Preserving railroad history

For more than 70 years the two massive locomotives have rested on a spit of land between Eagle and Chamberlain lakes, their hulking presence a landmark to veteran travelers of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and a delightful curiosity to newcomers who happen upon them for the first time.

The engines – one 90 tons, the other 60 and both hauled into the woods by steam-powered tractors called Lombards – are all that remain of the Eagle Lake & West Branch Railroad which, from 1926 to 1933, hauled pulp logs through the North Woods to supply the Great Northern mill in Millinocket.

During its brief run, the 12-car trains moved 6,500 cords of wood a week from Eagle Lake to Umbazooksus Lake. The trains ran 24 hours a day, six days a week, making one round trip every three hours.

When the Great Depression abruptly halted the “railroad to nowhere,” the locomotives were abandoned in a wooden garage. Over the decades, the garage and other buildings at the site were burned, leaving the idled engines exposed to the elements and the whims of souvenir collectors who made off with pieces of equipment.

Some 13 miles of iron rail were taken up during World War II and sold for scrap in the war effort.

In 1996, volunteers known as the Allagash Alliance Group and state officials undertook an ambitious project to begin restoring the old locomotives, along with a section of the 6,000-foot-long tramway conveyor built in 1903 to transport logs from Eagle Lake to the shores of Chamberlain Lake.

The alliance, with a crew of hardy helpers from all over the state, removed asbestos from the huge machines, jacked them up from the mud and set down new blocking for them to rest on.

Without a road to the site, the workers carried all of their supplies, including more than 100 cubic yards of stone with which to build a new roadbed, by hand, by boat and by snowmobile.

When the work ended in 1998, the two old steam locomotives that had been sinking into the earth for 63 years sat on firm footing once again, providing canoeists on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway an enchantingly mysterious glimpse into Maine’s logging heritage.

Now, a handful of dedicated railroad and history buffs from that earlier alliance – Ramon Collermer of Lincolnville Center, Paul Murphy of Orono, Wayne Sweetser of Presque Isle, Peter Smallidge of Mount Desert Island and Wayne Duplisea of Hermon – have regrouped to resume the restoration effort.

The men, most of them in their 70s, call themselves “The Tramway Work Force.” Early last month, the group traveled by snowmobile to the remote site, where they spent three days replacing some of the locomotive parts that had been scavenged over the decades. With the blessing of state officials, the men installed a refurbished headlight, fashioned new smoke-box doors and fitted them to the front ends of each engine and put a new smoke stack on one of them.

“And everything is welded on,” said Duplisea, an 81-year-old former engineer for the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad who serves as the group’s locomotive consultant, spokesman and unofficial straw boss. “So unless someone goes up there with a torch they won’t be taking off those parts for souvenirs.”

Duplisea, who was unable to make the trip because of health problems, said the group has even more ambitious plans for the site.

They would like to outfit an engine with a wooden cab to replace the one that was burned in the garage fire. They hope to restore a boxcar at the site, as well as a small section of the dilapidated old conveyor system, and even to build a new roof over the two rusting locomotives.

Because the work may be more than the aging volunteers can accomplish on their own, however, they’re hopeful that others might want to join them in the effort to maintain these intriguing monuments to Maine’s woods industry.

“We thought maybe some younger people would like to get involved, to keep the project alive as a showpiece,” Duplisea said. “Those engines are part of the attraction of traveling the waterway, and it’s important that we preserve the history that’s up there for future generations.”