<\/p>\n
Anyone who has lived in Waterville for the past fifty years has fond memories of the Lewiston. Augusta and Waterville electric railroad that had its local terminus in front of the Waterville City Hall. That interurban was a great convenience to the folks of Vassalboro, since it passed through East and North Vassalboro on its way into Winslow and Waterville.<\/p>\n
What is not so well known to folks today is that Augusta was the focal point of four such electric lines. The influx began as early as 1889. a few days after the inauguration of Grover Cleveland for his second term as President of the United States. The Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner Street Railway was incorporated on March 6, 1889. It was the second electric railroad
\nin Maine. being preceded only by the Bangor Street Railway.<\/p>\n
Maine’s most famous streetcar promoter was Amos Gerald of Fairfield, who had a part in several such projects in different parts of Maine long before he got the line between Waterville and Fairfield into operation. He helped finance that first Augusta line. It extended from the Maine Central station in Gardiner along what is now Route 201 to Grant Street in Farmingdale, where it crossed the highway and and went along its west side to Hallowell. Running the length of Hallowell’s Water Street, it entered Augusta’s State Street, passed the State House to Grove Street. then went down though the
\nbusiness district of Augusta’s Water Street, then formed a loop back to Grove Street.<\/p>\n
Beginning in March 1890, construction proceeded rapidly until the telephone company refused to change the location of poles that stood in the carline’s right of way. All along. the telephone company had opposed the project as it forsaw the carline would cause electrical interference with its circuits. .. The dispute was not settled until the middle of July.<\/p>\n
A carbarn was erected in Hallowell, and temporary power plants were installed in abandoned factories. When operations began on August 4, the line had seven miles of track and nine passenger cars. Within a year the company had abandoned the loop back to Grove Street in Augusta, took up the track and used it to extend the road beyond the bridgehead on Water Street to the EiiWaras Manufacturing Co. at Northern Avenue. By 1900 the line had 18 passenger cars and employed 38 persons.<\/p>\n
At the turn of the century came Augusta’s second trolley line, the Augusta and Togus Electric Railway. Again it was Amos Gerald who was the chief promoter. Already Togus had steam connection with Gardiner by means of the two-foot narrow gauge Kennebec Central. That company strongly protested competition from an electric road. It claimed that for ten years the narrow gauge had provided reasonable facilities to and from the Veterans Hospital, and since the electric line would
\nprobably be patronized chiefly by sightseers, who were already a nuisance at Togus, it would not truly serve the public convenience. However, the Railroad Commission found in favor of the electric road.<\/p>\n
Operations began on June 15, 1901. The 38 employees included 7 motormen, 8 conductors, 3 mechanics and an electrician. When finished the line was valued at $275,000. Later the property was acquired by the older Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner Street Railway. That road found it profitable to get public good will by contributing to community projects.
\nOn one occasion, all fares for a day were donated to the Augusta City Hospital, and pretty girls served on the cars as conductors.<\/p>\n
It was Amos Gerald again who got Augusta its third trolley line. In 1900 he secured a charter for the Lewiston, Winthrop and Augusta Street Railway. From a junction with the Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner road in Augusta, the new line was to go through Manchester and Winthrop to Morymouth and Wales and connect with the Lewiston, Brunswick and Bath Street Railway at Sabattus village.<\/p>\n
This was indeed an ambitious project requiring the laying of 27 miles of rail. Despite opposition from the Maine Central it was approved by the commission, but financing proved to be too formidable for the entire plan. The road was finally built only from Augusta to Winthrop. It opened in 1902. In 1906, the Winthrop line’s boom year, it carried more than two million passengers for a revenue that exceeded $100,000.<\/p>\n
Augusta’s fourth trolley line was the one that the Waterville region came to know best – the Lewiston, Augusta and Waterville Street Railway. Before it finally crossed the Kennebec from Winslow into Waterville in 1909, several attempts had been made to get electric transportation between Augusta and Waterville. One plan was for a line through Vassalboro and Winslow, but it had strong competition from a proposal to run the road through Belgrade and Sidney to Oakland. That plan was endorsed by Amos Gerald, because he was principal owner of the existing road between Waterville and Oakland.<\/p>\n
Gerald did get a charter for the Waterville, Oakland and Augusta Street Railway Co., but no rails were ever laid.
\nIn 1904 was chartered the Lewiston and Kennebec Street Railway Co., to build from Lewiston through Sabattus, Monmouth and Litchfield to Gardiner, but the plan was eventually abandoned.<\/p>\n
Topsham was already on the Lewiston and Brunswick electric line, when in 1906 a charter was granted for the Gardiner, Richmond and Topsham Street Railway to connect Gardiner with Brunswick through Bowdoinham and Richmond. Promoters failed to raise the necessary funds. and that project too was abandoned. In 1907 the legislature approved the consolidation of four previously chartered companies: the Lewiston, Brunswick and Bath; the Auburn and Mechanic Falls; the Augusta,Winthrop and Gardiner; and the Augusta and Waterville. The new company was named the Lewiston,
\nAugusta and Waterville Street Railway. In May 1907, it secured authority to lay its tracks through East and North Vassalboro to Winslow and Waterville.<\/p>\n
The plan struck a snag when the RR Commission refused to allow the company to use the highway bridge to cross from Winslow into Waterville. They declared it not safe for the load. That compelled the electric line to build its own crossing at considerable expense. In January 1908, cars began to run over a seven mile stretch from the Sebasticook Bridge in Winslow to the narrow gauge crossing in East Vassalboro. Not until two years later in December 1909 did they cross the Kennebec into Waterville. After that the line extended from Depot Square in Lewiston through Sabattus, Gardiner Hallowell, Augusta, the Vassalboros, and Winslow to its terminus in front of the Waterville City Hall.<\/p>\n
That trolley line did an increasing business through its first ten years. Its most profitable year was 1913, the year that I graduated from Colby College. Then it had a profit of $73,000 and paid a dividend of six percent.<\/p>\n
Then it fell on bad times. In 1918 it went into receivership, but was soon reorganized and kept running. The first steam railroad to reach Waterville had been the Androscoggin and Kennebec in 1849. I suspect that few people now living ever heard of an electric railroad of the same name, but indeed such a company was formed in 1919, and it took over the Lewiston, Augusta and Waterville line. Then came the worst winter that the interurban line had ever encountered. I have reason to recall that rough winter very well, because one February morning, when I was then teaching at Hebron Academy, I boarded a train at the West Minot station to begin what was usually a three-hour trip to Boston. The previous day had seen a thaw with some rain, but the night brought temperatures 20 below zero. There followed a foot of snow on top of the encrusted ice. After we reached Portland the storm grew worse, and it took fifteen hours for the train to go from there to Boston. I had hoped to reach the hospital before my first child was born, but he was 12 hours old before I saw him.<\/p>\n
That and other storms of 1920 brought extreme distress to the trolley line that was already financially weak. To cap the climax, the automobile began to encroach on its passenger traffic. In 1920 it had carried 13 million passengers. By 1927 the number had dropped to 7 million. By 1930 its passengers were only four million and deficit exceeded $25,000.<\/p>\n
When the State Highway Commission decided to widen and modernize Route 201, necessitating relocation of many miles of track, the company decided to abandon the line. So the last car between Waterville and Lewiston ran on Sunday, July 31,1932. Still remembered is the local waiting station of that line on Waterville’s Main Street. It was on the ground floor of the office of the Central Maine Power Company, which in the 1920’s had come to control the company that operated that trolley line.<\/p>\n
The L A and W provided hourly service through most of its existence. At times the schedule was irritatingly irregular. Heavy
\nsnows often left passengers stranded out in the country. In that awful winter of 1920 one car was marooned for 48 hours between Augusta and East Vassalboro. In the spring washouts sometimes made passage impossible for several days. One summer, caterpillars so crowded the rails that even persistent sanding could not prevent continuous slipping of the wheels. Yet, despite irregular schedules and snowbound cars, and its occasional wrecks, a lot of Maine people missed that interurban trolley line after it folded in 1932.<\/p>\n
And with that we say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1291, Broadcast on November 29, 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}