(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)