The P. & R., like the Sandy River, had kind of a Midas touch. Millions of cords of pulpwood and millions more feet of timber and logs rolled down the tortuous grades; sawmills were everywhere; boom towns, such as Sanders. Old photos show Sanders, ten miles up on the P. & R., with steam mills, stores, railroad buildings, boarding-houses and barns. Frontier prosperity. But today: well, if you pushed along the old grade you might find hidden ruins--a moss-covered foundation or a scrap of rusty boiler plate. Not a building left. Purposive branch lines wandered through the woods, like stray cats. I don’t know who used all the lumber but quantities of it rolled out over the narrow gauge during the next thirty years. [Illustration: (_Moody Photo_) Something novel in railroad tricks: a Grill Car. Rebuilt from a standard boxcar this Grill dispenses with hamburgers, ice-cream, and Pepsi-Cola, not only to the throng of Edaville guests but to Mr. Atwood’s hungry employees as well. ] Once they had seventeen engines working, and few went out again at night. Thirty-three men labored at the Farmington transfer loading freight from little cars into big ones. Two and sometimes three baby cars made one wide gauge load. I suspect that the same money was pretty much behind all these Franklin County roads. In 1908 the big Consolidation came off: the F. & M., P. & R., the Madrid, and the old Sandy River merged into the new Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes. Three years later the Eustis Railroad joined up too, giving the new S. R. & R. L. a total of 120 miles of line--logging branches and all. Seventeen locomotives and nearly four hundred cars, including Franklin County’s pride, the _Rangeley_. In 1911 the Maine Central scratched its chin reflectively, and bought the outfit, lock, stock, and ramrod. In some ways this was a good thing. The big road made some money, and they did a lot of improving such as heavier rail, new engines and cars, as well as kind of guiding the baby to complete maturity. That caboose you just saw on the work train was one of the cars they built. This parentage lasted eleven years. For some reason, in 1922, the Maine Central sold the jack-rabbit to a pair of local tycoons. These boys, a Kingfield lumber king and a Gardiner banker, owned it right through to the end, in 1935--June 29, to be exact. Maybe I fumbled by telling you about the Sandy River first. She was the grand climax to the others. A modern railroad, abbreviated down to brownie size. Regular engines with eight-wheel tenders. Parlor cars. Telegraph. Air brakes. And a super machine shop where engines could be completely taken down. Most impressive of all, perhaps, crews who talked railroad, lived railroad, and could defy any others to out-railroad them!