(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.
(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.)
