Part 3

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? ]

It was this way: a feller named George Mansfield from up Lowell way had 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.