We have Ellis Atwood and Edaville to thank for the almost single-handed preservation of the majority of the surviving locomotives and rolling stock of the Maine Two-Footers. Without Edaville there would be very little left anywhere. At a distance of 70 years it's difficult to appreciate how unusual and eccentric a proposition it was that Atwood would purchase essentially the entire Brigdton & Saco River RR, move it to his estate in Massachusetts, and then supplement it with equipment from the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes and the Monson -- incredible! But in the same era that saw the early preservation efforts on the Ffestiniog and Talyllyn in the UK, this was the beginning of narrow gauge preservation in the US, and no one had tried it before and
succeeded. (I emphasize succeeded with a tip of the hat to the noble but unsuccessful effort a decade earlier to preserve that lost beauty SR&RL engine 24.)
Yes, it was a rich man's toy, but it was taken very seriously at the time, and as august an institution as the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society even went so far as to move its library and railroadiana collections to South Carver for a while in the late 1940s.
It was only after Atwood's death that the commercial pressures of the operation forced Edaville to develop the amusement park atmosphere it later took on, and the equipment also suffered somewhat. All of those excursion cars were built from the remains of former B&SR freight cars, the B&SR baggage car was converted first to a combine and then to a coach, and SR&RL combine 15 became a coach as well. (The Maine NG Museum has since converted SR&RL 15 back to a combine, to their immense credit.) Visiting Edaville with my parents in the early 1980s I remember seeing a row of rotting B&SR boxcars in the woods that had not only lost their numbers but had donated their trucks and couplers and other hardware to keep the passenger fleet rolling. (All the SR&RL passenger cars except the Rangeley had lost their original trucks and rode on B&SR freight trucks -- as I believe they continue to do today.) Still, it was the historic equipment and museum displays that made Edaville a treasured place for me and other East Coast railfans. Now that the rolling stock has all returned home to Maine, there is nothing left but the amusement park. It's a sad tale.
-Philip Marshall
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2014 04:01AM by philip.marshall.
