the Edaville of today--the _last_
two-footer.
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
The de luxe coach “Elthea”. They even come in perambulators to ride
Mr. Atwood’s train!
]
Eh? Did they make it before the fatal hour? You bet they did! Why, the
gang hove to that night with axes and oxen and the way they scattered
railroad track up that last half mile would make Mr. Atwood’s
track-layers look like sit-down strikers. More B. T. U.’s sparked off
that night than in the whole city of Boston. The little Hinckley engine,
twelve tons of brass and headlight, tottered behind the galloping track
gang and, just as the clock in the steeple dumped its jackpot, the last
rail clattered down; and Hinckley No. 1 fumed defiantly into Phillips.
The town’s check was good!
(No thank you, Mr. Atwood; I can’t eat clam sandwiches and talk at the
same time. You eat it.)
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Ted Goodreau throws the switch, backing a work train into the gravel
pit. She’ll emerge from the spur with some 20 yards of sand for
ballasting purposes.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
This tiny Brooksville locomotive with 13 1-yard dumpcars was Mr.
Atwood’s construction train last year.
]
As I was saying, almost before that first train got turned around there
was an avalanche of business. Exponents of the railroad were slapping
each other on the back and thumbing their beaks at the sour-puss
skeptics. A year or so later and all Franklin County was lathered up:
everyone wanted a railroad.
Kingfield was first to get it. Somehow the Boston egg-men, A. & O. W.
Mead, got snarled in it. They began their Franklin & Megantic Railroad,
Strong to Kingfield, fourteen and a half miles, in 1884. It was a pretty
road. Full of curves as a chorus girl and lush with wild, bucolic
scenery. You could see Mount Abram looming up five thousand feet, and
Mount Bigelow was still higher. At Mount Abram Junction you could almost
spit on ’em, they were so close.
This little pike didn’t swell with the financial pregnancy that busted
the more copious Sandy River shirt. The F. & M. was always broke. A
cussed feeling, too; take it from me. Several reorganizations and the
final exodus of the Mead boys made no difference. While they managed to
relay the original twenty-five pound rail with bigger thirty-five pound
stuff they did little grade improving or curve relocation. Track went up
and around with the whims of Mother Nature, and the old harridan whimmed
plenty in that rugged country.
The snow they had! You should see some of the old pictures of
snow-fighting (Maybe Mr. Atwood has some here); it was nothing to see a
man’s head sticking out, and then learn that he was standing on top of a
boxcar.
In the early ’90’s, under the paper name of Kingfield & Dead River, the
F. & M. built fifteen and a half miles of road from Kingfield up through
Carrabasset to Bigelow, a booming lumber town. Today Bigelow _ain’t_.
You just drive up through there and wonder where the place was. This
thirty mile line rivaled even the P. & R. in wild, rustic beauty. If
only those wintry hills could have been cranberry country!
About this same time some other Massachusetts business men (See: the Bay
Staters were always the power behind these midget gauges!) dumped their
pennies into the twenty-nine mile Phillips & Rangeley Railroad, from
Phillips up over Redington Mountain to Rangeley. You should have seen
it. What a railroad. One reverse curve after another; three and four per
cent grades with Sluice Hill and the Devil’s Elbow going over five per
cent. Grand country, too: wooded hills spouting white-water
streams--where trout frolic in the rapids and thumb their little noses
at you.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Nancy Merritt sells Mr. Atwood’s souvenir tickets, and maybe her big
smile is why a thousand are often sold in a single day! You may ride
on the Edaville free, but the 5c souvenir tickets seem to be in
popular demand.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The cranberry train hauls up at a bog crossing, and a few boxes of
berries are loaded aboard. Mr. Atwood is more than pleased with his
little railroad’s utility value.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Big business today at 14-Acre Bog. About 30 truck-miles are reduced to
4-boxcar miles when berries are hauled by train. The slogan
“Ship-and-Travel-by-Rail” is in full effect on the Edaville road.
]
The P. & R., like the Sandy River, had kind of a Midas touch. Millions
of cords of pulpwood and millions more feet of timber and logs rolled
down the tortuous grades; sawmills were everywhere; boom towns, such as
Sanders. Old photos show Sanders, ten miles up on the P. & R., with
steam mills, stores, railroad buildings, boarding-houses and barns.
Frontier prosperity. But today: well, if you pushed along the old grade
you might find hidden ruins--a moss-covered foundation or a scrap of
rusty boiler plate. Not a building left.
Purposive branch lines wandered through the woods, like stray cats. I
don’t know who used all the lumber but quantities of it rolled out over
the narrow gauge during the next thirty years.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Something novel in railroad tricks: a Grill Car. Rebuilt from a
standard boxcar this Grill dispenses with hamburgers, ice-cream, and
Pepsi-Cola, not only to the throng of Edaville guests but to Mr.
Atwood’s hungry employees as well.
]
Once they had seventeen engines working, and few went out again at
night. Thirty-three men labored at the Farmington transfer loading
freight from little cars into big ones. Two and sometimes three baby
cars made one wide gauge load.
I suspect that the same money was pretty much behind all these Franklin
County roads. In 1908 the big Consolidation came off: the F. & M., P. &
R., the Madrid, and the old Sandy River merged into the new Sandy River
& Rangeley Lakes. Three years later the Eustis Railroad joined up too,
giving the new S. R. & R. L. a total of 120 miles of line--logging
branches and all. Seventeen locomotives and nearly four hundred cars,
including Franklin County’s pride, the _Rangeley_.
In 1911 the Maine Central scratched its chin reflectively, and bought
the outfit, lock, stock, and ramrod.
In some ways this was a good thing. The big road made some money, and
they did a lot of improving such as heavier rail, new engines and cars,
as well as kind of guiding the baby to complete maturity. That caboose
you just saw on the work train was one of the cars they built.
This parentage lasted eleven years. For some reason, in 1922, the Maine
Central sold the jack-rabbit to a pair of local tycoons. These boys, a
Kingfield lumber king and a Gardiner banker, owned it right through to
the end, in 1935--June 29, to be exact.
Maybe I fumbled by telling you about the Sandy River first. She was the
grand climax to the others. A modern railroad, abbreviated down to
brownie size. Regular engines with eight-wheel tenders. Parlor cars.
Telegraph. Air brakes. And a super machine shop where engines could be
completely taken down. Most impressive of all, perhaps, crews who talked
railroad, lived railroad, and could defy any others to out-railroad
them!
The other roads weren’t; not so much, anyway. They used vacuum brakes or
simply stuck a hickory in the brake-wheel and laid back on it. Their
operation was more short-line, jerkwaterish, and patchy. The Bridgton &
Saco River (and if you don’t mind, that’s pronounced SAW’ko) was nearest
to the Sandy River in this kind of excellence. Maybe due somewhat to
Maine Central influence, too. While the Wiscasset road was the only one
to have a separate-tender engine like the Sandy River’s it wasn’t nearly
as up to date and spic and span as the Bridgton line.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Back home. Little No. 4 engine ready to leave Monson for her morning
trip to the Junction, before wars and depressions laid her low.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
End of the trail. Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington No. 8 never
turned a wheel again, after this wreck at Whitefield Iron Bridge in
far-off 1933.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
The New Year’s Special puffs through the frosty Cape Cod air, telling
the cockeyed world that miser gauges can run in the snow.
]
The B. & S. R. was built in 1882. The first train into town was on
January 21 the following year, “packed with exultant citizens and
numerous representatives of the rising generation”, so writes William
McLin in his interesting history _The Twenty-four Inch Gauge Railroad at
Bridgton, Maine_. The Edaville gets demonstrations of that “rising
generation” idea, too!
This sixteen mile line ran from the Maine Central at Hiram up through
some pretty wild country to Bridgton, and fifteen years later another
six miles to Harrison was added--along the shores of Long Lake. They ran
lots of trains, too. See that old time card over here on the wall: looks
like a lineup of Braintree Locals.
They made money. Probably that’s why the Maine Central bought it in
1912. Like the Sandy River’s case, they made lots of improvements
although the little tike was in pretty good shape anyway. The machine
shop was in Bridgton but it wasn’t on a par with the Sandy River’s
Phillips shop; most of the heavy work went to Thompson’s Point for the
Maine Central to do. Mr. Atwood has that machine shop here in Edaville
now.
Well, by this time people must have decided that George Mansfield was a
second Moses and that his slim gauge railways puffed right into Heaven.
Infection had spread like chicken-pox. The Monson Railroad, ’way up
Moosehead Lake way, had been built in 1883, six miles long with a couple
of miles in slate quarry spurs.
Monson slate went all over the world. Still does. Bathtubs, shingles,
switchboards, and gravestones. Kind of a womb-to-tomb business, you
might say. Far as I know the Monson never aspired beyond the horizon,
whereas its contemporaries planned to go clear to hellangone, although
none of ’em ever got there.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
W. W. & F. No. 4 and 11-car train (including the last Railway Post
Office on 24-inch gauge track) leaves Wiscasset for her 44-mile run
to Albion, in 1932.
]
In a way, though, I suppose they _all_ got there. The bubble busted
twenty-five years ago and the Golden Age was on skids. Hard to say
whether competition, cussedness, or just plain luck was the reason.
Whatever it was, their teeth fell out, ribs showed through, joints
ached, and Dr. Quack shook his head hopelessly.
Calamity number one came in 1929. The smallest of the lot--baby of the
family, so to speak--took the colic and pegged out. The five mile
Kennebec Central.
The K. C., built in the early 90’s, was used chiefly to haul things from
Kennebec steamers at Gardiner to the Soldiers’ Home at Togus, coal being
the biggest item. A competing trolley line from Augusta hadn’t helped
their lucrative passenger business and when the benevolent Government
awarded the coal haul to some trucks it didn’t leave the Kennebec
Central much to live for. So, she went in her sleep. Second of the
two-footers to go. The old B. & B. was first.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
What would Plymouth County think of snow like this? At Monson
Junction, however, 5-feet deep is an open winter. Little Monson
engines could buck the drifts as well as their B. & A. cousins, too!
]
While I think of it: someone was asking about the little engine over to
Putnam, Connecticut. William Monypeny up to Cambridge owns it; bought
her from the W. W. & F. which had recently got it from the defunct
Kennebec Central. His mile of twenty-five pound rail also came up from
the K. C. (No: you can’t buy it. He wants it as much as you do!)
That was the push-off.
Four years later--at 7:23 in the morning of June 15, to keep these dates
straight--the forty-four mile Wiscasset road bit the dust.
In a way the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway was the first
two-footer. It was chartered ’way back in 1854. Actually, though, the
narrow width wasn’t decided upon until just before construction began,
in 1894.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Bridgton No. 6 had been scrapped long ere Mr. Atwood thought of buying
the narrow gauge.
]
In general interest, if not in physical excellence, I think this road
rated next to the Sandy River. Maybe its long haul influenced that.
Started as the Wiscasset & Quebec Railroad its history is a long
complaint of frustrations and tantrums. I won’t go into it because the
_Sunset Special_ is nearly ready to go. You mustn’t miss it. Anyway, the
W. & Q. was going to do big things: lay rails clear to Quebec Province,
have de luxe trains with diners, sleepers, and parlor cars to make the
_Rangeley_ look like a trapper’s camp. They were going to swipe the
million dollar grain haul away from the Grand Trunk--just like that.
Wiscasset has a fine harbor and is a little nearer Liverpool than
Portland, which was the basis for their stock-selling argument.
While crews were laying steel up the Sheepscot valley other men were
building some old-histing great wharves at Wiscasset for the steamboat
line to New York. They never splashed a paddle but to hear stock
salesmen gab you’d have thought another Fall River Line was in the
making.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Boxcar 13--and she’s in luck to be at Edaville instead of rotting away
at Bridgton Junction. The Atwood line also has a boxcar numbered 1,
which is unusual.
]
Its first hop was to Burnham, fifty-five miles up. Old Frustration set a
derail here: the Maine Central were opposed to a crossing of their
Belfast branch; so submissively and sulkily the little pike backtracked
to Week’s Mills (twenty-eight miles above Wiscasset) and began a line
from there to Waterville and Farmington, hoping to make the Quebec trip
with the help of Sandy River rails to Rangeley. However, the Maine
Central again boxed the W. & Q.’s flapping ears by refusing to let ’em
cross Maine Central tracks at Farmington to connect with the Sandy
River.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Steel to the West! Tracklaying on the Edaville last Spring. It was
near this point that the golden spike was driven.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
The Golden Spike. When the rails met, near the Ball Field, appropriate
ceremonies were held, including Mrs. Atwood taking a whack at the
golden spike (a whole lot of them, in fact) as construction men,
visitors, and the pitch-pine trees witness the event.
]
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
These are the men who’ll guide your journey on Atwood soil; Assistant
Conductor Higgins, Conductor O’Neil, and Superintendent-Agent
Dunham, the last two from the New Haven railroad.
]
By now the Wiscasset dwarf was a confirmed neurotic. It just threw a
fit, abandoned its grand ideas and miles of nearly completed line, and
testily began to operate over such track as it could be sure
of--Wiscasset to Waterville (actually to Winslow, on this side of the
river), and Week’s Mills to Albion. Shortly thereafter they discarded
even the Winslow line, and from then until 1933 the forty-four miles
from Albion down to Wiscasset was all that was left of the grandiose W.
& Q. Even this imposing name faded out to the jaw-breaking misnomer
Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington which folks sometimes called _Weak,
Weary & Feeble_; just as they dubbed the B. & S. R. _Busted & Still
Running_. Awful, wasn’t it?
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Dave Eldredge, Mrs. Atwood’s nephew, dishes hot dawgs and pop-sickles
over the Grill Car’s counter.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
This is what I call posing ’em! Mr. Atwood smiles between his brand
new Oldsmobile and his baby No. 4.
]
The W. W. & F. was the only one of these little roads to keep the
Railway Post Office route. All the others--the Farmington & Rangeley,
and the Bridgton’s mailcar--were taken away during the other war. This
one, though, stayed to the last run.
There were--let’s see: one, two, three ... there were ten stations on
the line, some being rail points for stages from other post-offices,
too. Must have been twenty or more offices served by this R. P. O.
Its worst mess of all came in 1931 when a mortgage-monger who controlled
some timberlands up in Palermo got hold of the road. That’s a good
story, too, but we’ll have to skip it now except to say that the road
didn’t improve any under his ownership, and track got so rough there was
no fun riding on it. Coming down that morning, June 15, they’d just left
Whitefield station when _Crash!_--a broken rail. The tiny Portland
engine switched ends and dove down the bank toward the river. A flatcar
tail-feathered up behind her. The cream-car careened. The last Railway
Post Office wobbled feebly, jolted to its last stop, and settled into
the ballast for a good, long rest.
That was the Weak, Weary & Feeble’s last trip. Wreck was never picked
up. Mr. Atwood may have some pictures of that, too.
She was the second one of the Maine two-footers to go.
In 1935 the Sandy River, with its excellent line, trim engines and cars,
and business possibilities dunked its fire and went home. That left two:
the Bridgton line and the little Monson.
Wish I had time to tell you about the Bridgton’s last sickness. What a
time they had! The town owned it, you know. Most of the folks wanted to
junk it while a few enterprising souls hung on. In cahoots with some
railroad fans its president, Lester Ames, put up a lively scrap to save
the little line. Lasted a couple of years, that wrangling. First, the
railroad champions would be on top, and then their dark-complexioned
adversaries were eye-gouging or had a knee in the railroad’s bowels. It
looked bad. Hard telling how long it might have lasted but the _coup de
grace_ came suddenly when someone slipped through a deal with an
uninnocent junkman. Spikes flew. So did Mr. Atwood.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The moribund Bridgton line in 1941, when fan excursions and passionate
junkmen were running wild. Here No. 8 is ready to haul a crowd of
railroad-fans down the line.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
An Edaville work train climbs Mt. Urann past the probable site of the
Ball Field station. See Mr. Atwood’s snowplow hibernating at the far
end of the siding.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
The Edaville Railroad will never be completed. New spurs and siding
beckon from isolated bogs. Here a crew is ballasting a new spur to
31 Bog.
]
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Engineer Knight and Fireman Young bat a freight train across the bog,
and will shortly return loaded with red, sour bog-nuggets
(cranberries, to you).
]
He’d been keeping tabs on it anyway and when this junk-shark (_he_ came
from Massachusetts, too!) began wrecking things Mr. Atwood A-carded up
there, plum full of adrenaline, and managed to buy quite a lot of
equipment. No. 7 engine, some cars, and the turntable. Paid through the
nose for it, too. Worse still, after paying the money and assuming
ownership, this junk-expert would turn around and cut it up for scrap,
claiming he didn’t know that Mr. Atwood wanted it! Biggest wonder in the
world he didn’t put the torch to No. 7 engine.
This was all in 1941. That fall the track was gone and the cars stored
at Bridgton Junction. The connoisseur who’d previously bought the parlor
car, Eric Sexton of Rockport, Maine, also bought some of these B. & S.
R. cars for the same reason--to preserve ’em for posterity. Another fan,
Edgar Mead, bought two or three. John Holt and Van Walsh, who’d fallen
in love with No. 8 engine, bought her. That greasy junkman sure cleaned
up on those fellers. In the end, however, Mr. Atwood owned it all and
got a corner on two-foot gauge railroads!
Year ago last fall he arranged with the Somerville movers, C. E. Hall &
Sons, to bring the things down here. He’d talked with the railroad
people but there were car shortages then, and besides the Maine Central
had dismantled their siding there at the Junction. He’d have had to done
the loading, to I. C. C. specifications, whereas the Hall crews did it
if he shipped by truck. So, the last of the two-foot gauges came home to
Massachusetts--by truck!
Quite a sight seeing a railroad whizzing down the Boston road.
Newspapers and magazines played it up plenty. Still do, in fact. Mr.
Atwood’s name is in the news more than any railroad man since Peter
Cooper or Jim Hill. The idea of his little Edaville Railroad seems to
click.
[Illustration:
(_Atwood Photo_)
Not all Edaville business is out on the bog. Here Mr. and Mrs. Atwood
confer in the seclusion of their private office in the palatial
screenhouse.
]