Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad

The original Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad was Maine two-foot gauge railroading at its peak: a 2 ft narrow gauge common carrier operating roughly 112 miles of track across Franklin County. Gardiner banker Josiah S. Maxcy won legislative approval in 1891 to consolidate the Sandy River Railroad and Phillips and Rangeley Railroad, and after years of common management the constituent lines formally merged as the SR&RL in January 1908. The railroad ran as a Maine Central subsidiary from 1912 until 1923, when unpaid bond interest — and a February 1923 roundhouse fire at Phillips that damaged eight of its thirteen operational locomotives — pushed it into receivership. Traffic, dominated by pulpwood, drained away to highway trucking; the last steam train left Rangeley in May 1931, the railroad was sold at auction to a scrap firm, service ended on July 2, 1935, and the remaining rails were lifted in 1936. The revival began in 1970, when railfans at the Phillips Historical Society organized to document the line and later formed a separate nonprofit under the historic railroad's name to preserve surviving equipment. That heritage railroad continues to operate today on the original SR&RL trackbed at Phillips.