Chapter II: Part 2

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.)

(_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.
]

(_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.

(_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.
]

(_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.
]

(_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.

(_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.

(_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.
]

(_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.
]

(_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.

(_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.

(_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.

(_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.

(_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.

(_Atwood Photo_)
Steel to the West! Tracklaying on the Edaville last Spring. It was
near this point that the golden spike was driven.
]

(_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.
]

(_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?

(_Moody Photo_)
Dave Eldredge, Mrs. Atwood’s nephew, dishes hot dawgs and pop-sickles
over the Grill Car’s counter.
]

(_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.

(_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.
]

(_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.
]

(_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.
]

(_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.

(_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.
]

That’s about the story. The Edaville’s quite a railroad in its own right, let alone because it’s the last of the two-foot gauges. It isn’t completed yet, either. Doubt if it ever will be: there’ll always be a new spur to build or a bog-siding somewhere to install. Maybe some new equipment, too--such as a nice, new Plymouth diesel for the cranberry freights.

(_Moody Photo_)
No. 4 heads a freight train into clear to allow the passenger job to
gallop by.
]

(_Moody Photo_)
No. 7 crosses some undeveloped bog. Maybe next year cranberry vines
will bloom over there in the brush.
]

Eh? Sure: why not? What’s wrong with diesels? You fellers always get emotional when someone says diesel. Want to see the Edaville go in the red? This railroad (although you’d never guess it) isn’t a plaything; it’s a plantation utility, designed to facilitate Mr. Atwood’s cranberry business. The passenger train and the parlor car, and Sunset Vista, are gestures he and Mrs. Atwood make from their own pockets to give people some fun down here--and to have a little themselves. But he can’t run his freight trains at a loss just to see coal smoke smudging all over those nice red cranberries. Red’s a pretty color, but not on the ledger!

Probably if the other two-footers had bought some Plymouth diesels they’d all be running today. Lots of difference between coal at ten bucks a ton and oil at ten cents a gallon. Personally I’m for it--a ten ton, eight-wheel diesel Plymouth. Besides, that’ll save the steam engines for Sunday and holiday passenger trains!

(_Moody Photo_)
No. 7 when she was a girl at home. Here she waits at Bridgton Junction
for men to load mail and express into the baggage-car; then she’ll
breeze up the hills to Bridgton, 16 miles, in an even 40 minutes!
]

Gosh! Here it is Six-thirty; they’re backing the _Sunset Special_ in. Maybe Mr. Atwood would like to show you those pictures of old two-footers in the few minutes that are left. I see he’s finished his steamed clams now.

Guess I’ll mosey onto the platform and see who’s in the crowd. Always hoped Kilroy might be here sometime!

(_Moody Photo_)
The first 2-foot gauge enginette in America, Bedford & Billerica
“Ariel” No. 1. You see her here as Sandy River No. 1 less a
monstrous smokestack and goldleaf filigree.
]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix

You’d think I’d written a five-foot shelf of books instead of a small travel-guide pamphlet, if Forewords, Introductions, and Appendixes are any criteria. This is how it seems to stew out though, so it’s how you’ll have to take it. Keep cool!

Lots of you won’t be interested in this Appendix. It’s designed for the fellers who’re more or less railroad minded and thirst for technical details. It’s a brief critique about the gears and rods that made the wheels go round, during those hectic, vortical years. A cursory account of engines and cars and mileage that made up the Edaville’s immediate predecessors.

Here again we’ll have to condense the facts in favor of space. To include a really comprehensive _expose_ of these historical lines--locomotive rosters and dimensions, car measurements and classifications, capitalizations, earnings and expenses, and blow-by-blow reports of the septuagenary rise and fall, as well as scale-drawings for model fans--would be a book in itself, and a family-Bible size at that. No one but the most serious students of railroad lore would read beyond the title page. Let’s try to jam a lot into a few pages here.

EDAVILLE RAILROAD

Just when the Edaville was conceived is a risky guess. Maybe in 1941 when the moribund B. & S. R. prodded Mr. Atwood’s imagination. Maybe forty years ago when, as a lanky young feller, he mused on the pleasure of owning something better than rickety sections of portable track and tiny one-yard dumpcars.

He did something about it in 1941, anyway. They were busting up the Bridgton road. He bought the biggest part of it. Wars came. You couldn’t call your soul your own unless it was kept out of sight. Without an AA-12-PDQ-RSVP-1/2 priority there was no such thing as moving things by freight, and these coveted ratings weren’t being handed out to move narrow gauge railroads from Maine to South Carver. Unless they moved into the Community Scrap Drive, and I never understood how this one escaped those zealous patriots.

(_Moody Photo_)
Important in pygmy power development were the little Moguls. The Sandy
River had engines with separate tenders as well as those like Mr.
Atwood’s--built all in one piece.
]

It did have a tight squeak. Mr. Atwood was notified that his railroad equipment might be seized anytime for Government use and for him to leave it strictly alone. Engines and cars needed for self-defense--don’t touch!

Funny how it came out: A few weeks later he was advised he might protect his ownership by moving everything to Carver at once. Mr. Atwood tartly replied that such extravagant use of transportation facilities and scarce gasoline, when our country was fighting for its life, wasn’t becoming a patriotic gentleman. Mightn’t he wait until the wars were done? An answer sizzled back! Henceforth he might not only do as he pleased, but the government had oodles of railroad equipment they’d like _to sell him_, war or no war. Would he buy?

He wouldn’t; then.

The wars petered out. We were allowed to use the gasoline again. Big trucks and little ones headed north in the fall of 1945, and rumbled back with loads of little cars. The City of New Bedford owned a private railroad that once hauled coal to their Water Works pumping station, and they agreed to sell. Two and a half miles of fifty-six pound steel. Three miles more came down from the mountain grades of Parker-Young Company’s logging road in New Hampshire. Ties from Maine and more from the New Haven. Crews assembled.

Some desultory track-laying began in 1946 but it wasn’t until late that fall that a former New Haven track man lined up his gang, and work began in earnest. In the car shops repairs were progressing, for the day when trains would begin to run.

Mr. Atwood did the engineering. He scooches to a transit as easily as Farmer Jones milks a cow. He personally supervised everything else, too; nothing was too small to escape his attention, no detail too mean for his august decision. Mostly his own crews did the work. When cranberry work could spare them they turned-to and became railroad men. Except for the track boss no former railroad men were hired, although Badger might as well have been an ex-Master Car Builder: he knew enough to be.

The locomotive crews are Mr. Atwood’s own cranberry men, instructed in their exotic duties and performing them with remarkable efficiency.

Friends, visitors, and well-wishers have joined in offering suggestions and criticisms to help the enterprise along. Mostly, though, it’s been a series of inspirations plus years of secret planning from Mr. Atwood himself.

Today the physical properties of his railroad are:

Miles of road:

Main line 5.5 miles
Grove Cutoff 0.6 miles
Yards 1.0 mile
Total 7.1 miles

(_Moody Photo_)
This was biggest of them all, Sandy River No. 23. My pet grief is that
Mr. Atwood didn’t go into the railroad business ten years sooner,
and catch some of these tricky little pigs when the S. R. & R. L.
went broke in 1935.
]

(_Moody Photo_)
Gasoline rail-buses on the Sandy River. The further one, with the
trailer attached, is now on the Edaville.
]

(_Moody Photo_)
The freight train waits while pickers scoop another box of berries.
I’ll bet their backs’ll ache before night!
]

Engines:

No. 12 1-ton Bog Engine, Model T Ford
13 1-ton Bog Engine, Model A Ford
14 5-ton Plymouth
3 0-4-4T Vulcan ex-Monson R. R. No. 3
4 0-4-4T Vulcan ex-Monson R. R. No. 4
7 2-4-4T Baldwin, ex-B. & S. R. 7
8 2-4-4T Baldwin, ex-B. & S. R. 8

Cars, Passenger:

No. G1 Model T Trackauto ex-S. R. & R. L.
G2 Model T Trackauto ex-S. R. & R. L.
G4 Reo Railbus
Baggage No. 31 ex-B. & S. R. 31
Coach 15 ex-B. & S. R. _Pondicherry_
17 ex-B. & S. R. 17 (now named _Elthea_)
18 ex-B. & S. R. _Mount Pleasant_
3 W. W. & F. 3
Parlor 9 S. R. & R. L. _Rangeley_

Freight:

Box: 15 cars
Flat: 14 cars
Excursion: 4 cars
Tank: 2 cars
Caboose 557 ex-S. R. & R. L. 557
101 B. & S. R. 101
Snowplow 2 B. & S. R. 2
Flanger 1 B. & S. R.
4-wheel dump: 32 cars
Total number of cars, 80

(_Moody Photo_)
The berries go aboard. Boxcar 13 already has a load, and presently the
little train will meander down to Edaville screenhouse and the
graders will take over.
]

(_Moody Photo_)
Here is little engine No. 3 before she came to the Atwood family. Lots
of snow in Monson, eh?
]

(_Moody Photo_)
Transferring sand from a “wide gauge” car to the narrow gauge, at
Monson Junction years ago. See the link-and-pin coupling on the
Monson flat.
]

BRIDGTON & SACO RIVER R. R.

Chartered in 1881, built in 1882, opened in 1883. Extended to Harrison 1898. Maine Central purchased it 1912, sold it 1927. Reorganized it as Bridgton & Harrison Ry. and new company assumed control in 1930. Harrison line abandoned 1930. Entire line abandoned 1941. Cost to build and equip approximately $200,000. Peak year of earnings 1921 when revenue was $112,000.

First train order issued on the Edaville; members of the National
Railway Historical Society made this trip, August 31, 1937.
]

Miles of road:

Hiram to Bridgton, 16 miles
Bridgton to Harrison 5 miles

Engines:

No. 1 0-4-4T Hinckley 1882
2 0-4-4T Hinckley 1882 Became W. W. & F. No. 5
3 0-4-4T Portland 1892 Became K. C. 3: W. W. & F. 8
4 0-4-4T Porter 1901
5 2-4-4T Portland 1906
6 2-4-4T Baldwin 1907
7 2-4-4T Baldwin 1913 Became Edaville 7
8 2-4-4T Baldwin 1924 Became Edaville 8

Cars:

2 Baggage, 1 Combination, 4 Coaches
1 Caboose, 69 Box and Flat, 2 Tank, 1 Plow, 1 Flanger

BILLERICA & BEDFORD R. R.

Chartered in 1876; built 1877. Abandoned Jan. 1878. Sold in entirety to Sandy River R. R.

Miles, 8.6.

2 Locomotives,

_Ariel_ 0-4-4T Hinckley 1877, became S. R. No. 1
_Puck_ 0-4-4T Hinckley 1877, became S. R. No. 2

Coaches, 1; Excursion, 2; Combination, 1; Box, 1; Flat, 6.

SANDY RIVER & RANGELEY LAKES R. R.

Sandy River R. R. chartered 1879, built 1879. 18 miles.

Franklin & Megantic R. R. chartered 1884, built 1884. 15 miles.

Kingfield & Dead River, chartered 1893, built 1894. 16 miles.

Phillips & Rangeley R. R., chartered 1889, built 1890-91. 29 miles.

Madrid R. R. chartered 1903, built 1903. 11 miles.

Eustis R. R. chartered 1903, built 1903. 19 miles.

The 1908 Consolidation of these roads formed the S. R. & R. L. system, and including logging branches it gave the new company approximately one hundred and twenty miles of line, of which the forty-seven mile Farmington-Rangeley road, the thirty mile Strong-Bigelow line, and the ten mile Eustis Branch had scheduled passenger trains.

The S. R. & R. L.--or just plain _Sandy River_ as it always stayed in the hearts of Franklin County--deserves a book in itself. Its history and pictorial display would fill a big one. But here are the scantiest of facts: With the Consolidation this new company inherited a galaxy of equipment; whether or not all these units were renumbered into the new S. R. & R. L. roster, or if some older ones were scrapped, is (and ever will be, probably) a moot subject among railroad fans. I’ve spent hours--yes, months, trying to track it down and willingly admit that I’m bewildered and as uncertain as before. I admit, too, for the benefit of serious fans who believe they’ve identified these old engines and cars, that some logical and chronological sequences look pretty convincing; and that’s all. There’s no proof, no positive evidence. I’m not extending my neck. Here’s an all-time roster of motive power as complete as I can find indisputable records to substantiate it.

Locomotives:

Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 are open to question. Probably F. & M. 1 and 2; S. R. 1; and P. & R. 4 _Bo-peep_ were the culprits; but which were which no one knows.

No. 5 0-4-4T Portland Co. 1890? ex-S. R. 4
6 0-4-4T Portland Co. 1891 ex-S. R. 5
7 0-4-4T Portland Co. 1891 ex-P. & R. 1
8 2-4-4T Baldwin 1907 ex-S. R. 16
9 2-4-4T Baldwin 1909
10 2-4-4T Baldwin 1916
15 2-6-2 Baldwin 1891 ex-P. & R. 3
16 2-6-2 Baldwin 1892 ex-S. R. 2nd 3
17 0-4-4T Baldwin 1893 ex-P. & R. 2
18 2-6-2 Baldwin 1893 ex-S. R. 2nd 2
19 2-6-2 Baldwin 1904 ex-S. R. 8
20 0-4-4T Baldwin 1903 ex-Eustis 7
21 0-4-4T Baldwin 1904 ex-Eustis 8
22 0-4-4T Baldwin 1904 ex-Eustis 9
23 2-6-2 Baldwin 1913
24 2-6-2 Baldwin 1919

Sandy River 1st 3 was an O-4-4T Porter, sold to the W. & Q. in 1894. No. 6 was sold to the Kennebec Central about 1922 as their No. 4, and was acquired by the W. W. & F. in 1933.

Cars: Another blank wall. The company’s _schedule of property_, typed in 1935 for prospective scrap buyers, says they had 73 boxcars, 58 flats, and 136 “other freight train cars”. My own observations around there would place the number of boxcars at nearly twice 73. Several official reports had given the total number of freight cars as 350 whereas this _schedule_ amounts to only 267. Just another of those vicissitudes the historian must bang his head against!

As for those “other freight train cars” they were probably the swarms of flats fitted with rack sides, for hauling pulpwood. Some may have been the truant boxcars. Ho-hum.

As for passenger cars, this august _schedule_ says “12 coaches, 3 combination, and 2 baggage”. The 3 combinations and 2 baggage comes out all right, but I’m nostalgicly moved to wonder where they hid all those twelve coaches all the years I used to be over there. I was familiar with five. To be sure, there were a couple of old, abandoned coaches and one retired combination boarded up, and used as camps. But still, no twelve.

The _schedule_ lists six cabooses and four gasoline railcars. I’ve seen eight cabooses, and ridden in five railcars. There were five snowplows in service, and seven flangers. There were big turntables at Farmington, Strong, Phillips, Madrid Station, Rangeley, and Kingfield. Three-stall wooden enginehouses at Rangeley and at Kingfield, and another at Bigelow before that Carrabasset-Bigelow section was abandoned about twenty years ago. The big ten-stall brick house at Phillips is still there, used for a woodworking mill.

MONSON RAILROAD

Chartered in 1882; built in 1883. 6 miles. Abandoned 1945.

Engines:

Nos. 1 and 2, O-4-4T Hinckley 1882
3 O-4-4T Vulcan 1912 now Edaville 3
4 O-4-4T Vulcan 1918 now Edaville 4

Cars: 1 Combination; 28 flat and boxcars. 1 snowplow, 1 spreader.

KENNEBEC CENTRAL R. R.

Chartered 1889; built 1890. 5 miles. Had no physical connection with any other railroad, as its western terminus, Randolph, is separated from the Maine Central’s “Lower Road” at Gardiner by the Kennebec River. Barges unloaded Togus coal at the railroad coal docks, on the Randolph side. The K. C. was also unique in having no ballast supply on their line. All gravel was carted in to them, the same as coal would be.

Engines:

No. 1 0-4-4T Baldwin 1890 _Volunteer_
2 0-4-4T Portland 1891
3 0-4-4T Portland 1892 ex-B. & S. R. 3
4 0-4-4T Portland 1891 ex-S. R. & R. L. 6

Coaches, 2; Combinations, 2. Box, flat, and dropside gondolas, 13. Also a freakish kind of snowplow-flanger rig.

So, we’ll call this an introduction to a two-foot gauge history. Maybe our more accomplished brethren will call it less complimentary names. If the printer will correct the misspelled words, and I have any luck at South Carver next week taking pictures, maybe _Edaville Railroad_ won’t be so bad, after all.

(I guess this is all.)