America’s growth was built on the expansion of railroads across the country. It’s an exciting history of fortunes made and western territories settled over the past 150 years.

Many small communities also contributed to the industry, adding local pieces to a nationwide web of tracks. One such endeavor was the Androscoggin Railroad from Leeds to Livermore Falls.

While bankers in big cities planned railroads from coast to coast, a group of Maine farmers were gathered in excited conversation at a general store following the Leeds town meeting in February 1852. The town had approved a $15,000 loan to benefit construction of a small rail line chartered four years earlier as Androscoggin R.R.

Three well-known Leeds residents took the lead in the venture. They were Giddings Lane, Josiah Millett and Ensign Otis. A feature story written by Rena Leadbetter McIlroy in the May 10, 1941, edition of the Lewiston Journal Magazine Section recalled that meeting almost 100 years earlier, and she told the story in an imagined conversation.

“Yer gut what yer wanted, didn’t yer,” one of the so-called Big Three of the town said to Lane.

“Yes, with the road-bed from the Junction to Livermore Fall finished, I figure, as soon as the frost is out, we’ll start laying the ties and the rails. This money is bound to be a big help. People can laugh at the town of Leeds, but I say she’s got gumption. If it hadn’t been for some of our enterprising townsmen, the new railroad never would have been a reality.”

Big benefits were expected to come to the small farming town, McIlroy’s story said.

“The Lothrop farm will double in value,” Otis told his friends in the general store. And the same was predicted for other farms through the north end of the town and Livermore.

However, farmers were not altogether happy with the rail line’s construction. The train’s path would be right through the middle of many pastures, and farmers would have to remove fences or put in gates, which would not be popular with the Androscoggin R.R. engineers.

True to the prophecy of Mr. Otis, the Androscoggin R.R. was open to travel the following November. The equipment consisted of one small engine, two passenger cars, one mail car, six box cars and 12 platform cars. It ran irregularly through the winter.

In the summer of 1853, another locomotive was purchased and a local man, John Brooks, was hired to run it.

Those fences on farmers’ fields proved to be a point of contention. A work and supply train in the early phase of construction set out one day with Josiah Littlefield of Auburn running the engine. Littlefield was said to be a competent engineer, but was known to be “an ornery cuss.”

A first trip that day had been made through the fence gate on Solomon Lothrop’s field. Littlefield left the gate open, knowing he would be back soon.

According to McIlroy’s story, Littlefield proclaimed, “If Lothrop has put back his fence, I shan’t stop to take it away.” And as the train rounded a curve, there was the gate across the tracks.

At a 30-mph clip, the engine ran through, sending wood flying in all directions. A fence rail went over the smokestack, landing on the top of the second car, a witness said.

Another story of the early Androscoggin R.R. days took place in the extremely severe second winter. A train carrying two ladies and three gentlemen, after going 3 miles, got stuck in a snowdrift. After the engine had exhausted the supply of wood and water, a nearby farmhouse provided more wood. Water was brought from a track-side brook.

Stalled there in the woods, the passengers remained two days and one night. Shovelers got busy the second morning, and by 2 p.m. the train was able to run backward to Leeds Junction, and then it proceeded the next day to Livermore Falls.

Construction of the Androscoggin R.R. reached East Wilton in December 1858, and in 1860 the line reached Farmington. The railroad was not financially successful, and it went through foreclosures and other ownerships in the following years.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].