(Click on the pictures below to obtain larger images, which take longer to download.) Photographs © George P. Landow may be copied without written permission for any noncommercial use — for hobbies, education, and so on. If you have any additional information on the locomotives or rolling stock in these pictures, please feel free to send it along to me at george@landow.com; pictures are welcome, too. GPL)
Back in 1978 I published a photo article on Edaville in Challenge Publication's Railway Quarterly — an article in a now-defunct magazine about a now-defunct tourist railroad. I miss Edaville — Ellis D. Atwood's wonderful collection of Maine 2-foot-gauge locomotives and rolling stack that ran around his Cranberry bogs at the base of Cape Cod — a lot more than that magazine. Edaville, I believe, was largely staffed by volunteers, and in addition to the always enjoyable ride around the bogs, it displayed a stbdard gauge Boston & Maine streamliner and engines from far and near, including ones powered by compressed air, diesel engines, and electricity. It also had a collection of stationery steam engines, steam tractors, and a horse-drawn steam fire engine (much like the one of which Scale Structures produced a model years ago). And then there was the indoor collection at the little museum. When Atwood died, his family kept it running for a while, but then one day the newspapers announced that all the equipment — that historical treasure of Maine 2-footers — had been sold and dispersed. I'm told by a friend who used to serve as a conductor at Edaville that some one has tried to revive it with a single diesel engine, but it's hard to imagine it without those steam locomotives.
A Ride around the Cranberry Bogs
In these three pictures, we see the crew assembling a train, a crewman pulling the opem observation car at left and another signalling to the engineer backing the lovomotive and tender to connect with yellow baggage car. Note how small the couplers are in the middle picture.
People getting on and off the train as a father gets a family photos of his childen at the back end of a caboose or combine. Middle left: Taking on water. Middle right: a crewmember hanging out of the engine as it reverses.
The Edaville had enough motive power to doublehead this tiny train, and here the engineers must have shaken the coal on the grate to create impressive smoke for the runby so the rainfans could get good pictures.
Edaville's watertower and engine house, where locomotioves were restored.
Some of Edaville's Other Motive Power on Display
The Weimar from Germany, and no 2, a second 0-4-0 from the Sullivan Trail Coal Company.
A wonderful 2-8-0 with a balloon stack and an engine powered by compressed air for us in places where open flames would prove too dangerous.
Diesel, steam, and electric powered locomotives — this last an electric-powered switcher built in 1905 by the Mason Mfg. Co.
Some of Edaville's Rolling Stock on Display
Some of Edaville's Sream Engines on Display
