My mother and I used to drive over to Loveland and eat at a cheap restaurant called the Skylark Buffet, just across US 34 from the sugar factory. All you could eat was about 85 cents at the time, and the food was pretty good. From the front windows during the beet campaign, you could see the little Davenport saddletanker shuffling beet cars into the wet hopper. One cold night about 1961, old No. 90 blasted into the yard with a long train, an impressive sight even at a distance.Some 25 years or so later, my own son and I were sitting in the Strasburg snack bar (where the food is also pretty good and not expensive), when the same locomotive whistled into the station, triggering some old memories.Today, there is no more Skylark Buffet, and not much is left of the old Loveland sugar factory, which closed in the '80s, but No. 90 soldiers on. Even the little saddletanker is still around on sugar factory property, at the still-open refinery in Fort Morgan. It last steamed about 1989, being one of the last steam locomotives in non-preservation service.

That's neat Bob.I remember my dad telling me how when he was just a kid, he would lay awake at night in their home in Malden, MA and listen to the local switcher shuffling cars around a few street away (when he was supposed to be sleeping!)This would be B&M in the late 1930's and 40's. HIS stories are what got me interested in old things -- I'm always interested in hearing how others became similarly addicted.

My Great Grandfather came over from southern Italy when he was 11 or 12 and ended up building the Bangor & Aroostook into Northern Maine.Then he became the head of a section crew on the Canadian Pacific Line from Plasterock N.B. to Presque Isle, ME. His Son in law, (my Grandfather) worked with him and eventually took over the section until he retired. Almost all my Great Uncles worked that section as well. My Dad worked it off and on during his younger days. I grew up on these stories. In fact my Grandfathers garage was an old motor car shed.I got heavily interested in 1974 when we took a trip to Churchill Lake in the Allagash. At that time the tractor shed was still there complete with several Gas Lombard tractors inside and shelves stocked with parts for them. I also heard for the first time about the remains of the Eagle Lake & West Branch railroad that were just up the lake. From that point on I loved old machinery, old cars, old technology etc. We did not get to visit the locomotives that time in fact it wouldn’t be until the winter of 1982 that I actually saw them. The following year (1975) we went back to Churchill only to find the Lombards hauled out onto the grass and the building burned. I thought at the time and still do that it was a tragedy of the greatest magnitude. (I begged my Dad to get one of those tractors)In the meantime I took an interest in model railroading. My parents fostered my interest by taking me to a Model railroad convention and visiting several steam powered tourist lines. All the time I kept thinking of those locomotives in the woods.Later after building a home, starting a family and during a divorce I needed a project. The rest is history. Hard to believe its been 8 years since we straightened up those old queens of the Allagash. I also have great memories of traveling with my Dad all over the Allagash recording and inventorying as many historic sites as possible over a two year period. We spent many hours poking and staring at rusting bits of metal and rotting wood trying to figure out what it once was. I also realized that the EL&WB was history that had not been told (fully or accurately) so I began collecting photos and interviewing the very few survivors still with us and documenting the remains as much as possible. My old age project will be to pull all this stuff together and perhaps get it published.Its quite a thrill to stand on an overgrown winter haul road imagining a steam Lombard trundling by with a long train of sleds. Or sitting in the rusting cab of EL&WB No. 2 and dream about what it would have been like during a hot summer day in 1930….the sights the sounds the smells……I also took time to work on the Maine Central 501 and fire the 2 footers on the Maine Narrow Gauge. Today I am back to raising a family. (My 3 year old daughter loves trains by the way) so time is short. But I still go up to the Allagash every fall to visit those fine old locomotives and search up other long abandoned logging related sites that have been reclaimed by the forest and time.