(steam train whistles) (lighthearted music) - [Narrator] In the closing years of the 19th Century, steam-powered locomotives plied rails stretching across the nation.

Young men from all walks of life flocked to jobs as mechanics, brakemen, conductors, firemen and engineers.

Frank Ballard Ramsdell was one such young man, dreaming of life as a railroad engineer far away from the isolation of a rural Connecticut farm.

The New York and New England Railroad passed the Ramsdell Farm on the banks of the French River.

As Frank worked in the fields, he could hear the great machines as they rumbled by.

Local folklore says Frank could identify the locomotive, and even the engineer just by the sound as it passed.

As a youth, Frank enrolled at Maury Ingof English and Classical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

It was on the train commute from West Thompson to Providence that Frank caught the railroading bug.

Walter Fog, a fireman on the New Haven line, invited him to ride up front in the locomotive's cab and to help fire up the engines in the Providence yard.

That dream derailed when Frank's mother fell ill and his father called Frank, his only surviving son, home to help with the farm after his graduation in 1895.

Farming life rolled on in rhythm with the seasons but Frank never lost sight of his dream.

He began what would eventually become an expansive collection of railroad photographs and memorabilia traveled extensively on locomotive excursions, photographed and filmed steam engines in action, and became a lifelong member of the National Association of Railroad Enthusiasts.

It was here that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity arose when he became friends with the group's mercurial treasurer, William Monypeny.

The scion of a wealthy Midwestern merchant family, Monypeny was a young man of ample means, abundant free time, and an avid rail fan.

Bill Monypeny had lots of money, Frank Ramsdell had plenty of land, and there was a scrapped narrow gauge railroad for sale in Wiscasset, Maine.

Together they hatched a plan that would dispatch Engine No.

9, the last-surviving Maine narrow gauge steam locomotive, on a journey that would last 58 years and span three generations.

(lighthearted acoustic music) (upbeat music) - Well, what else do you want to know, anything?

- Yeah, how did they come to have a locomotive engine?

- Oh, well, you see, my father always wanted to work on the railroad and up in Maine, there was this narrow gauge that had gone out of business in Wiscasset, (indistinct) So they sold it cheap, you know, back in '37, we was in the Depression and they sold it for scrap.

Well, it costs more to get it here than it did to buy it.

- Just prior to World War II, most of the, except with the exception of the Mountain Railroad met their demise due to trucks and automobiles.

So, they became sort of superfluous.

And a far-thinking man, Frank Ramsdell from down in Connecticut made a deal with the railroad and bought engine Number 9, box car 309 and flat car 118, which was used to rip up the railroad at the time.

And I believe he had a plan to create a private little amusement park in on his farm.

- Well, William Gilette was a big train buff, and he had a small engine, much, much smaller than the Ramsdell, a locomotive.

And he had built tracks around his property, which today is a state park called US Castle.

And he used to take his friends for rides all through his property on his train.

People don't realize how many amusement parks were in Connecticut, especially at the late 19th, early 20th century.

When the trolleys got going, they were able to get people out from the cities and other areas.

So it was not unheard of to have an idea to put an amusement park associated with the Ramsdell farm up in Thompson.

- Well, at the time my grandfather found out that the Wisconsin, Waterville and Farmington railroad went bankrupt, he went up there on a trip to find out what was going on and he found that some of the pieces that were still left to the railroad might be available for sale.

So he got together with William Monypeny and a couple other friends, and they pulled money together and they said, wouldn't it be great if we could buy the locomotive and some of the other rolling stock and bring it to the farm and bring that locomotive and engine to life and have it run here on the farm?

And maybe it could be a tourist attraction and everybody thought it would be relatively easy.

Just bring it down and get it running.

But it was not as easy as they all found out.

(mellow music) - (indistinct) developed in Maine as a way for some of these outlying areas to be connected to the general transportation system in the country.

The idea behind this railroad was to restore Wiscasset to a place of worldwide commerce.

Wiscasset was a major harbor.

They say bigger than Portland, on par with Boston prior to the war of 1812.

And they wanted to restore Wiscasset to that place of prominence.

It was special that they thought that (indistinct) held this potential.

It didn't work out.

They couldn't get the funding they needed to complete their proposals.

After they gave up on their plans to expand to Farmington went to Quebec before that, they were operating in this valley, they only made a profit for four years of their operation.

And after that, there were several times that this railroad was considered a ban or allowed to be abandoned and sold for scrap and saved at the last minute.

In 1926, it was purchased by a glomeration of farmers up in Sheepskin Valley who wanted to retain their transportation source.

They kept it going until 1929.

In '29, they were about to abandon and it was purchased by an individual who had lumber interest up the railroad.

And he kept it going until the end.

He was working on a shoestring to say the least, he laid off most employees on this line, kept a bare bones crew here.

The track condition grew worse.

There were stories in the late '20s and early '30s, they attached brooms to the front of the locomotives to sweep the grass off the rails so they'd have adhesion.

So that was the condition towards the end.

Well, he had three working locomotives that the feds came in in 1932 and gave him six month extensions on.

They needed to, at the end of six months, they'd be out of service.

He needed to act quickly.

So his solution was to go and buy an entire railroad, which was defunct, the kind of essential railroad.

And he did sell for its two steam locomotives that still had active federal boiler certificates.

So he moved those two locomotives here in January, 1933, they became Wiscasset eight and nine.

- It started out as Sandy River, number five, then it became the Sandy River Ranch, the lakes, number six, and then it became the Kennebec central number four.

And then it became the WWF Number 9.

- Number 9 was built in 1891.

It had six sisters.

So the Portland Company built seven of those, all to very similar design.

- It was built for the Portland Company in Portland, Maine, for the Sandy River.

Before the Portland Company got it made, the Sandy River changed its name to Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes.

They went out of business in the '20s and then it was sold to the Kennebec Central, this engine out here, because it's a Forney type and he can pull, push just as heavy a load as it could pull, because it's well-balanced, the Forney's balanced.

So they used it to carry the freight and baggage, passengers from Randolph to Togus, Maine, to the soldiers home.

And they lost it, it came up for bid and a trucking company underbid them $1.

So they folded up.

So Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington was in need of an engine.

So they bought all the engines on the Kennebec Central, but they kept this one going because it had new flues put in it and they could send it out.

If there was trouble, they could send it out and haul the stuff back in.

- Number 9 ran the service from February, 1933, until we believe it was may late May, 1933.

In late may the engineer, long-time engineer, Earl Keef noted in his log that Number 9 was tracking poorly.

He looked underneath the rear frame and found a broken frame member and took it out of service.

- They already used Number 9 once and it broke down.

And then in June 15th, 1933, number eight ran off the track and they just abandoned the railroad.

- When number eight wrecked in Whitefield, that was the end of the railroad.

The owner chose not to clean the wreck up.

(mellow music) - WWF Number 9 came down to the farm through Frank's efforts with some other gentlemen who intended to build a railroad on the farm.

So WWF I believe was bankrupt for prior to 1937.

Bill Monypeny was instrumental providing funds for the purchase of the locomotive and transporting it down here to Connecticut.

I'm sure it was in the newspapers that the WWF was bankrupt, equipment being sold off to satisfy creditors.

Frank had a wide network of contacts.

Somebody must have put him wise to the fact that there's a locomotive for sale up here and for a pittance.

- It's in May 37.

Yeah, we got it down here and we worked on it like buggers, oh boy, how they do work on it that summer.

So I found fault because you didn't get this done.

You didn't get that done, you didn't get the guide plan< by 4th of July, that was wild.

(bright bluegrass music) - After the war, the ones that was gonna help, some of them had the flu during the war and died.

And some of them was too old to do anything.

And then my father bought it from the fellow, according to the paper, for 50 dollars.

- I think the work on the engine, came to a halt because Monypeny lost interest.

He was traveling around a lot to do railroad photography in '38 and '39.

And I think that he just had lost interest in trying to see the engine through.

Plus he had probably realized, they had all probably realized that it was gonna be much complicated than they thought.

They assumed that they could just take the engine, basically take the engine out of the box and get it running and that was simply not the case.

Frank was supplying the farm, the place to do it.

Monypeny was supplying the funds and the two Jenkins, Jester and Louis Jenkins were going to be supplying the work, were going to be helping, helping put the thing together.

They were craftsmen.

And I think the group just fell apart.

And Frank still wanted to get the engine running and they passed that on to Alice who also wanted to get it running.

But it turned out that there was much, much larger job than either of them could have handled.

- The main concern was they had that engine inspection.

This was for safety precautions.

If you were gonna haul a train with passengers, it had to meet certain safety specifications, which Number 9 kind of failed.

(mellow music) - Who are your closest neighbors here?

What did they do?

- Well, Frank and the last one was Frank Harris and he did a market garden, but before that was Case's and Roof Case always had peas and early vegetables and he got it all planted.

And then he had a stroke and the girls didn't know what he was gonna do.

That was in 1895 'cause my father just come out of school and they came over and they said, "Frank, what are we gonna do?"

My father says, "You know how your father fixed things."

He says, "I'll take them to grow Groenendael for you.

"And I'll see if I can sell them."

So we took them to Groenendael.

And they were so many French people, you know?

And my father couldn't talk French and you have to, if you tell them how much they were you'd have to use your fingers, you know, tell them (indistinct).

He sold the cucumbers two for a cent.

Or you'd have to take your money out and show him, two for one cent, see?

That's the only way he could do business.

But finally my father got, so he could talk, tell the price, the things, because when I went to school, somebody said I was a Frenchman and boy, that didn't set.

I said, "No sir, I'm a Yankee."

Says, "Your father talks French fluently."

So I come home and at the supper table, I say, "Sir, you talk French fluently?"

He said, "Nope, I suggest you do."

Says, "Who's talked to you?"

I said, "Nita Pelican."

"Ooh, goodness," he says.

I go in and I say good morning to her in French.

Bonjour, madame.

And I tell her how much the eggs are and she puts the money down and I give her the change and I said goodbye.

And that's (indistinct), so all right.

That was the way with that (indistinct).

Well, Pa sold all those things that that father had raised and that's how my father got into (indistinct) and he parroted that 59 years.

- His butter and egg business he maintained to his dying day.

But the only thing he didn't do was continue to drive a car.

So Alice steps in and she would drive him up through the villages and he'd make his sales.

So she goes into one of the houses and I guess uncle Frank went into another house, no, uncle Frank stayed in the car.

That's what it was.

He stayed in the car.

Alice comes back into the car and he's, I think he's sitting erect in the back seat, but he was (indistinct).

He had died in the car waiting for her to come back.

- And then one day we was peddling and he died right in the car.

So I took him right to the doctor's, but he was dead and I brought him home in the car.

(indistinct), "Call the undertaker."

I said, "He's no deader now than when I brought him here "and he's going home with me.

"I'll have what undertaker I want, not yours."

So I did.

That's the way, you know, (indistinct).

I'm strong minded.

- Uncle Frank was a lover of pink.

That was his favorite color.

So for his burial suit and tie, he had a pink shirt.

Not too many people got buried in pink shirts, but he did.

- [Narrator] Following Frank's passing, Alice received a letter from his longtime friend, Walter Fog, with an idea for Frank's headstone, a fitting tribute to a lifelong love of railroading.

- [Man Reading] Dear Alice, the idea of putting an engine on your father's headstone, is a good one and I want to thank you on behalf of my grand friend of years and years, I have given the idea a long study from my part.

I think Norwich in Wister would be the best.

He liked number 10 and 17.

Perhaps number 10 would be better as its broadside view ensures the builder's plate in good shape, which is good on any engine picture.

(mellow music) - The interesting thing about 1955 and the cause of the flood was July of that summer was the driest July recorded at that time in history.

All that changed in August when two tropical storms, tropical storm Connie, came through around August 11th.

Connie dumped between six and 10 inches of rain on the state of Connecticut and southern Massachusetts, which completely saturated the ground.

A week later, hurricane Diane came up the coast and in a 24 hour period over the state of Connecticut and especially just above us in the state of Massachusetts, between 17 and 24 inches of rain fell in it in 24 hour period.

This caused very rapid increase in the amount of water going down the Quinebaug and the French river.

- That river had a lot of dams on it that still held water.

And the high tides came.

A lot of those dams went (mimics wooshing).

One dam would let go on and then another one would let go.

It was kind of a domino effect.

And each one added to the flood level.

- People didn't have a chance to do anything except get out of the way of the path of water.

So they lost entirely all their belongings, their clothing, their food, not to mention their jobs ceased to exist too.

Hurricane Diane was the first hurricane in history to eclipse the billion dollar disaster amount the storm had cost.

(mellow music) - When Project Noah started, one of the aspects of it was they were going to build a series of dams, not just in West Thompson, but it was throughout the state, throughout New England to protect the Thames River basin from forever flooding to the proportion that it did in 1955.

In 1960, the Flood Control Project Law was passed, which gave the power to the army Corps of engineers to go ahead and claim eminent domain over a lot of property owners that would be in the backup area behind the dam.

In other words, north of where the dam is situated, I believe the lake would extend eight miles to the north of where the dam is.

The army Corps of engineer began their project fall of 1960.

The dam was dedicated and actually completed in 1965.

- 1936 and '38 there were major hurricanes in the area.

And there was some talk about doing some flood control or flood damage reduction they call it now, projects in the area.

And what they would do is with contain the water, just upstream of big towns like Putnam.

Of course, people are living in these valleys and you're talking about taking 2200 acres out of residential use, out of farming use, just taking it.

Most of West Thompson village, for which the dam was named, the buildings were taken down there, moved away, negotiated payments were made.

And Alice didn't want to leave.

This had been in her family since 1825.

And she wasn't about to go anywhere.

This is home.

You don't want to move your house, your neighborhood, your place of work and go someplace else.

That's exactly what the federal government did when they came in.

They said, "Okay, everybody that lives within "this 2200 acres, I'm sorry, "but you got to sell us your property and you got to leave."

Buildings were dismantled.

And they were moved to other towns, to other places up the street.

The church on the west side of the river was taken apart and moved.

And what I didn't realize was that many of the buildings were burned down.

And I found this out by we had a meeting, it was kind of see what the impacts would be of taking down the structures at Alice's place after she died and after everything of value was removed from, and the buildings were documented, there were too far gone to be repaired and there really wasn't any use for them.

So we went to the community and the historic society hosted a meeting for me.

And we started talking about, well, what could we do?

One of the ideas was burning place down as an exercise for the fire department.

And the visceral reaction was palpable.

These people had had to sit and watch their homes and their community just burn.

And they went up on the slope of the dam being constructed at the time.

- Well, when Alice heard about the potential of having a West Thompson dam project whereby West Thompson village would have to be eliminated and much of the land around the dam would be taken over by the government, Alice was quite enraged and was not wanting to stand for that one little bit.

In fact, she tried to organize the people of West Thompson and get them to try and fight the government.

But most of the people said you can't fight the government.

That if the government says, they're going to take the land, they're going to take the land.

Well, Alice said that, "They're not taking my land "and I've got my shotgun.

"And if they try, I will show it to them."

(bright music) - First time I ever met Alice was back in the late '70s, probably '79, if I'm correct.

And we were conducting archeological surveys because of the West Thompson dam, and we were excavating, we're in the ground, you know, with our archeological squares and excavating away when we heard a voice and the voice was adamant and loud, "Get off of my farm."

And we all kind of looked up and there was Alice with that shotgun in her hand, I mean, she was looking at, and she was angry.

- Alice is famous for defending her property from being seized by the government when the dam was being built.

Part of the story goes that she held people off with a shotgun.

And knowing Alice, I took that with a bit of a grain of salt, but I did meet somebody years later.

He's our chief of real estate office.

His name's Brownie and Brownie told me that he was one of the lawyers that would come to her house.

He was always aware that behind the door and she was careful to walk him around it was her shotgun leaning up against the door jam.

- They told stories about Alice keeping that shotgun behind the front door, she wanted to threaten people.

I don't think it was any shells in it, I don't think exactly shoot it, but it looks kind of dangerous.

Especially with this wild lady that was screaming at you.

- The best story that came down was she was rather a spinster in her day.

Her farm was one of the ones that was slated to be taken.

Now, Alice Ramsdell had lived there all her life I guess, they were not going to take her property from her as the story goes, the story after the story.

Anyway, she sat on her front porch with a shotgun and as the people came to serve her with papers for eminent domain, I guess she was very feisty and threatened them that she was not about to give up.

- My aunt was very firm that she was not going to allow the army corps of engineers to push her around.

And they had the idea that they were going to go in and they were going to do what they pleased without her permission.

So when their representatives first came, she brought out her shotgun and told them they were not welcome and they needed to leave now.

And they did.

- Can you tell us a little bit about your fight with the government?

- Oh yeah, I fought with them.

They was gonna put my stuff right in the road.

I says, "By god, anybody comes in here, "they ain't gonna walk out."

(indistinct) "Gonna kill 'em?"

I said, "No, but they won't be able to walk out."

You know (indistinct).

(mellow music) Cost me $5,000 but I won.

(tense music) - Was that the on in Boothbay Harbor?

- No, Edaville put Mrs. Monypeny up to it, see.

But her husband had sold it to my father.

So it was mine and they found out it was mine.

But it cost me for the lawyers, but (indistinct).

So now you know who it belongs to, no question.

You still working that?

- [Camera Man] Yup.

- Monypeny had two wives, Priscilla Wilcox Monypeny and Delpha Robinson Monypeny.

He married Delpha in 1947 directly on the heels of divorcing Priscilla.

The year after Bill Monypeny died, Delpha tried to get the engine back from Alice and Delpha hired a lawyer and sent him up to talk to Alice.

The first time, I guess he did talk to Alice, but the second time he went back, she held him off with her shotgun and he didn't get a chance to talk to her, this was 1973.

Things dragged on for years.

And in, I think late 1980, Delpha tried again to get the engine back.

And Alice hired a lawyer and took it to court and was able to win on the doctrine of replicant, which is that Delpha had not asked for seven years.

Therefore Alice actually owned the engine.

- There was a time when the person who ran Edaville railroad, Mr. Blome, came to the farm and he came to the farm with the purpose of getting the locomotive from my aunt.

And he thought it was going to be just a matter of, okay, you're gonna give it to me now, you know, because I'm running Edaville and I have a place for it, but my aunt had other ideas because her dream was to get that locomotive to run on the farm.

So they did not see eye to eye, but when he left, he did leave a pack of free passes to Edaville railroad.

And my aunt and I on many occasions, went down to Edaville and used his free passes that he gave us.

And my aunt would often go to the person who was running the locomotive and tell them that she was Alice Ramsdell and she was here with her nephew and wondered if her nephew could have a ride and they were all excited.

They said, oh, this is the woman that owns that locomotive.

And so I'd be welcomed right up on the locomotive and they'd let me ring the bell and blow the whistle and have a ride right up in front.

So it was kind of nice, but Nelson Blome never got the locomotive, no matter what tactic he tried.

- Along came World War II, and they put on a lot of scrap drives.

He was a little concerned about all the scrap metal she had sitting around in her (indistinct), so to speak.

So the first thing she'd do was haul all this rail out in the woods and kind of semi hid it, scattered around here and there.

- [Dale] And there were people that would come around looking for scrap metal to take.

And of course, having an 18 ton locomotive around was a great source of scrap metal as well as a third of a mile of railroad track.

- Well, I had heard that was one reason it was in the shed, so it's not obvious, because during the war, they scrapped a lot of really very nice artifacts for a very little bit of scrap.

It was almost a paranoia with the Japanese and so on that that a lot of stuff got cut up that really shouldn't have.

And the only reason that didn't, 'cause somebody driving by is not gonna see it.

- They had some early warning about people coming looking for scrap metal.

And so they took particularly the rail and they hid the rail in various spots all across the farm so that people couldn't find it.

I don't know the whole story, but there was a little bit of deception going on.

(mellow music) - If we talk about what may have inspired Harry, he grew up in a town of Weeks Mills and this railroad ran through Weeks Mills.

And he grew up before 10, was in an era right after the railroad stopped running, had been torn up, but the right-away was still very apparent.

And I remember him talking about going out as an eight year old walking on the old ties in the road bed and no rails and not really having the ability at that age to go see what that was really all about.

And I think that inspired a curiosity in Harry about this, about this railroad, this endeavor.

And I think that sort of set the stage for his inspiration over the years.

It was similar to my experience, maybe in a little different way, but very, very parallel.

- Well, back in 1940, my folks moved out to Weeks Mills.

There was still some track up there above the village on the old Weeks Mill fly.

Kids would go up there and play.

I thought that was the greatest thing.

And 1943, we moved down to Head Tide.

Well, the Head Tide station was still there then.

And the ties were there, the rails were gone, and I had visions of rebuilding it.

So I managed to replace one of the ties with one of my father's six by six timbers.

When he discovered what I'd done, the project came to an end.

Alice Ramsdell down in Connecticut, had the flat car, the boxcar and locomotive Number 9, a gravel tip car and rail enough to lay a quarter of a mile of track.

- The Book, Ruby Wiggin's book, "Big Dreams and Little Wheels" called out the Ramsdells by name.

So it was understood that the Ramsdell farm had this equipment.

I presume Harry found out that way.

I believe Harry essentially cold called Alice.

And there were times that didn't go over so well with Alice, he went to her specifically with the idea that he wanted to help her with the farm.

He was instead interested in the railroad equipment, that he was interested in helping her reserve it.

- They had built a shed for the engine.

Everything else was outdoors.

And Alice had defended the whole works from the scrap drives during World War II.

She was pretty handy with a shotgun.

- My aunt was very focused on trying to get the locomotive in operation again, and she contacted quite a few people.

Some of the people wanted to just take it off of her hands, but there was one individual who really seemed to have a vision so similar to Alice's that she took him into her confidence and that was Harry Percival.

And he came down quite a number of summers and actually worked on the locomotive, tried to find out what things needed to be done to get it to work again.

But it didn't go too far because there was always farming to do and somehow Alice convinced Harry to also help getting in hay and doing the farming.

And once again, the chores of the farming took up the time to work on the locomotive.

- I'd been going down there to help out with the farming while I was going down there to work on equipment, but I always wound up helping her with the farming.

(soft music) - When my aunt passed away shortly after Christmas in 1994, I realized that we had just one year left to be able to do things on the farm, according to the agreement, and that posed quite a dilemma, especially with the locomotive.

While I could move furniture out and all the possessions out, moving an 18 ton locomotive was not an easy thing to do.

And I didn't really have any room for an 18 ton locomotive at my home in Cranston.

So I was kind of in a dilemma.

- After Alice's death, part of the contract that we had with her was any improvements to the property, any buildings, anything that was there belonged to the Ramsdell family and her heirs.

As you can imagine, the house had been lived in, in various stages since 1825 and probably even further back than that, if you count the initial house that was there when the Ramsdells bought it.

All this stuff had to be moved.

And then one of the last things to move was the steam engine.

Everything else had been pretty much cleared out.

- I had the opportunity to go back after Alice died and the house that they were going through with the federal government and local preservation efforts to save the farm, to save the house and so forth.

And I was asked to come in as the state archeologist at that time to review it and make recommendations about any archeological sites that may be associated with the farm itself, with the farmhouse (indistinct).

So I had an opportunity to actually go into the house.

And I remember distinctly that my impression was that this house hasn't changed since 1930.

I swear I saw a calendar on the wall that was from 1930.

And I remember out along the property to the shed where the locomotive was.

- Besides the locomotive, there was a boxcar and a flat car and all kinds of other pieces of railroading equipment, but there was a huge locomotive photograph collection, not only photographs of locomotives, but steam boats, and other methods of transportation.

And I had that in my house and it was quite extensive and I really didn't know what to do with it, but the Thompson historical society found a home for it and I was quite thrilled to have that.

- What's there now where Alice used to have her house, there's still rolling fields.

The succession of the trees has been kept under control to the point where you can still recognize it as a farm, but there's nothing left of the buildings.

So you can still find the foundations and the stone walls.

If you know where to look, you can still see the edge of the corn crib and where the old driveways were.

Some of the old agricultural equipment's still popping up out of the ground here and there.

The army corps replanted some of her Ramsdell sweet apples.

It's a nice place to go and walk.

A lot of people do, they walk up and down the old Ravenel Road that goes right in front of her old doorstep.

- You know, she was a good old Yankee.

She was a good old Yankee.

She was set in her ways.

I think she had a passion for the property and the land.

It was her family's farm.

It went back, that farm was important to her in so many different ways.

And there was a love there of that property.

And I think that was the thing that was so upsetting to her when the army Corps took it by eminent domain, you know, this just wasn't gonna happen on her watch.

And she was ornery and stubborn enough to stay put until she did pass.

(soft music) - Fortunately, a man by the name of Harry Percival, who was trying to start up a museum in Maine for reviving the Wiscasset Water Bill and Farmington railroad, he contacted me and wondered if they could borrow the locomotive for a hundredth anniversary they had on the railroading there in Maine.

And I said, "Well, sure I can do that."

That's not hard.

So we discussed what would be the future of the locomotive.

And I told them of my dream.

I really had hoped that someday the locomotive would run again and their eyes lit up and they said, "That's exactly what would like to do."

- Jason and I went down to Alison's funeral.

Her sole heir was her nephew.

He had no place to put this stuff and the government had taken the whole place as a flood control thing, way back.

Alice had taken him through the courts and managed to get the right to live there the rest of her life plus six months.

So he had six months.

And so he got in touch with me and wanted to know if we were interested in, I mean, are you into it?

(Harry laughing) (soft music) - My first exposure to the museum was in 1991.

I was 13.

My father and I were driving down the length of the railroad just to see what was left and knew nothing about this operation, but we were looking for remains of the railroad.

We started at Albion.

We got as far as Sheepskin Station where it should have been another abandoned site.

And there was this third of an engine house that was started with two foot gauge tracks inside and a kiosk of information.

So that was the first exposure.

- Harry originally got interested in the railroad as a kid in when he lived in Weeks mills.

The Y tracks were left there.

So he would walk on top of the rails until they got scrapped during the war.

When he grew up, moved down this way from working with Central Maine Power, he tried to buy what was left of the original right away in the early 1970s.

And Harry had mentioned that he got a very negative reception, someone involved with the Winter Foundation.

So he put that dream on hold until 1985 when he found out that from Central Maine powers property division, that the Winter Foundation was selling everything.

So he went down to the Winter Foundation office, made them an offer.

He said he never knew whether it was too much or just enough to get him off their back, but he ended up owning about 60% of the right away.

And that's how the whole idea got started.

- Harry was the defining part of the culture here for the entire time he was alive.

His approach here was that this railroad should be rebuilt as a functioning working railroad and anecdote.

If you look at our main line, which right outside here, which is built where the original main line was, and our siding is very specifically 13 feet on center from the main line.

And Harry designed that.

He did that because he thought this railroad to be in business should be able to haul freight and the only appropriate freight going up to valley when he thought all this up in the early 1980s were mobile homes, mobile home parks, and 13 feet on center would allow a mobile home to pass another mobile home on an adjacent track.

Harry wanted this to be a working, functioning railroad.

And he set up this idea from the beginning that purveys very deeply to this day that we're not a museum.

We're a continuation of the original WWF railroad.

- His goal was to rebuild the railroad of his youth.

He was very young when the railroad shut down and he used to play around the area.

He actually started rebuilding some of the track.

- Harry got cancer.

You know, he went through a bad spell there, came out of it and was full of energy.

And at that time we were planning on replacing a trestle, (indistinct) trestle.

You could see it invigorate him and he undertook for the design of this bridge and the planning of its construction on a very detailed level.

We had the Marine Corps Reserve plan to come in and rebuild the bridge.

And they only had a week to work on this project.

In the months after they left, his health declined and he died within six months.

So it was plain that that focus kept him alive an extra couple of years.

The original yard layout here was Harry's.

He plainly wanted the main line where it was, he wanted a shop building that was a representation of the shop in Wiscasset.

So it was a three stall engine house.

It's about one quarter of the size of the original.

I remember it was one night at Harry's house.

Harry said, "We've got to do the actual mathematical layout "of the yard."

He had his concept drawing.

And I said, "Well, I'd love to do that.

"How do I do it?"

And he said, "Well, have you learned trigonometry yet?"

And I said, "No, they tell me they're gonna teach me," you know, next month, he was gonna start soon.

He says, "Well, I'll give you a rundown."

So he gives me a rundown of basic trigonometry.

And he says, "That should be all "you need to lay out the yard."

I said, "Okay."

So then I that week spent some time and I laid out the yard mathematically and I brought it back into him.

"Yeah, that's okay, fix a little bit here.

"That should be fine."

So that's how the actual layout, the mathematical layout happened from Harry's concept.

(soft music) - The day that the locomotive left, I was working in my office in Oxford, Massachusetts.

So I did not see it leave.

I got a call later and I was relieved that it was on its way.

- Harry, Jason and I went down there on a Sunday, early February, basically to talk with Dale, make sure that everything was satisfactory with him.

And we had a nice chat with him.

And after we left there, we went directly to Alice's farm, picked up any loose stuff that was laying outside that could get stolen.

And then we got all that done.

We came back to Maine with that.

And then I think it was the following weekend we went down there with a crew and basically hauled the locomotive out, took all the parts off of it so that it could be loaded and hauled to Maine.

Then we had the lay track.

It was a two day project.

As we were pulling that locomotive out, we had to put a curve in the track and they were barring it out with bars, and when they got to the curve, it didn't want to go any farther.

So Harry had had a three-quarter or one inch nylon rope that we hooked to the front of that and I had a four wheel drive pickup, and we hooked it up to the back of the pickup.

And I wasn't sure whether I could even do anything with it, but I stretched it and stretched it and stretched it.

And there was a fellow standing behind the pickup truck, and I was afraid the rope was gonna break.

So I wound down my window and about ready to haul out to him when it broke and it come back and smacked him.

And after that, he, he knew enough to stay away from it.

Sunday, we finished up, we got it hauled out of the building, up on a ramp and all set to go, and picked up a lot of the loose parts inside the building that we could haul on our trucks.

And we both had a load and we hauled it all back to Maine.

(soft music) - This railroad deserved to be rebuilt and didn't deserve its abandoned road bed into slumber.

So I started writing up plans of how to rebuild the railroad as a 12 year old.

I didn't know anything about Harry's effort or anything that was happening here.

And it was that interest that I kept bugging my father.

"We've got to drive to WWF.

"We've got to see what's left.

"We've got to see what there is to work with."

So we know what we're starting with when it comes time to rebuild.

And he finally agreed.

And we started in Albion and worked down through all the way down to Sheep Station.

And when we road in here is when we saw the beginnings of Harry's effort.

It turns out that Harry's predisposition was pretty much the same, which was this needed to be a reconstruction of the railroad.

It needed to operate, he needed to bring it back to life.

- Well, it was many years in coming and I always thought that they would get the train running much quicker, but they were perfectionists and they wanted everything to be perfect.

And so eventually the day did arrive and I was totally thrilled to actually see the dream of my grandfather, my aunt and myself come finally true.

(train whistle blowing) (warm music) (train bells ringing) (train whistle blowing) (train chugging) (train bell ringing) (train whistle blowing twice) (bright music)