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Margaret Chase Smith waves from a Bangor & Aroostook Railroad Engine on November 18, 1949.
Margaret Chase and her Skowhegan High School classmates gathered at the train station in Leeds Junction, Maine in 1916. They traveled by rail to Washington, DC for their senior class trip.
Skowhegan High School basketball team at the train station in Leeds Junction in 1916.
Trains replaced animal-based transportation for long distance travel. The railroad came to Skowhegan in 1856. It allowed townspeople to venture to other parts of the state and nation easier and faster than by horse. The Somerset & Kennebec Railroad eventually became part of Maine Central Railroad.
Fun Facts:
Tomas Savery patented the first steam engine in 1698 in England.
Another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen, invented an atmospheric steam engine in 1712.
In 1776 James Watt of Scotland improved on Newcomen's engine.
In 1830 Peter Cooper created the Tom Thumb locomotive, considered America's first steam engine.
Work on the Trans-Continental Railroad, which linked the coasts of the United States, was started in 1863 and completed in 1869. The new construction from the Midwest to the West Coast added 1912 miles of track. Beginning in 1870, rail passengers could travel from New York to California in seven days.
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