Bowdoinham's first railroad station was built at Cathance Landing in 1850. (This drawing made by Sarah Ann Stapler from several old photographs.)
BOWDOINHAM - The Kennebec and Portland Railroad Company built its depot at Cathance Landing in 1850. On December 30 of that same year, the road's first train steamed up the line from Brunswick, made a brief stop at the landing, and then chugged her way on to Richmond. Bowdoinham's farmers and fishermen, and wood and ice cutters finally had a steel railroad to market. The railroad era had begun.
The line through Bowdoinham was first surveyed in 1845. Work on the track actually started in late 1846 or early 1847, and was completed through to Richmond in 1850, after several financial problems were overcome. The road ended at Richmond for two years, then as the company prospered, lines were extended up the Kennebec to Augusta and Skowhegan, then Waterville and beyond.
Mildred Snell Given still recalls that early depot. It was a long, plain affair, painted brown and joined to the tracks by an uncovered, wooden platform. The freight shed stood at the west, or Topsham end of the station. Mrs. Given says she was almost born in that station. Her father, Horace Snell was Bowdoinham's station agent from 1870 until 1904, and her mother operated the telegraph at the station for many of those same years.
This view of the station at Harward's Crossing was taken before 1895, and station agent Charles Brown is shown wearing a derby hat, with-his hand on the chain ball. This signal was used by Brown, and other station agents, to alert engineers in passing trains that a passenger was waiting in his station. A ball lowered on the line meant a passenger was waiting, while a high ball signaled the train to pass on through. Notice the freight shed beside the station, and the large kerosene light on the corner used to light the platform. Others in the picture are: (left to right) George McFadden, Frank Parkman, and Ray, Bertha and Gertrude Brown. (Photo courtesy of Della Brown Rideout.)
"Pa's ticket office was near the center of the station," she recalls. "There were waiting rooms on either side, one for the ladies and one for the gents." Back in those days she observed, separation was not considered discrimination, It worked out quite well, the ladies had their handiwork and gossip, while the men had their tobacco and talk that was sometimes rough to a lady's taste. Waiting for the train used to be a part of the enjoyment of a ride on the steel rail.
In those first days of the railroad, Bowdoinham was used as a "wooding up" stop by the trains. When that wood-burning steam locomotive pulled into the station, all the crewmen (and perhaps a few passengers) filed off the train and carried wood to the carrier behind the locomotive.
Local men cut their share of wood for those trains, early journals tell of hundreds of cords of hardwood stacked around the station. A Dollar or two was considered the going rate for a cord of wood, delivered. Eugene Hill is now 92 and living in Richmond, but he is still proud to say that his grandfather. William Hill, supervised most of the stonework; and grading for the Kennebec road. He was a native of New Hampshire, built the farm on the Kennebec that now bears his name, and was obviously a stone worker of great talent. Some of the stone culverts he built, such as the one on Shingleman's Creek, stand as straight and true today as the day the work was completed.
Gene Hill guesses some of the stone for the road was mined in this area, but he can't be sure. In the Shingleman's Creek Bridge, some of the granite blocks measure more than four feet square.
Those early days for the railroad were not very profitable. Capital expenses and construction costs were high, and many of the bigger shippers in the Kennebec Valley were still relying on the time-tested sailing vessel for delivery of their goods.
In 1854 the Kennebec and Portland Railroad underwent major restructuring and refinancing, and the railroad became known as the Portland and Kennebec Railroad. During the financial reconstruction, towns along the line were asked to advance their credit for use by the railroad. Bowdoinham and Richmond were two of the few towns on the line who refused that early credit scheme.
By the mid 1860's, the railroad was a booming enterprise. Passenger and freight business flourished, and the carrier, now called the Maine Central Railroad, built a branch office at the crossing in Harward's woods in east Bowdoinham.
Della Rideout recalls the Harward Station vividly. Her father, Charles Brown, became station agent and telegrapher at Harward's about 1885, and stayed there for more than 30 years.
Brown built his family a house behind the Harward Crossing Station, and it was in that house, and the station itself, that Della grew up. She remembers that there was a small store at the crossing for a number of years, selling general goods and provisions, but Brown eventually closed it and tore the building down. Tending to the trains took all the time Brown had for business. In the 1880s more than a dozen passenger trains per day passed through Bowdoinham, with most of them stopping at both the village and Harwards.
Mrs. Rideout remembers the ice cutter who worked in the Kennebec houses, in particular the cutters for Clark and Chaplin's over where Spear Sedgeley lives now. - :
"They'd get their paychecks and practically run to the station to meet the 4 p.m. (that was number 16) for Brunswick. They'd get to Brunswick get filled up on their liquor, then come back to Harward's on the midnight train. It was almost funny watching some of them reeling back toward the boarding house on the point. I wonder even today why some of them never got lost in the woods or wandered into open water on the river."
Mrs. Rideout was only six when an engineer on a Richmond bound switcher stopped at Harward's and asked Mr. Brown if Della couldn't make the ride with him up the line. At first, Brown said no, but finally, the engineer and Della prevailed. Della climbed, into that cab, bubbling with excitement, and proceeded to drive that train to Richmond. The ride took just minutes, and Della was back in her father's arms almost before her mother knew she was gone. "That engineer couldn't have pleased me more if he had offered me a mail sack full of money," she says today. "I can still close my eyes and see those great coals of fire in the boiler. That was a moment in my life I'll never forget.
Not every train stopped regularly at Harward's Crossing, or at the village. Often a passenger or freight would come in and the station agent would have to stop the next available train. Lanterns were used to halt the trains at night, while a large ball suspended from a pole was used to stop the train during the day light hours.
Mail was delivered to both the village and Harward's stations several times each day. If the train stopped, the mail was transferred in a businesslike manner. If the train didn't stop, however, mail was kicked from the speeding train by the mail clerk on board, and out going mail was snatched from a track-side post using a mechanical catcher arm.
Della Brown often retrieved the mail for her father. She recalls that most of the clerks were excellent judges of speed and distance...It was a rare occasion indeed when the platform was missed completely. If a clerk did miss the platform, however, it was standard procedure for them to throw out a bag of candy when they came through on their next pass.
In his book, BOWDOINHAM WAS MY HOME TOWN, John Wallace Ames recalls a typical day for the village station.
At 7:18 a.m., Number 44 brought in the bulk of the day's mail...
Number 1, eastbound, stopped at 8:15 leaving, the Post and the Globe from Boston, and more mail.
Number 64 was the 10:30 train, bound from Bangor to Boston. This was a popular train for towns people wanting to do a day's shopping in Brunswick or Portland.
Number 3, eastbound, Portland to Waterville, stopped at 11:15 a.m. This was sort of a convenience train, and not heavily patronized.
Number 11, eastbound, Boston to Bangor, was the Flying Yankee . It grabbed a mail pouch from the arm by the station, threw off incoming mail and high balled on its way. It passed the village about 2 p.m., and Harward's about 2:05.
Local Number 19 followed the Yankee at 2:30 p.m. She was an eastbound train, Portland to Waterville.
Number 16, westbound, Skowhegan to Portland, was our 4 o'clock train.
This was followed at 5 p.m. by Number 102. This train Ames refers to as "the genuine Flying Yankee ," she was westbound, exchanging only mail in town. Time from Bowdoinham to Brunswick for the Yankee was just ten minutes.
Number 25 was the day's last mail train. It arrived from Portland and Boston at 6 p.m., bound for Bangor. This was a popular train for people returning to Bowdoinham.
Number 64, westbound, stopped at 7 p.m.
and Number 112, westbound, stopped at 7: 30.
Number 2, westbound would stop to leave passengers, but people wanting to board the 11:30 p.m.train would have to flag it, just in case no Bowdoinham stop was planned.
Number 71, eastbound, stopped at 12:30 p.m.
Number 8 flew past the Bowdoinham depot at 2 a:m., and was also an eastbound train.
Ames recalls several incidents relating to trains in his book: on a sad day in January, 1919, Doctor Peabody came down from Richmond on Number 2, hoping to aid Celia Ames, who suffered with pneumonia. "She died about midnight," Ames writes, "so Doctor Peabody took number 71 back to Richmond at 12: 30. Trains were a way of life," observes Ames, and in this particularly sad case, a part of death .
Recalling happier days, Ames tells of another incident which took place at the Bowdoinham depot:
"George Denham was (Bowdoinham's) American Express agent. There was a (painted) white line on the station platform that told workers where the express carts were supposed to set when the trains came in (This system was apparently used to speed the loading of freight onto trains.)
Well, one time the station platform was replanked, and the new plank extended closer to the tracks than the old ones had. Before the new white line was painted on the plank, Mr. Denham misjudged the distance and set his trucks too close to the train. The result was that the locomotive hit the trucks, knocking them galley west and scrambling twenty, thirty dozen cases of Boston-bound eggs all over the new platform."
Bowdoinham village got a new station in 1892, when Horace Snell was station agent. Bowdoinham Advertisers of the 1880s chastised the Maine Central severely for maintaining "such a shoddy station in so fine a community." The new station featured a long covered platform, and was used until passenger service ended in Maine in 1961.
A gate house was maintained by the railroad where Main Street crossed the tracks. From the house an operator could open and close overhead gates on the Main Street, Center Street and kindling wood factory crossing. During the great fire of 1902, the flames which leveled lower Main Street were stopped at the gate house.
The bicentennial book lists Bowdoinham's gate keepers as follows: Green McKay, Frank Small, William Maloon, Sam Rounds, William King and John Coughlin. Elmer Jordan, George Brawn and Ralph McEwen were spare men until 1931, when automatic crossing guards were installed.
Bowdoinham's village depot was first manned by William Lunt, then by Samuel Douglas and R. P. Carr. Snell took over the station in 1870 and operated it faithfully until 1905, when ill health forced him to retire. Snell was followed by Frank Nicholas, Charles Hackett, Charles Sherman, Phillip Carr, Henry Cummins, and Walter Burnell.
We believe that Nat Brown, a brother of Charles Brown (Della Rideout's father) founded the station at Harward's, although no records are available to substantiate this. Charles Brown took the station in 1885 and managed it until about 1905-10, when his daughter Gertrude and her husband, John Pratt took over. The Harward's station was closed about 1929, and razed in the early 1930s when the overpass for Route 24 was constructed.
Bowdoinham Advertiser &endash; February 1976
Frank Connors, Editor