85 Years Ago Today - November 11, 1939 - Car 31 - Prepared For Its First Winter in Kennebunkport

STM Photo of the 1900 Biddeford and Saco Railroad Company No. 31

when it first arrived on campus in July 1939, at what we now know as

the Seashore Trolley Museum.

On Armistice Day, November 11, 1939, the finishing touches were made to Car 31 in preparation for it to spend its first winter outside. 31 was newly refitted with its two trucks and placed down on a section of rails just long enough to accommodate the historic open car. 31 was resting on the original ten acres of the property acquired by the original eight founders of what we now know as the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine.

This post has various photos of 31 during its first year or two in Kennebunkport. There is one photo of the second car acquired in 1940, by the early members, Car 38 from the Manchester Street Railway in New Hampshire. It is seen on the same original section of track that 31 was on next to the former right-of-way of the Atlantic Shore Line Railway.

Following the series of photos are clippings of interviews done by Ed Dooks in the late 1980s of some of the founders and early members of the Seashore Trolley Museum. I find the transcripts interesting especially when some of the discussion points of Car 31 being prepared for its first winter in Kennebunkport match up with some details in the photos that are posted here. I kept the topic of the interviews narrowed to 31 and the years of 1939 and 1940. There is also a map posted of the property from the 1939/1940 era.

Enjoy this final post reflecting on the 85th Anniversary of the saving of Car 31 and the beginning of the Seashore Trolley Museum.

Phil

Click Here: 85 Years Ago Today - July 15, 1939 - B & S RR Trolley No. 31 Arrives - Kennebunkport, ME

Click Here: 85 Years Ago Today - July 5, 1939 - Final Day of Trolley Operations - B & S RR

Click Here: 85 Years Ago Today - June 18, 1939 - "Farewell Fan Trip - The Biddeford And Saco Railroad"

Click Here: 124 Years Ago Today - June 6, 1900 - B & S RR Trolley No. 31 Arrives - Saco, ME

STM Photo

STM Photo

STM Photo

1939 Joel Salomon Collection

1939 Joel Salomon Collection

STM Photo

STM Photo (1940)

SERy Annual Report

STM photo

SERy Annual Report

Shop 1 is on the left as you look at this photo - See the map below

SERy Annual Report

1940 SERy Annual Report

Manchester Street Railway Car No. 38 when it was first placed on

the tracks at the ROW (on left) 1940. Same place Car 31 was at first.

Kevin Farrell photo at STM

Ed Dooks Interviews - Highlights Only of the Original Ten Acres - 1939

July 4, 1989 - Charles A. Brown, Gerald F. Cunningham, and Lucien Phinney

Charles Brown - Let's go back to 31. We have it moved, but we haven't got it up on its trucks yet. We don't have it off the power company property. That is where we came into the act. And that was sweat, tears, blood, you know all those things. We had very little sophisticated equipment...I think the most sophisticated equipment we had was a car jack that was borrowed from the Boston Elevated.

Gerald Cunningham - It was borrowed, yes!

Brown - Borrowed

Ed Dooks - Permanently borrowed?

Brown - Yah! Probably. We had block and tackle and we had mud to get this car out of and no knowledge of how to do it. It was completely an amateur night at the opera. In fact, every time we move a car or any part of a car it is Seashore Trolley Museum comic opera time. That started with No. 31.

Brown - When we first got the car it was only half on the ground, half on the trucks, the truck of the Smart (Bob Smart drove the wrecker that delivered 31...pwm) That had to be corrected we had to get it so we could maneuver the car body onto its trucks. This took place one by one on two different weekends. Finally, after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, if you will, the car body was put back on its trucks, and as the crowning glory Ted Santarelli climbed up on the roof and put the trolley pole back on. That is symbolic steel construction, as you know, when you put the last piece of steel in, you put a pine tree on the roof. Well, this was our pine tree

Brown - We got the car moved onto our own property and satisfied the power company. The property that we moved it onto was the Hill (George Hill was the owner of the original ten acres...pwm) property, that little triangle, which had been isolated off of Hill's property when the Atlantic Shore (Line...pwm) was built. It was useless to him and very useful to us. And for $5.00 a year, you couldn't do better than that. So, the car...

Brown - (Referring to if and how the payments were made...pwm) I think we would have. Perhaps he forgave us, I don't know. I think a lot of the early contributors were like that. These are good guys, give it to them... I think some of the paint and the hardware were either under the counter or given to us. We had a lot of friends in those early days, fortunately...

Brown - ....but it was the friends that really came through for us when we needed them. With only a few hundred dollars in the till, you don't do much quality buying, if you will.

Brown - After 31 was put on two trucks and on a short piece of track it was pushed onto the Hill property and stayed there for quite a while. This was the beginning of winter, I think the last move when Ted put the trolley pole on the roof was on what they call Armistice Day weekend which is now Veteran's Day, I think, November 11, that saw the completion of 31 on the tracks, not necessarily in running condition, but at least it could be moved by car jacks, block and tackle, horse and, Mr. Clough had a horse, which, occasionally, use to move the car for us.

Cunningham - Do you remember the name of the horse?

Brown - Probably Brownie 

Cunningham - One thing about the hazard of getting 31 up on its trucks, and I think everyone has forgotten, we had Mosquito Lake. And I'm telling you the mosquitoes were absolutely horrendous. It was right at the curve where we left the power line. Horton Banks drew a plan of it, of the lake, in report number one. It was in blueprint form. And through the years, of course, that disappeared and was filled in, but boy it was really rough with those mosquitoes.

Brown - That is correct (replying to a question of the location of the land...pwm). It's just to the south of the barn (referring to Shop 1...pwm) that's at the entranceway. In fact, the track that leads to the barn is probably laid on the site where 31 rested for so long before it finally got moved back into the rest of the property. But that was the original little piece of property for which we paid $5 a year, which can not be verified, but it's the property anyway.

Brown - The first resting place of number 31 was on this short piece of curved track that shows as 1939 on this drawing. which was finally torn up in the 1947 drawing as we grew more in both directions to deposit more cars as they came into the museum. But the little chunk of track that was the original 31 home was torn up in 1947.

August 30, 1989 - Horton Banks - Phone Interview with Ed Dooks

Banks - ...Bill Maier wasn't an original member but I used to stop in Manchester, on my way up there, and pick him up and take him up when we first started. He put a lot of work in, that probably he didn't get any credit for then even.

Dooks - Now, he told me tonight that he started when you started laying track. That's when he got involved...when the track was starting to be laid down.

Banks - He worked with us from the start though. ....he was a teenager back in those days. We did a lot of..., it was a hard job. When they delivered the body up there, they put the body on horses right on the Cumberland County Power and Light right-of-way. Then they brought the trucks up separately in a dump truck. Shoved one of them in the bushes here and the other one perhaps a hundred feet away from that one, in the bushes somewhere else. Our job was to get that thing off the right-of-way, because, Cumberland County Power and Light claimed it was blocking access to their power lines. They did get by it all right. They made themselves a sho-fly around us so they could get by it to go up the line. We went up there in late October or early November. It was a rainy season. Tried to jack the thing up to move it. Boy, the right-of-way was soft and muddy. ...jack the thing up two inches and the jack would go another inch down into the ground.

Banks - Yes! Eventually, we got it over, off the right-of-way.

Dooks - According to some material that Charlie Brown gave me that weekend was October 8...1939.

Banks - Yes, that's right. We went up on weekends...

Banks - ....but, as I say, I can't remember where the jacks came from. I know we bought the contents of the line car from, Boston, Revere Beach, and Lynn. I would say that's where the jacks came from. But, maybe I'm wrong.

Banks - We did have a friend up there who had worked for the Biddeford and Saco. He worked on track and maintenance and was a Frenchman. Gene Cote was his name. And he was a great help to show us how to do things.

Banks - He had been a watchman. He may have got the jacks for us too. I'm not sure about that.

Banks - Yes. Yes. Oh, yes, he worked on the track. He knew where the latest ties had been laid on the Biddeford and Saco. So, when we wanted ties, we went looking for some that were still in the ground, you know. And he told us, what was the name of the hill..., York Hill in Saco was the last piece of new rail they put in with new ties. So, I would, with my Plymouth coupe that had a seat in it, went up. I was able to move five and pick up five, at a time off the ground. Of course, we had to fill in where we dug them up at the side of the road and that's where the first ten ties we had came from, up there. 

Banks - We just helped ourselves. They were abandoned on the side of the road. So, anyway.

Banks - (referring to where Gene Cote was in 1989...pwm) I don't know. He didn't stay with us very long. I think he had a job somewhere else. Before we ever really got started, we lost him.

Banks - (referring to a weekend visit to Car 31...pwm) Because I could get up there on weekends, Tom Brown, Ted Santarelli, and (I) drove up there. John Amlaw, I think he went up in his own car. 

Banks - I was living in Allston at the time. My Plymouth, that I had wasn't that good. I didn't trust it to go to Maine, that distance. A couple of times...I had a problem coming back one time with (Henry) Brainerd and I had gone up the weekend. I went snaking poles out of the woods too, with my car to use you know. when they took the wires down, the overhead, they just chopped the poles down and left them lying beside the right-of-way. so, I went up and picked up the best ones and towed them down with my car.

(on his way home one of the tie rods dropped onto the front wheel...needed a tow truck).

Banks - (referring to installing the first pole...pwm) Yes. And the first pole we put up, we didn't know how to put a pole up, but Ted thought after we got the car moved over onto the (property), and put it onto the trucks on the track, that...He thought that we should,...if you put up a bracket on the pole on the ground and then raise the pole up that somebody on the roof of the car could hold the pole erect..., hold onto the bracket while they filled around the pole so to hold it up. You see, we didn't know how to put a pole up.

I had watched one time when the electric company put poles up. They had dug a hole big enough for that pole to slide down into and that was it. But Ted insisted on having a hole much bigger than that so it was like trying to stand a pencil up in a teacup. We got through so, but they did it. But we didn't know how to get the pole raised up. So, the Clough boys (Fred's sons...probably Walter and Carl...two of three sons?...pwm) were working on the farm in the garden across the wall (the stone wall that runs parallel to the current STM main entrance asphalt road...pwm) saw us fooling around. They came over to talk. Oh, they knew how to put a pole up, so, they showed us how to do it.

One of the boys went out with an axe and cut down a birch tree with a fork in it and they got the block and tackle from the car and hooked the block and tackle onto the pole and then the other end onto the fork in the birch tree. Put the car, my car, on the other end of it and we pulled. It of course pulled the birch tree right up with the fork in it and as the birch tree went down, the pole came, hooked on to it, came up, and went right down the hole. As I said, it was like trying to stand a pencil up in a teacup. I did get up on the roof and try to when they tried to stand the pole straight while they were running around getting rocks and throwing around...But, we learned the hard way. It took a farmer, the farm boys to show us how to put a pole up.

Banks - (more about the Cloughs...pwm) ...But they served as watchdogs for us while we were away, of course, during the weekdays when nobody was up there. Even Mrs. (Mabel) Clough used to..., saw anybody looking around there she's hot foot it over and tell them to get the hell out of there. You don't belong here and all this.

Banks - (referring to 31 when on tracks...pwm) Of course, Ted, Ted was always worrying about the deterioration of the car(s) in the wintertime. Being out in the open in all, so his idea was to put paint on them all, whether it was a good paint or anything to protect the wood, you know. We could remove the paint afterward...Earl Bacon decided he would take the box signs on the end of 31 down to a professional sign painter and had them all re-done, lettered, and put back up. And I spent a lot of time working on the, I think my sister was sitting on the end of the thing too when I took the picture with the new signs on the end. But of course, a couple of winters, and, those signs are all peeled off and had to be done over again.

August 30, 1988 - John Amlaw and Henry Brainerd (HB's first visit to see 31 was on April 19, 1940)

Henry Brainerd - (referring to 31 arriving in Kennebunkport 1939...pwm) ...so, you got it down there and then you had to jack it up and get the trucks under it and get some track under it or something. You got some ties from somewhere.

John Amlaw - I think we got a few (ties...pwm) from up in the B & S yard (Biddeford and Saco carbarn...pwm). There were half a dozen or something that were up there for emergencies, and since they had gone to buses, they didn't need them anymore. So, it seems to me that they told us that we could have them and that's what we used. We had them, well sort of like the Beachmont line. One tie at each end of the rail and one in the middle, but it was enough to hold it (referring to the ties placed under 31...pwm). I believe we had one or two ties under each truck, possibly four altogether, and that's the way we arranged it.

Amlaw - ...Because our worst problem was trying to get jacks that were reliable and heavy enough to get blocking that was heavy enough. So, we had to find timbers and then we had to try to arrange some sort of base for the jack because it was on ordinary gravel and dirt and it was not a very reliable way to jack up anything...we didn't know just what to expect, but we did know that if anything happened, it would not be something pleasant, and this point was where Fred Clough proved practically invaluable. He would come over, about every time, we were there, and suggest ways to do things, and we found that Fred was just about right 99% of the time.

Brainerd - But you had it (31...pwm) standing on its own length of track, and I gather the two rails you moved it on to were just about long enough for it.

Amlaw - ...we had a few things inside it (31...pwm). I've forgotten now just what it was, but I think a couple of pieces of blocking, the jack, and little things like that. We kept the side curtains pulled down to try to keep them protected from the weather.

Brainerd - (First visit to the site, April 19, 1940) We turned off Route 1, came over, and looked at 31 standing on its own length of track in sort of a swampy pool of half-melted snow. I remember I climbed on the running board and pulled the bell cord, and heard the ding of the bell. I was quite thrilled. I don't think the curtains were down then. Of course, that was in April and that's the first I had seen of this location. On July 4 weekend I came up with Horton Banks and his gang in his car. He had a 1932 Plymouth rumble-seat coupe. The track had been extended to about 100 feet long and that was since I had seen it in April and 31 had been pulled up to the uphill, end of the track. I think that was the time we drove over to Saco, and where the track had climbed the hill, beyond the bridge from Biddeford, the ties were on the side of the road. The rail had been ripped up and sold for scrap. Nobody wanted the ties so we snitched them and you could put 3 ties in the rumble seat of his coupe and we made 3 or 4 trips. I think that was about the time that we were starting to extend the track to the switch at what's now the Bunkhouse Yard.

Brainerd - I remember I slept on the bench of 31 with one elbow against the seat back, and I got a wooden soap box and my other elbow rested on that, and I slept in my clothes. I woke up soon after dawn, around 5:00 a.m., and it was on the cool side. There was a very heavy dew. My sensation was that every drop of dew was an ice crystal, so I went and snuggled into the seat of Horton's coupe and sort of warmed myself up a little bit.

Brainerd - On the 4th, we got a few firecrackers or something, maybe a Roman Candle, or something like that, and we went a distance up the right-of-way and fired them off and celebrated the 4th to that extent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We continue the restoration work on the 1912, Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

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Being more than a century old, the stately, "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including; time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents captivates, fascinates, then generates, interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

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The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition of narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

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Independent book publisher, Phil Morse, holding

the Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 the Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive