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When the Railroad Stopped in Town
The
Franklin lineage of longtime resident Dania Stager-Snow goes back to
John West, the man who gave the land for the 150-year-old
Franklin
Methodist
Church.
An old postcard recalls
Franklin’s depot. Doug Smith, still a Franklin resident, was the
last railroad station agent there. |
Later, around 1899,
the Maine Central Railroad tracks that passed through Franklin,
complete with a depot, divided more of the family’s land.
The tracks remain,
but the depot doesn’t, because but no passenger train has come
through since 1957.
Freight trains
stopped using the line around 1979.
Stager-Snow
remembers the trains as something special about Franklin,
particularly in the 1940s. The train served the town at a time when
it had as many as five general stores.
The trains came
through twice a day as they chugged between Bangor and Calais.
“It was major
transportation in the days before everyone had a car,” Stager-Snow
said.
“The train brought
the mail in the evening, and people used to gather in the little
post office. The postmaster was a Bunker, so he knew everyone.”
Stager-Snow has a
very personal memory of Franklin’s place along the train line.
“As a child at age
10, I took my little cousin, age 5, for a Saturday in Ellsworth,”
she said. “We went to the movies and had lunch at Newberry’s. We
visited Aunt Edith Scammons in the afternoon, then came home on the
train again.
“There is no way
you’d let two little girls go off on the train like that today;
that’s how safe it was.
“I love trains, and
it’s one of the tragedies of our country that we have allowed trains
to disappear the way they have.” |
