common / backtracks
Sugarloaf’s History: The Railroad
(Editor’s note: this story is taken from the Vol. 10, #1, 1976 issue of the Sugarloaf Irregular (Ski Show Edition) and is reprinted here in its entirety. ©The Original Irregular)
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The system interfaced with the Maine Central’s broad gauge tracks at the Farmington station. From there it went north; splitting at Strong (to the west of New Vineyard, as you drive north to Kingfield on Route 27), with one branch following the Sandy River through Phillips to Rangeley, which you can see from the top of Sugarloaf, and the other branch going north through Kingfield and Carrabassett to end at Bigelow Station, not more than a stone’s throw from where Sugarloaf’s access road branches off the main highway.
The Bigelow stationhouse still stands, though the mills surrounding it have fallen down. The train bed remains though, and is used today as a ski touring trail, which comes out in Carrabassett by the Red Stallion. Just across the river from Carrabassett’s Valley Crossing are old concrete footings that once supported a sawmill, too. The millpond in Kingfield was once lined with several mills. If you walk in the woods around Bigelow Station or Carrabassett, you can find old bottles and bits of things that date from the first part of this century.
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