W.W.&F. Discussion Forum
The Maine Narrow Gauges (Historic & Preserved) => Bridgton & Saco River Railway => Topic started by: Jeff Schumaker on July 21, 2019, 01:38:10 PM
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While looking through old issues of The Bridgton News, I came across the mention of Barnard's station on the B&SRRR. Where would that have been located?
Jeff S.
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That is a new one to me Jeff. When was it mentioned?
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It was July 22, 1898, in regards to rerouting a road to connect with the new road between Barnard's station and South Bridgton. I also came across a report in the April 22, 1898 issue regarding minor vandalism at the Ingalls road depot.
Jeff S
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Came across the following article in the July 9th, 1897, edition of the Bridgton News.
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I wonder if it was the original name for Ingalls..
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Jeff’s July 22 post mentions Barnard and Ingall’s suggesting two separate places. Does anyone have a TT that would help?
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Jeff, I have been searching for any info on Barnard's station and have found nothing to date. Within my own collection of B& SR RR Excursion Tickets (special) I found two other destinations that may have been flag stops. I have a single ticket (serial no. A41571) and dater canceled June 11, 1930 with rubber stamped "Twin Lakes" to "Lakeside". There are two different sets of two Conductors punch impressions. I wondered if this ticket is something made up by the late 1930's railfans who came to try to save the railroad. All of my other Excursion Tickets are dater stamped for the late 1880's or early 1890's. Lastly, I found five Excursion Tickets with penciled in "Bridgton to Withams" canceled in 1887 and 1888. From my June 25, 1906 B & SR RR timetable, there is a listing of hotels and boarding houses, I found two different "Lakeside" establishments (that may have been flag stops or stage connections). One was in Bridgton with the Proprietor having been Jno. Cobb & Son and another in Harrison, kept by a Mrs. Jo's. McAllister. Can anyone add information as to where the Barnard's, Lakeside and Withams passengers and baggage may have been dropped?
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Might that have been an earlier name for South Bridgton station? Or maybe Kenner’s? I think there was a station at Ingalls Road and one of the other locations near the hamlet of South Bridgton.
Regarding Witham’s that was my great great great grandfather’s place on Hancock Pond not too far from the first location of the West Sebago station.
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I may be way off but some little bell is going off in the back of my mind saying that it was near Barnards that the train hit the moose in the late 1880s. The leg was mounted and is in the Bridgton Historical Society museum with a plaque. I’m not home at the moment so I can check my reference material.
I also recall that I was told that the train used to stop at Withams during the boarding season to pick up and drop off mail.
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I wonder if "Lakeside" was the Station that is in the czmpgtound on the Harrison Branch. It has been converted (or had last time I went through the campground) to a rest room for the campground. It was still located along the grade. It is one of 3 buildings left of the Railroad. The others being North Bridgton Freight House and Bennets Camp on Hancock Pond.
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I may be way off but some little bell is going off in the back of my mind saying that it was near Barnards that the train hit the moose in the late 1880s. The leg was mounted and is in the Bridgton Historical Society museum with a plaque. I’m not home at the moment so I can check my reference material.
I also recall that I was told that the train used to stop at Withams during the boarding season to pick up and drop off mail.
I will check the moose leg and ask Mike Davis at the Bridgton Historical Society for what he might know about it. Great story about "Withams", those old tickets now have so much more meaning. That's sad if "Lakeside" has become a comfort station. Reminds me of the "Provo Privy" in the John Wayne film, "The Green Berets".
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Lakeside was Joe Bennett’s cottage on Hancock Pond where the passing siding, watertank, and section house were. There was a little store there in the 60s and we kids would walk down there to buy penny candy and at that time the flag holder for flagging the trains was still attached to the porch post.
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Lakeside was Joe Bennett’s cottage on Hancock Pond where the passing siding, watertank, and section house were. There was a little store there in the 60s and we kids would walk down there to buy penny candy and at that time the flag holder for flagging the trains was still attached to the porch post.
Of course.. I forgot about that.
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Great story about the 1960's use of Joe Bennett's cottage as a penny candy store. Now whenever I look at that Lakeside ticket, it will be in a whole different light. It is the stories of course that keep the past alive. Thank you both Mike and Dana for your thoughts. By the way, that ticket cost me $2 from a dealer in Australia. Best two bucks I've spent in a long time...
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So, I recently bought a photograph of Sandy Creek. It’s big, 16x20 in a nice frame. It shows the depot with a short passenger train headed by locomotive Number 1, the mills and other buildings that were there after the railroad opened. I believe it was taken in 1883. There is a man standing in the depot doorway who I am certain is Seth Berry, owner of the mills and also station agent at Sandy Creek. I wanted to try and find out more about the activities at Sandy Creek so I started searching the Bridgton News for any reference to Seth Berry. Among the items I found was a follow up to the article Bruce posted, dated September 17, 1897, which states that Seth Berry completed the new station at Barnard’s Road. So here we are again. Where was that? Seth Berry built both the Sandy Creek and Perley’s Mills depots and their designs were practically identical. And they were built when the railroad was constructed. So they would’ve already existed in 1897. So was Barnard’s Road at South Bridgton or Ingalls? Or was it at Kennet’s? I guess I should search the Bridgton News for other references to Barnard’s Road.
Something else caught my eye in the Sandy Creek photo. One of the buildings near the tracks on the Mill side has an apothecary symbol on it. That caused some head scratching on my part. Then I found a note in the Bridgton News dated 1898 which told of the 14x28 addition Seth Berry was constructing on his Union Store at Sandy Creek. The building with the apothecary symbol must be the store.
Seth Berry was a very active fellow. Besides running the mill that produced lumber, shingles, laths, and other wood products, he was Station Agent at Sandy Creek, was later postmaster there, owned the store and a blacksmith shop, ran a farm, and built a number of buildings in the area. He died in 1904 and the Mills gradually shut down but in 1909 Mains & Dolley was using one of the mills to make baseball bats. These were probably shipped out by rail.
It’s all gone now and that area is Sandy Creek Park. The old mill foundations are all easy to find as well as the remains of the mill dam. A nice spot for a picnic.
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Nice bit of research there. Very interesting..
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Great job Dana and as Mike has said, interesting to read. I had a thought that Mike Davis at the Bridgton Historical Society might be able to help you out with any information on Seth Berry. As I have only gone through the B.H.S. collection of Bridgton News articles pertaining to the railroad, I never thought to search beyond the obvious and dig deeper. I imagine Mike could help you with looking through other Bridgton News that the society has and maybe arrange for you to review microfilm at the News offices.
When I was volunteering at B.H.S , I made copies of all of their railroad related articles and put them in two 3" three-ring binders...that's how many there were. The binders are an odd lime green color which should be easy to find. All the articles are (or were) in chronological order. Most are from the 1930's to close of business in '41. Very little from the years prior.
Mike Davis has a great working knowledge of Bridgton history. I was very impressed with how he could speak on nearly any historical subject that came up. When he was a youngster, he knew Bill Shelley and no doubt began an interest in the narrow gage.
Dana, I am planning on bringing some Bridgton materials to display at the W.W. & F. Ry. Museum on Saturday October 4th from roughly noon and on. I will have copies of a Bridgton check register from 1893, an accounting ledger from 1922 and a transcribed accounting record book from 1913. If you'd like to see these, come on by.
If I know you are coming and you'd like to see my own copies of Bridgton News articles, I can bring those as well.
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Bruce, I would be very interested in seeing your Bridgton material, unfortunately I won’t be there on the 4th as I will be at a wedding. I will be up for the FWW and maybe as early as Tuesday of that week to help with the prep.
I have some additional info about the mills at Sandy Creek that I will post soon. Haven’t found much about Barnard’s but I was looking at an 1871 map of Bridgton and there was a Barnard family living at the end of the road that ran past Adams Pond in South Bridgton. Their place would have been close to where the railroad started to swing northeast toward Sandy Creek. I’m starting to think that Barnard’s was the South Bridgton depot. More research is needed.
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Ok. I was looking through an old discussion thread from 2009 in which Glenn Christiansen stated that Bill Shelley showed him a cottage in South Bridgton that he claimed was the South Bridgton depot that had been moved there. What was very interesting is that Bill also said that this building is very similar in design to Perley’s Mills and Sandy Creek. Well, we know that Seth Berry built the stations at Perley’s Mills and Sandy Creek and those two buildings were almost identical before the addition was built onto PM. We also now know that Seth Berry also built the station at Barnard’s Road. I’m becoming more convinced that Barnard’s was South Bridgton.
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So, in Peter Barney’s photo journey book he has some info in the back that includes station building dimensions. Sandy Creek was 16x30, Perley’s Mills was 16x30 prior to the addition of the freight shed which made it 16x62, and South Bridgton was 16x30. Those buildings, I believe, were all built by Seth Berry from the same basic plan, and that leads me further to conclude that South Bridgton and Barnard’s are the same station.
I have never seen a photograph of the South Bridgton station.
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The dimensions of the stations were 16x36 not 30.
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Dana, we'll have to keep an eye out for I.C.C. valuation reports on the Bridgton. Somebody must have them, maybe they exist within the Peter Barney collection.
Ed Bond amassed a large collection of those forms for valuation on the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes. The data is very thorough and Ed had reports on buildings, rolling stock, motive power and on rail infrastructure. I spent most of late July and August going through it and inventorying each piece.
Jerry DeVos told me that Ed Bond was friends with Emons Lancaster. Emons was able to have Ed come in to the Maine Central engineering offices at St. John Street in Portland and help himself to whatever of the obsolete records he wanted. The W.W. & F. Ry. Museum archives now have Ed's val reports and blue prints. I should mention that both men were Civil Engineers.
Today, I was showing Marcel a collection of 48 pages of val reports on every structure between Boston and Springfield, Mass., once owned by the New York Central and operated by the Boston & Albany in 1948. The records list each building, coal pocket, water tank, inspection pit, etc. The dimensions are given as is the original date of construction. In 1948, much of that was no longer used by the railroad, but leased to customers. That information is given also. The detail is incredible and that comes to us in the H. Lincoln " Linc" Harrison collection.
If we can find such records on the Bridgton, wouldn't that be great? Gotta be out there...
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It would be, Bruce. They’re probably right under our noses somewhere. As popular as the B&SR was at the end I can’t imagine those reports would have been tossed.
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I copied all of the Maine Two-Footer ICC Val sheets at the National Archives about 15 to 20 years ago and gave scans of them to the WW&F Archives.
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Thanks for passing that information along Allan. I will ask Linda about those at my next opportunity.
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Dana,
Within the Ed Bond collection (collection no. 25-07-08) are the following items pertaining to the Bridgton & Saco valuations and inventories:
Bridgton 1916 Inventory - items no. 209 through item no. 245
Valuation records - items no. 348 (list of facilities & fixtures) through item no. 369.
Note that item no. 353 is for the West Sebago section house
Also see item no. 405, which is a plan of the Sandy Creek station.
Happy hunting!
Bruce