Ghost Trains of the Allagash: Abandoned Locomotives in Maine

On the narrow neck of land between Eagle Lake and Chamberlain Lake, two steam locomotives stand side by side on a short piece of track. They have not run since 1933. There is no road to them, no gift shop, no interpretive center and no attendant. They sit inside the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, and the Bureau of Parks and Lands calls the ground they stand on the Tramway Historic District, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and the only property inside the Waterway with that designation.

Read the first line again, because a lot of what is written about this place gets it wrong. There is no trailhead, no parking area a few miles past the Chamberlain Bridge ranger station, and no sign pointing off a logging road to the trains. Everything below comes from the two organizations that run the ground: the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, which administers the Waterway, and North Maine Woods, which runs the gates you pass to reach it.

The History

Three things happened on this neck of land, and they are easy to confuse.

The tramway, 1902. Loggers were working the Eagle and Churchill Lake country, but the lock dam into Chamberlain Lake was a bottleneck. In 1901 Fred P. Dow of Bangor surveyed a crossing of the narrow neck between Eagle and Chamberlain, and construction began in March 1902. The machine was a 6,000-foot continuous steel cable in a loop, 1 1/3 inches thick, with steel trucks hung from it every ten feet on two levels of track. Loaded trucks crossed on the upper level and dumped their logs into Chamberlain Lake over a nine-foot sprocket wheel; empties returned upside down on the lower level. A Westinghouse compound steam engine, fed by two wood-fired boilers, drove it. In a 16-hour day it could move an average of half a million board feet. It ran about six years and carried roughly 100 million board feet before the Lombard steam log hauler, invented in 1907 by Alvin O. Lombard of Springfield, Maine, made it unnecessary.

The railroad, 1926 to 1927. By the 1920s the cut had shifted to pulpwood and the East Branch Penobscot route was awkward, so the Great Northern Paper Company arranged for a railroad running from the Eagle Lake end of the tramway across Allagash Stream and south to Umbazooksus Lake, which drains to Chesuncook Lake and the West Branch of the Penobscot. The work was done by Edouard “King” Lacroix of the Madawaska Company. During the winter of 1926 and 1927, Lombard tractors hauled every part of it roughly 50 miles overland from Lac Frontiere in Quebec, then across Churchill Lake to the shore of Eagle Lake: a 1,500-foot trestle, rails, loaders, two gas-powered switchers, sixty cars, and the two locomotives, each about a hundred tons. Great Northern bought Lacroix’s operation early in 1927 and the line made its first successful trip on June 1, 1927 as the Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad.

The run, 1927 to 1933. The line to Umbazooksus was 13 miles. Great Northern soon extended it five miles more to Chesuncook Lake, a section called the Chesuncook and Chamberlain Lake Railroad, giving 18 miles of track with no junction to anywhere. The National Register nomination records that the “Pulpwood Express” ran several trips a day in summers only, with 10 to 12 cars per train, and that an average work week moved 6,500 cords. Loading was done by two conveyors that lifted logs 25 feet; a cord went from lake to car in about 90 seconds and a 12-cord car filled in 18 minutes. The state’s own map says the two engines “made the round trip between the lakes every three hours.”

The line stopped in 1933. The engines were pushed into a shed at the Eagle Lake terminal and left. Aerial photographs from 1966 show the shed was the only structure still standing at the railroad site when the Allagash Wilderness Waterway was created. On April 9, 1969, while the land still belonged to the Seven Islands Land Company, the Maine Forest Service burned the shed by mistake, damaging the wooden parts of the locomotives including the cabs. The remaining log cars were burned too, leaving little but their trucks.

The Locomotives

• Number 1: a 4-6-0, built June 1897 at the Schenectady Locomotive Works and stamped 4552. The 1979 National Register nomination says the six wheeler was acquired from the Maine Central in 1926.
• Number 2: a 2-8-0, built December 1901 at the Brooks Locomotive Works and stamped 4062. The nomination says the eight wheeler came from the New York Central shortly after Number 1; the Bureau of Parks and Lands dates Great Northern’s purchase of Number 2 to 1928 and calls it the main engine for hauling pulp cars from 1928 to 1933.

Both were built to burn coal and were converted to oil because of the fire risk from cinders. Both have been stripped: the 1979 nomination says “treasure hunters” removed virtually every portable fitting, though the external shape of each engine is largely unchanged.

They have also been worked on. In 1995 the boiler jackets were taken off both engines so that the asbestos around the boilers could be removed, which is why they look skinned. Since then Waterway staff and volunteers have run work parties to level the locomotives, one of which had been settling into the ground at a dangerous angle, and to set them on a gravel bed and new track.

Getting There

There is no road to the locomotives. Maine law fixes where you may drive to the edge of the water on this stretch of the Waterway, and the two nearest points are Chamberlain Thoroughfare Bridge, shown on maps as Chamberlain Bridge, at 46.170889, -69.208944, and Churchill Dam to the north. The Bureau of Parks and Lands mileage chart puts the Tramway 16 miles from Chamberlain Bridge and 13 miles from Churchill Dam. Either way the last leg is on the water. Chamberlain Bridge is the usual choice from Millinocket.

The drive to the water

1. Start: Millinocket is the usual jumping-off point. The Bureau of Parks and Lands map labels the Telos Road out of the Chamberlain Bridge junction “To Millinocket and Greenville.”
2. Gate: the Telos checkpoint, not Six Mile. North Maine Woods gives Telos as “From the Golden Road, take the Telos Road approximately 14 miles to arrive at the Telos Checkpoint,” open 6:00am to 9:00pm daily. Six Mile is a real checkpoint but it sits six miles west of Ashland on the Realty Road, on the far side of the North Maine Woods, and has nothing to do with this trip.
3. Fees: day use is charged per person: $13 Maine resident, $18 non-resident, free under 18 and free at 70 and over. Cash and check only. Every visitor logs in and logs out at a checkpoint on each visit.
4. Registration: everyone entering the Waterway must register, at the first North Maine Woods checkpoint or with the first Waterway ranger they meet. Ranger stations are at Chamberlain Bridge, Churchill Dam, Umsaskis and Michaud Farm.
5. Road conditions: these are private logging roads. North Maine Woods puts it in capitals: “TRUCKS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY.” Drive slowly, pull well off when you stop, keep your lights on, and carry a full-size spare. Nobody publishes an official driving time from Millinocket, so treat any figure you see as a guess and give yourself enough margin to clear the gate before 9:00pm.

The trip on the water

The Bureau of Parks and Lands mileage chart gives Chamberlain Bridge to Lock Dam, 10 miles, and Lock Dam to the Tramway, 6 miles. That is 16 miles of water: the length of Chamberlain Lake, then through Lock Dam and up Eagle Lake. Chamberlain Bridge has a parking area, a hand-carry canoe access and a trailerable boat launch.

Motor rules shape the trip. Conventional motorboats are confined to Telos and Chamberlain Lakes below Lock Dam, and even there personal watercraft, hovercraft, airboats, racing boats and pontoon boats are banned. From where Lock Dam Stream enters Eagle Lake and north, only canoes and kayaks are allowed, with no motor or a motor of no more than 10 horsepower. So the last six miles are a paddle. The alternative is to come up Chamberlain Lake to the arm below the neck and walk across on the Tramway Trail, which BPL notes doubles as a portage.

There is a closer put-in at Indian Stream in T7 R12, a legislated access point with parking and a 0.2-mile carry down to the water. It shortens the boat leg but does not remove it, and it is a hand carry, not a ramp.

Paddlers running the full Allagash pass the site anyway. The Tramway is one of the waypoints on the state’s mileage chart, 6 miles below Lock Dam and 13 miles above Churchill Dam, and Telos Landing to Chamberlain Bridge adds another 5 for anyone starting further up.

The Tramway Trail

• Distance: the Bureau of Parks and Lands lists the Tramway Trail at 0.6 miles, so about 1.2 miles there and back. It runs shore to shore across the neck, and BPL maintains it as one of the Waterway’s authorized foot trails. Arriving on the Eagle Lake side you are already at the locomotives; arriving on the Chamberlain side you walk the length of it.
• What it is: the historic district is a strip 3,000 feet long and 1,000 feet wide running between the two lakes, with the tramway grade down the middle. The trail runs beside it. A Boy Scout crew first cut a path parallel to the tramway, about twenty feet to one side, and it has served as both a portage and a walking route since.
• What you pass: the cable and its steel trucks, now lying on the ground and partly buried where the wooden ties rotted away, and at the Chamberlain end the remains of the drive machinery, two large steam boilers, the two-cylinder engine, the belt wheel and the nine-foot sprocket wheel.
• The locomotives: the 1979 nomination puts them fifty feet east of the Eagle Lake end of the tramway, in a small clearing, resting parallel to one another.
• Terrain: low and wet in places. Expect mud.

Warning: the engines are old, stripped and structurally uncertain, and they are protected historic artifacts on state land. Look, photograph, and keep off them.

Planning Your Trip

• Season: ice out on the Waterway is in early or mid-May, and the state says canoe trips should not be attempted before May 15. Black fly season starts about June 1 and eases off in the first part of July. Firearms are not allowed in the Restricted Zone from May 1 to September 30.
• Winter: the Waterway is open year round but the state calls winter travel here “for only the most skilled and hardy.” Plowing varies year to year with logging, snowmobiles do most of the moving, and BPL notes that Chamberlain Thoroughfare is generally the most reliable motor vehicle access point in winter. Designated snowmobile access points on Chamberlain Lake include Chamberlain Thoroughfare, Mud Pond Carry, McNally Brook, the trail to Nugent’s Camps, Upper Crows Nest and Lock Dam.
• Fees: the North Maine Woods day use fee above, plus Waterway camping at $6.54 per person per night for residents and $13.08 for non-residents, tax included, free under 10. Camping is only permitted at the authorized Waterway campsites.
• Facilities: none at the locomotives. Each Waterway campsite has a table, tarp poles, a fireplace and a shared outhouse, and every one of them is reached by water. Fires only in the fireplaces provided.
• Group size: strictly limited to 12 people on the Waterway, with all gear in one campsite cell.
• Connectivity: the state’s own guide says internet and cell phone coverage are nonexistent. Download maps before you leave pavement.
• What to bring: bug spray, boots you do not mind soaking, a paper map, a compass, water and food, and something to signal with. There is no public transport and no help nearby.

Nearby

• Allagash Wilderness Waterway: the trains sit inside it. Ninety-two miles of lakes, ponds, rivers and streams, established by the Maine Legislature in 1966 and named the first state-administered component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System in 1970.
• Lock Dam: formally Chamberlain Lake Dam, built in 1841 to reverse the flow of Chamberlain and Telos Lakes into the East Branch of the Penobscot. Ten miles up the lake from Chamberlain Bridge and six short of the Tramway.
• The trestle: the railroad crossed the northwest arm of Chamberlain Lake on a 1,500-foot trestle, the single most substantial structure of the operation. Only a few remains are still visible, and the state map marks the spot.
• Chamberlain Farm: one of the supply farms the state names as significant on the Waterway, alongside Churchill Depot, Harvey Farm, Michaud Farm and the Moir Farm. Water access.
• Churchill Depot: headquarters of Lacroix’s Allagash operations in the 1920s. Its boarding house and storehouse were listed on the National Register in 2019.
• Chesuncook Village: a National Register historic district since 1973, reached by boat or a long drive.
• Mount Katahdin: visible from stretches of the Golden Road on the way in and out.

The Photography

The site is genuinely photogenic, and the light is whatever the day gives you. Carry a wide lens for the two engines in the clearing and something longer for detail: rusted fittings, the exposed boilers where the jackets were stripped in 1995, the cable and trucks lying in the moss along the tramway grade, the sprocket wheel and boilers at the Chamberlain end, and the trestle remains out on the arm. Shoot from the ground rather than from the machinery.

Why This Matters

Before tourism, before recreation, the North Woods were an industrial landscape. Millions of cords moved down these rivers and rails to mills that employed thousands, and the engineering people improvised out here was strange and ambitious: a cable tramway hauling half a million board feet a day across a neck of land, then a junctionless railway hauled in over the ice from Quebec, run for six summers and left where it stopped. In the Bureau of Parks and Lands’ words, when the railroad stopped operating “both locomotives were relatively obsolete and not worth the cost of transporting them back out of the Allagash area.”

Respecting the Site

These are irreplaceable artifacts on public land, inside a National Register historic district.

• Take nothing. The 1979 nomination already recorded that souvenir hunters had removed virtually every portable fitting. Whatever is left is what remains of the record.
• Do not climb on them. The metal is old, sharp and unsound, the cabs were damaged by the 1969 fire, and volunteers have spent years stabilizing these engines.
• Pack out everything, including litter left by others.
• Stay on the trail across the neck. The tramway remains are lying on the ground beside it and are easily damaged.

Planning an Extended Trip

The locomotives are not a day trip. Realistic shapes for the visit:

As part of an Allagash trip. Most people who see the trains see them from a canoe, on the way down the Waterway from Chamberlain Bridge toward Churchill Dam and beyond.

As a boat trip from Chamberlain Bridge. Drive in through the Telos checkpoint, launch at Chamberlain Bridge, run up the lake, walk the Tramway Trail, and camp at an authorized Waterway campsite rather than trying to do the whole thing between gate opening and gate closing.

Combining attractions. Baxter State Park and the Golden Road are on the way in from Millinocket, and Chesuncook Village gives the wider context for how this country was worked.

Final Thoughts

The payoff is two rusting locomotives in a clearing, a cable lying in the moss, and a set of boilers and a nine-foot sprocket wheel going back to the forest at the far end of the neck. Getting there costs a long gravel drive and a long stretch of open water. For anyone drawn to industrial history or to genuinely remote country, that is the point.