Early Seashore Electric Railway/Seashore Trolley Museum - Newspaper Articles 1939 - 1940s

The "Mother Car" of all trolley museums in the world,
 Biddeford & Saco Railroad Company No. 31, at

the Seashore Trolley Museum.  J. G. Brill Company in 

Philidelphia, PA, built the 12-bench open car in 1900. 

Car 31 arrived in Maine, on June 6, 1900.

Photo courtesy of Dan Vardaro.

Posted: July 16, 2024

Edited: 

    The official announcement released in the newspaper on May 25, 1939, by the Biddeford and Saco Railroad Company, that they would be replacing the electric cars with modern buses by about June 20, 1939. This announcement was shared by one electric railway fan, Gerald Cunningham, with two of his fellow electric railfans, Ted Santarelli and John Amlaw, as the three of them were traveling together in John's car from Massachusetts to join other fans in a Portland Division of the Electric Railroaders Association fan trip of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railway system on Memorial Day, Tuesday, May 30, 1939. 

    The conversation between these three friends, about the end of the trolley operations at the Biddeford and Saco Railroad, led to them reaching out to other electric railways fan friends and organizing a small group that worked together and saved one of the open cars from the B&SRR from being scrapped.

The group established the name of the group to be the Seashore Electric Railway (SERy).  In 1941, the organization created the non-profit name of the New England Electric Railway Historical Society (NEERHS), which was incorporated in the State of Maine and officially registered with the IRS in 1941. The NEERHS became the owner and operator of the Seashore Electric Railway (SERy). SERY would be the name used most often for the public media. Later in the 1950s, as the organization's public trolley operations became popular, the organization changed the name of the subsidiary organization to the Seashore Trolley Museum (STM). This name change was done to ease the general public search for the name of the organization's location for its public operation.

Here is a collection of newspaper articles related to the organization and in some cases, individuals involved with the organization. Starting with a few materials in 1939, then onto the 1940s. 

As other newspaper articles are located, they will be added to this post

1939

The public announcement that generated the conversations

that then led to the activities that started it all.

Biddeford Saco journal - May 25, 1939 - page 2

Portland Press Herald - June 23, 1939

Evening Express - June 16, 1939

A reproduction of the June 18, 1939 fan trip announcement,

 "Farewell To The Biddeford & Saco"

From the Jan/Feb 1964 Seashore Trolley Museum newsletter,

"The Dispatch." PWM

The summary of the fan trip was noted in the newspaper.

Biddeford Daily Journal - June 18, 1939

A copy of the original photo taken on  July 15, 1939 - The "parade" is pulled over

to the side of the Biddeford Road as it approaches what is now the main entrance

to the Seashore Trolley Museum. This is near where Car 31 was to be unloaded. 

 Image courtesy of the Seashore Trolley Museum.

   

July 1939 - Car 31 as it looked when it was first unloaded

at its new home in Kennebunkport.

You can see the right-of-way parallel with the electric poles.

You can also see that this end of Car 31 is resting on a portion

of the right-of-way.   Image from the Seashore Trolley Museum.

1940

Biddeford - Saco Journal - March 2, 1940 - page 5

Biddeford - Saco Jornal - July 18, 1940

Biddeford - Saco Jornal - July 18, 1940 

Ted Santarelli was only 20 years old

in 1939. 

Portland Press Herald - August 28, 1940

1941

Biddeford - Saco Journal - October 30, 1941 

Biddeford - Saco Journal - October 30, 1941 

1947

Biddeford-Saco Journal - March 22, 1947

Portland Press Herald - April 2, 1947

Ibid

Biddeford - Saco Journal - April 28, 1947

Sun Journal - May 14, 1947 - page 4

Evening Express - October 22, 1947 - page 19

    Below is a two-page description of the activities of members and local neighbors during the 1947 fire.

Portland Press Herland - November 16, 1947 - page 55

Ibid

1948

Kennebec Journal - July 22, 1948 - page 24

 

The Christian Science Monitor - August 6, 1948 - First page

Page 2

Biddeford -Saco Journal - August 12, 1948 - page 5

Biddeford-Saco Journal - August 16, 1948 - page 3

Biddeford-Saco Journal - August 24, 1948 - page 7

Biddeford-Saco Journal - September 25, 1948 - page 7

Journal Tribune - September 30, 1948 - page 10

1949

Biddeford-Saco Journal - February 23, 1949 - page 3

Journal Tribune - March 24, 1949 - page 2

Biddeford-Saco Journal - April 18, 1949 - page 6

Biddeford-Saco Journal - June 23, 1949 - page 5

Ibid

Boston Herald - November 15, 1949 - page 79

The digital copy that I have was challenging to decipher when added to the post...so, I decided to retype the article...doing the best I could to decipher the writing style and words used.

By William F. Homer, Jr.

KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Nov. 12

- This Pine Tree State has yet to see a streetcar named "Desire."

    But Maine coasters and others who turn off U. S. Route 1 on Biddeford Road north of this village can find a score of other names on old-time street cars from converted horsecar up to the streamlined P.C.C.

    The New England Electric Railroad Historical Society, Inc. puts on the show in a half-mile rural landscape, where the interurban's whistle blares no more. This spontaneous group, with rolling stock in Maine and roots in Massachusetts, started as a whim and turned into a hobby in 1939. It grew to (become) a museum for vanishing Americana, specifically the trolley.

UPSETS GEOGRAPHY

    The society owns Seashore Electric Railway, which upsets geography and traffic routes by offering a blend of "Yale Bowl" and "Stoneham" for destinations, with experting from (the) Massachusetts Institute of Technology to give it substance.

    Parked on a siding back of M.I.T., is next summer's power plant for Seashore. It is New York Central Railroad's gift of a gasoline-electric branch line car, M-13, whose motor will be shipped to Maine so that the rolling stock of the trolley haven may be powered, instead of pushed.

    "It's big enough 9430 amperes and 500 volts," explains Henry B. Brainerd, research engineer at the Institute, walking encyclopedia of streetcar lore, and chief engineer of the railway, "to run two or more cars at a time."

    When that time comes, MTA will no longer be the only passenger-carrying trolley line in New England, The Seashore fareboxes presumably will ring on a half-mile trip from "farmland to brush". But what they ride, not where, counts for the boys who wanted to grow up to be motormen.

CARBARN GOING UP

    They can run No. 4387, the last of the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway's prepayment convertible, which wound up that road's streetcar service. July 28, 1946, in Stoneham Square. They can board little Birney "safeties," or the nation's biggest trolley cars, the 56-foot coach-baggage interurbans of the Aroostook Valley Railroad. Of medium size, they find the 30-foot light-weight Wason-built as late as 1926, that started in East Taunton, Mass., and wound up in York (Utilities Co.) in 1947, as the last passenger trolley in Maine.

    And when Seashore's day of expansion comes, the "farmed-out" balance of its 25 cars should wind up in Maine. These outlanders include a line car and coach at the Boston & Maine shops at North Billerica, Mass; the rest of the Connecticut Company's four "summer cars" (Yale Bowl), known in the trade as "15-bench opens"; and the former rail post office car of Union Street Railway of the New Bedford, the venerable vehicle of the lot. 

    This is the four-wheel horse car built in 1879, converted to electricity at the turn of the century, and used first for passengers and then for mail service to New Bedford, Fall River, and Onset. This mail Car, No. 34, still with its original roof structure of steam-bent wood, has been (an) interim guest of Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Mass., the refuge of narrow gauge steam line antiquity.

    Already, the first columns and girders of Seashore's concrete carbarn are in place to house the transit treasures. First come, first served, is the principle, and the road's pioneer car. Its 12-bench open, No. 31, from the Biddeford and Saco, is No. 1 in the carhouse line.

AY $2 A YEAR

    This last remaining open trolley in northern New England ran in the era of running boards and turnouts, of black cords to hold straw hats, and of sitting up front with the motorman. Its final run, in 1939, with invited guests, wrote trolley finis for Biddeford and Saco.

    "Someone ought to preserve these rareities," 12 guests agreed on that wind-up day. "Who will it be? That someone oughtn't to be us."

    The dozen of 1939 are 240 rail fans now, including women. Each pays $2 a year dues in the non-profit organization that depends on fare box gifts and contributions of money and equipment for its growth.

    The 'Joker' in the purchase of No. 31 required that it be moved out of Biddeford, Old Orchard Beach, and Saco where it ran. That's why Kennebunkport is its last stop. although Seashore Electric's office is the Somerville, Mass., home of Treasurer, John M. Amlaw. Membership applications have come from as far (away) as Germany.

     The society has no 'Toonerville Trolley,' (although originator Fontaine Fox is a member) for none of its cars yet can meet all the trains, which run three-quarters of a mile away. The skippers, besides Brainerd and Amlaw. are the president, the Rev. Alexander van Courtisandt Hamilton of Norwalk, CT., who is mister on the railway and father in the Episcopal Church, and Theodore Santarelli de Brash, general manager and vice-president, and closest to the Kennebunkport scene.

BUSMAN'S HOBBY

    From ditch diggers to college professors, members pitch in (on) weekends, and in (their) spare time, haul cars, lay track, work on the carbarn, paint, and do hundreds (of) tasks that go with the growth of a hobby. Busman's Holiday is (a) non-misnomer for work on Seashore, with Eastern Massachusetts operator Lester H. Stephenson of Melrose and his wife, members of the society. Stephenson drove No. 4387 on its final Stoneham run.

    Purchase of 1,000 feet of rail, 1,300 new ties, a truckload of line materials, and tools from Eastern Massachusetts this year speeds Seashore Electric toward a physical, as well as financial status, of a going concern. Insulators, bolts, bars, cones, caps, and frogs, are street car materials now ready for use in Maine.

    Vigilant neighbors, the F. W. Clough family and bull terrier, Buster, serve as perennial watchmen. It was their alarm in the fall of 1947, that put the road's personnel to work digging fire-breaks and saving irreplaceable rolling stock from destruction.

    But the members themselves save the aged streetcar from customary junking or export, or at best glorified diners or simplified dwellings. The once-luxurious Middlesex & Boston official car, The Norumbega, now is the basis of a South Boston diner. The Boston Elevated's famous Car 101, serves similarly in the Attleboros.

END

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

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

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

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.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by making a donation today!

Click Here: Donation Options

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.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

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