12/31/2006
A great season finale

    I was pleasantly surprised to see the parking lot at least half full all the time I was there. It seemed like in the previous years, visitor count for the last Sunday of the season would be way down. But everybody I spoke with seemed to agree: the 2006 Christmas Festival was the best one for Brenda and Rob. The mild weather probably had something to do with it; although I still would prefer to see a blanket of snow on the ground. I just looked at last year's pictures and they all had that special element that just yelled out: It's Christmas!
    Always looking for railroad related changes at Edaville I found a new one for me: the generator car on the extra train. The running train had the "traditional" flatcar with the generator mounted on it but Edaville's second flatcar is now at Beaver Brook. So the shop crew used one of the new trucks and mounted the generator on it. It looks like a perfect fit.
    Too bad another season ended and the railroad will hibernate for almost 6 months. But I will be back next summer, always hoping to see steam running again. See you then.

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11/06/2006
A glimpse of Christmas

    The gates at Edaville opened for a special Christmas Preview Night this evening. TV Channel 5 was filming a commercial for Edaville and the invited guests were used as stand-ins to give life to the park. Our train passed the camera crew and stopped to let them board to shoot a few scenes from the moving train. Then we stopped again near the old coal pile to drop the camera crew off and finally we were on the way around the loop. Wow, it seemed like the displays along the road between the car shop and the Atwood whistle post never ended. Peacedale is looking great after a "going over" for the holidays and even the church looks level now, something that had been bothering me for a long time. Edaville's crew has been busy and did a great job setting up the lights since the Cranberry Harvest. They even managed to add more lights and are now up to about 7,000,000 bulbs! The few remaining displays should be lit by the time Edaville opens this coming Friday.
    Even the "Trademark View" of Edaville at Christmas seems to change every year a little bit. Today mother nature added her special touch: we had an almost full moon reflecting off Swan Pond and competing with the lights.
    Brenda and Rob have done an outstanding job with their crew to get the place prepared for their Holiday Festival of lights, come and enjoy it.

10/09/2006
What a great Cranberry Harvest

    This was one of the nicer cranberry Harvests that I attended at Edaville in the last 30 years. The only improvement would have been a longer train ride to enjoy the fall colors from the train for a longer time. Edaville was running an extra long train consisting of almost all of their enclosed cars pulled by diesel #2 rather than 2 short trains. There was no schedule, trains ran on demand and the demand was definitely there. The trains were “comfortably full” as our engineer Dave put it and that put smiles on everybody’s faces: the visitors had a little room in the cars, management was making the needed money, and it was worth it for the vendors to be there. Well, maybe money was not everything; one of them remarked to me, “I don’t care if anybody buys anything; I am just sitting here enjoying the sun!” I on the other hand have to confess that I already did some Christmas shopping.
     But I really did come for the train and the cranberries and I wasn't disappointed. They were loading berries from the bog across the track from Swan Pond. Quite a few visitors took the opportunity for a close-up view of the operation and walked out to the site.
     I had another educational view of cranberry harvesting when I first arrived: the use of a helicopter. When I got out of the car I heard the roar of a chopper from the bog next to the parking lot and that aroused my curiosity. I walked over and saw the chopper lifting crates of cranberries from various parts of the bog and moving them out to the road for pickup. We sure have come a long way over the past 100 years when men with wheelbarrows on planks hauled barrels of berries to the waiting teams of horses.
     In the gift shop I found a "new" postcard for my collection: the Cranberry Harvest card from 1997 has been reprinted with a different number and a watermark image on the back. Look for it during your next visit to Edaville.

06/10/2006
Good Bye Dave

     The 2006 season for Edaville unofficially opened today with an extraordinary event: about 50 of Dave Barnes' old friends had gathered to say good bye to him. The event was organized by Dave's friend Roy and began with a gathering in the Freight House Cafè. After that a special train with Fred Richardson at the throttle took us up the old mainline branch to the High Dike where we stopped. Roy entered a rowboat and sprinkled Dave’s ashes into the reservoir while Dave’s friend Joe led us in the committal prayer. The train backed into the new loop and we continued our trip back to the station. Brenda, with the help of the cafeteria staff, offered us a light lunch which we all enjoyed. The gathering concluded with several of Dave’s old friends sharing some of their fond memories of him with the rest of us.
     Before leaving for home we spent some time looking over the picture board that showed Dave during various times of his life and even included his Portable Engineers License Number 0001. The story of that license was told in the Summer 2003 issue of the Whistle. Bruce Wilson had a velocipede on display that he purchased from Dave years ago. It had started life as a standard gauge vehicle and Dave had converted it to a 2-foot machine for his own use.
     Today’s event once again drove home the point that Edaville is a special place because of its people. Management provided the place and equipment for our gathering and the employees volunteered their time to remember one of their own in this special way. Thank you, Edaville. And may you, Dave, rest in peace.

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