Radio Script #887

Little Talks on Common Things
April 4, 1971

As many times as this program has been concerned with Maine’s now vanished narrow gauge railroads, the subject keeps popping up. A few weeks ago there came fresh from the press a new book on the two-foot railroad that once ran from Wiscasset to Albion, with a branch joining it at Weeks Mills from Winslow.

The book has the intriguing title “Big Dreams and Little Wheels”, and the author is Mrs. Ruby Crosby Wiggin of Clinton, granddaughter of George Crosby, promoter of the little railroad in the last decade of the 19th century.

Although much has been previously pointed out about that Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railroad, Mrs.Wiggin has been able to add some important new information. One such bit is the proposed original mileage. The mileage operated along the stretch from Wiscasset to Albion was 43 miles, but the original plan was for a railroad 241 miles long, from Wiscasset to Quebec, and that road was not planned to go through Albion at all.

As other writers on this subject, such as Linwood Moody and Clinton Thurlow, have pointed out, the railroad was originally planned to afford the City of Quebec an ice-free winter port on the Maine coast, just as Montreal had found when John Poor built the Atlantic and St. Lawrence, later called the Grand Trunk, from Montreal to Portland.

So, as early as 1854, the State of Maine granted a charter for the Wiscasset and Quebec R.R. That charter lay dormant until 1879, when a group of flour mill owners in the west met with Maine interests in Augusta to discuss construction under a revival of the 1854 charter. It was pointed out that the charter authorized construction of a railroad from Wiscasset to the boundary line between Maine and the Province of Quebec, where it would be met by a Canadian road called the Point Levis and Kennebec that would take the trains to the southern bank of the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec City.

What Mrs. Wiggin has now added to the older accounts is the route of the proposed Wiscasset and Quebec R.R. Instead of going up the Sheepscot, then striking off for China, Albion and Burnham, as it eventually did, the original proposal was for a line from Wiscasset to Augusta, 25 miles; then Augusta to Oakland, 19 miles; 25 miles on to North Anson; 16 more to Bingham; then 22 miles from Bingham to The Forks; 28 more to Moose River; and a final stretch of 18 miles to the Canadian boundary – a total of 153 miles. The Point Levis and Quebec section, all in Canadian territory, and built by Canadian capital, was to be 88 miles long, making the total trackage from Wiscasset to Quebec 241 miles.

Nothing came of that particular plan, but 13 years later in 1892, Albion’s most prominent citizen, George Crosby, decided a road could be built, or at least the start of one, if he could route it through his own Albion farm, and spark interest in the towns between Wiscasset and Burnham. Crosby sold the necessary stock, and in 1895 the little two-foot track had been laid to Albion. The trains reached Weeks Mills in February of that year, Palermo in July, China in September, and Albion in November. Although the route from Albion to Burnham was graded and tracks were laid, no regular train schedule ever included Burnham because of the trouble encountered in the necessary crossing of the Maine Central tracks.

While other writers have dealt with the quarrel between the big Maine Central and the little Wiscasset and Quebec, Mrs. Wiggin gives the clearest account we have seen. In 1897, two years after the line had reached Albion, construction was begun to Burnham. Farmers, using horses and dump carts, contracted to haul material. Most of the gravel came from two pits bought from the Bessey family in Albion. The Italian workmen had a relatively easy task. The route was so free from ledge that they had only to shovel the dirt for ditches and level the hauled gravel.

The Wiscasset and Quebec wanted to cross the tracks of the Maine Central at grade level, but the big road objected, declaring it too dangerous a hazard. The railroad commissioners upheld the Maine Central, but declared the W & Q could cross the Maine Central some distance west of the planned spot, but not at grade. At the new site the M.C. would lower its grade by four feet, affording a clearance of 21 feet for an overhead crossing by the W & Q. The directors of the two-footer refused to accept that decision because it would cause serious delay in their reaching Burnham and would prevent entirely their securing the legal rights that accompanied grade level connection with the Maine Central.

The commissioners then relented a bit. They proposed that the W & Q build a temporary crossing by means of what railroad men call a diamond, at the place they had first indicated, and run trains over it while the permanent overhead crossing was being built. But when the W & Q tried to install the diamond, the Maine Central sent down a shifter and two flat cars to delay the work. After that train had passed, another soon followed it, and the big road kept up that harassment day after day. The W & Q gave up and its trains never reached Burnham.

Of course the major reason for wanting to cross the Maine Central was so the little narrow gauge could continue, step by step, on its way to Quebec. But the original route, proposed before the Civil War, had been completely changed by George Crosby’s successful plan to bring the road to Albion. Instead of going through Augusta, Oakland and Bingham, the W & Q was now planned to continue from Burnham to Pittsfield, then take over and narrow the gauge of the standard width line already constructed as the Sebasticook and Moosehead from Pittsfield to Harmony. The route from Harmony to the Canadian border was uncertain in 1897. No survey had been made, but two possible routes were suggested. One would go from Bingham through Caratunk, The Forks and Jackman to the border; the other would strike across less settled country through Mayfield to The Forks. Needless to say, no track was ever laid on either route.

For its firm position against letting the little road cross its tracks at Burnham, the Maine Central had a point. The big road knew that Waterville interests were already planning a railroad from Waterville to Weeks Mills, where it would join the Wiscasset and Quebec. If that branch should prove successful, the Waterville merchants and manufacturers could divert considerable trade from the Maine Central.

So let us now see what those Waterville interests were up to. In 1895, the very year that the W & Q reached Albion, there had been chartered the Wiscasset and Waterville R.R. “to locate and construct a railroad from some point in the City of Waterville, through the towns of Winslow, Vassalboro and China to Weeks Mills on the Wiscasset and Quebec R.R.”

Organization of the company was perfected on April 19, 1898 in the Waterville office of William T. Haines. Frank Redington was elected president and George K. Boutelle treasurer. Among the directors were such well known Waterville men as W.B. Arnold, Cyrus Davis, Harvey Eaton, J. Fred Hill, Perham Heald, Carroll Abbott, Warren Philbrook, L.H. Soper, and George Fred Terry. Other stockholders were H.R. Dunham, Isaac Libby, Everett Drummond, Moses Foster and Everett Wardwell. One critic commented: “Instead of putting their money behind the Wiscasset and Quebec, they made plans to put it into new construction of another railroad, the Wiscasset and Waterville”. By 1901, when building of the road got underway, the president was Dr. Frederick C. Thayer.

After that line was opened from Weeks Mills to Winslow via South China and Vassalboro, that became the main line from Wiscasset to Winslow and the line from Weeks Mills to Albion was a branch until 1914, when the Weeks Mills to Winslow section was closed, and all the narrow gauge trains ran between Wiscasset and Albion until the entire railroad folded up in 1933.

Meanwhile another railroad charter had entered the picture. Under the leadership of Linwood Atwood of Farmington there was formed the Franklin, Somerset and Kennebec R.R. “to construct a railroad commencing at a point in the village of Farmington, at or near the terminal of the Sandy River and Maine Central railroads, passing thru Farmington, New Sharon, Mercer, Rome, Smithfield and Oakland to some point in the City of Waterville”. The intent, of course, was to join the Wiscasset and Waterville, already operating to Winslow.

But one problem had not yet been solved – the expensive crossing of the Kennebec from Winslow to Waterville. Nevertheless the owners of the Franklin, Somerset and Kennebec did build pieces on both sides of several streams between Waterville and Farmington, and did layout parts of the road bed, though no tracks were ever laid before, in 1901, there came a new company called the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington R.R. It took over control of all three previous charters: the Wiscasset and Quebec, the Wiscasset and Waterville, and the Franklin, Somerset and Kennebec.

In 1906 the whole property was sold to Carson Peck of New York, and for seven years only five stockholders held all the securities. Besides Peck, there were four Maine men, one of whom was Norman Bassett, a prominent Colby alumnus who later became a justice of the Maine Supreme Court.

The little railroad was never a success. As finances became especially critical after the coming of the electric car line from Lewiston to Waterville, and as the automobile came into increasing use, matters came to a head in 1925, when a group of people in the towns along the railroad bought the line from the Peck heirs. They kept it going until 1933, when on a June morning the early train out of Albion left the rails near Whitefield Iron Bridge, and the whole enterprise folded. That ignominious ending was the last train on the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington R.R., whose initials, WW&F, had long before earned it the uncomplimentary sobriquet of “Weak, Weary and Feeble”.

Year: 1971