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.
(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.
