The only steam powered train in Massachusetts is the 2-foot gauge excursion train at the Edaville USA theme park, formerly known as Edaville Railroad. This operation was founded back in 1941, by a Massachusetts cranberry plantation owner named Ellis D. Atwood. This gentleman was a fan of the Maine 2-foot gauge railroads and when those lines went bankrupt, he purchased the rolling stock from three of them, with the intent of putting the trains to work in his network of cranberry bogs. He built a 5 1/2 mile railroad around a reservoir used to service the bogs and for a while, the line did indeed serve his cranberry business. As time went on however, public interest in riding Mr. Atwood's trains grew, and the place eventually morphed into a tourist railroad that operated nearly all of the surviving Maine 2-foot equipment the better part of the next 50 years. The place became famous throughout New England for its fabulous displays of Christmas lights and night trains. Alas, in the early 1990s, the facility had fallen on hard times. Eventually, it closed and all of the historic 2-foot equipment was repatriated to Maine.
In the years since, at least a couple of owners have tried to revitalize Edaville with varying degrees of success. After one failure, the property was nearly subdivided and sold off. Fortunately, Edaville still lives on as Edaville USA. The facility is a theme-park for kids now, but about 2 miles of the railroad has been preserved, and the current owners have found a couple of small steam engines to power the excursion trains. The locomotive pictured here is an English Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0, which has been "Americanized" and is roughly the size of the larger Maine locomotives that used to run here. This engine carries the number 21 and is nick-named "Anne Elizabeth". She is pictured here rounding an ice-covered pond during Edaville's annual Christmas Festival of Lights.
