Today I've got quite the adventure for you guys. I'm in the northern woods of
Maine at abandoned locomotives.
Kind of.
I just bought some maps and if you're wondering, "why did you wait until the day that
you're going to check out the locomotives to buy some maps?" and I know
where I'm going but I just wanted a more detailed map of where I'm going and
that's why I bought some maps. It's always good to have paper maps instead
of just on your phone, fun fact. Right now this is where we are.
Somewhere in here allegedly the abandoned locomotives
reside and if you're wondering, "Dylan, why you dressed like such a silly goose
wearing long sleeve shirt and boots and long pants in the middle of the summer
whenever it's about 97 degrees?" and that's because there's a bunch of
skeeters and I don't like skeeters and I don't want to get all bit by the
skeeters. So that's why.
It's about a two hour drive from
Millinocket to get there and 90% of that driving is done on these logging roads.
We got a ways to go on these dirt roads.
We just pulled up to a checkpoint in Allagash. In order to continue on this
road you got to pay a few bucks to help maintain the wilderness.
You have to like check in and then check out whenever you leave so they know that
nobody's gotten loss up here.
I'm doing that. Take a little survey of the map for a second.
We found the road to take us there and it's working. This roads pretty rough I
mean I'm averaging probably like 10 miles an hour because there's some
pretty gnarly potholes on this road and
oh here's some more. A little bit of water.
We've come literally to the end of the road.
The hike has begun. Hopefully it won't take more than half
an hour maybe an hour to get to these trains here. They're not trains, they're
locomotives. Some people get sensitive about that stuff.
Got some people moose tracks here, got some here. There's a few back there going this
way. The ground starts to tighten up so like they start to disappear but that's
pretty big. I've got large hands so pretty cool though.
Those are train tracks, those are train tracks right there. Look at that.
As you can see, we've made it to the tracks. If you're wondering why I've got
this funny thing on my head it's because the bugs were really annoying me and
this drastically cut down the annoyance. Look at this. This is where you would
switch the tracks I assume. Look at these tracks.
Great, yeah look right here. You have two sets of tracks here going down there. So
this sign here is where you manually switch the tracks for the locomotives to
run on. This is really cool.
We're walking pretty much right along these tracks here and it looks like I
mean the woods have opened up quite a bit and we're not in the forest anymore
but it looks like there's a clear and open up ahead and I feel like that's
probably where the locomotives are.
There's the clearing. There they are. There's the trains, the locomotives.
Whoa, check that out. It's how they transfer the logs.
Got those spikes on them to hold on to the log and they'd roll them all the way
down. Wow. These aren't the locomotives. That looks like some sort of huge
combustion chamber. These are piston heads right here. Looks
like there used to be something on top of there that would run this whole thing
maybe that was like a motor. Yeah look, this would spin and that would crank up
the wire which would then pull the logs this direction. This is all the way back
from the early 1900s that this stuff was made. An old steam engine which pulled
the logs all the way from Eagle Lake which is north of us about 3,000 feet
all the way down to here which is Chamberlain Lake which is right behind
me here to the south of us.
Whoa. Here's the locomotives, check those out.
It's crazy. Left here from the early 19th century early 1900's. I guess that's the 20th
century isn't it? This area of northern Maine was supplying 20% of the U.S.
paper in wood. The way they used to transport the wood back in the late
1800's early 1900's is they would use the lakes and rivers like a highway and
they'd float the logs down through them. They had a problem because these rivers
right here run north but they need the wood to go south so what they did was
they created this railroad to bring the lumber south into the nearby towns and
then whenever the Great Depression rolled around it basically put the whole
lumber business out of business. It was more cost-effective to just leave these
locomotives and all these tracks and stuff here then to come and get them out.
Now they're a piece of history in the woods here. Wow, pretty insane.
Whoa look at this thing. Wow that's like the furnace. Throw your wood in there
your coal in there or whatever to burn to get this thing moving.
It was quite the adventure to get here today between the multiple hour drive on
the logging roads to then a little over an hour of a hike to get in here. These
locomotives are just incredible preserved so well. They're such a perfect
representation of the time of the logging industry. I don't know what to say
it's just really amazing here. If you guys are ever in northern Maine and you guys
have the energy to make it out here I highly recommend it. It's very cool. Very
peaceful. The hike here is just as amazing as seeing the locomotives and
the tracks and everything. The hike here is incredible through the woods. Really
really highly recommend coming to check this stuff out. I'm going to end
this one here because I've got an hour hike back to the van and then I've got a
couple hour drive and then I'm going to camp somewhere so until next time you
guys stay rad.
We got a storm coming. Oh, we're gonna get caught
in the rain, we're gonna get caught in the rain, gonna get wet, gonna get wet!