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.
(Atwood Photo)