Next Stop, Edaville!

When a group of second graders visited Jack Flagg's Webster Street business to learn more about trains, none of them had heard of Edaville Railroad.

That's something Flagg, a lifelong Marshfield resident who plans to re-open the Carver park, hopes to change.

"Everybody I've met is thrilled Edaville is going to open again," Flagg, owner of John Flagg construction, said. "We were very sad to see it leave four years ago."

While the trains stopped running full-time through the Carver cranberry bogs in 1991, Flagg, along with partners Paul Hallet of Nottingham, N.H., and Richard Knight of Rockport, have formed South Carver Rail, Inc., aimed at reviving the now-defunct Edaville.

Hallet and Knight contacted Flagg, a collector of train memorabilia, after learning he bought and sold railroad equipment and had purchased much of the original Edaville relics and trains in January from a New Hampshire transportation museum. Those items are now headed back towards their original home.

The South Shore landmark was established more than 50 years ago by the Ellis D. Atwood family, who gained much of Edaville's popularity through lavish Christmas displays.

The Atwood family ran Edaville until selling it to Nelson Blount in the late 1960's. Blount's estate sold the railroad to Fred Richardson, who sold it to George Bartholomew in 1970.

Bartholomew operated Edaville until he sold it, lock, stock, and barrel, in 1992. Bartholomew wound up in court over a dispute with landlords Dave and Roy Eldridge, Atwood's nephew's, who inherited the property in 1983.

Edaville Entertainment Corporation, a firm who tried to revive the attraction in 1996, also wound up in court over a lease dispute with Dave and Roy Eldridge.

The Atwoods still own the hundreds of acres of land surrounding the five and a half miles, two foot gauge train track. South Carver Rail plans on leasing only the track, and running the original steam trains through the picturesque countryside.

"The key to Edaville is steam engines and the original equipment cars," Flagg said. South Carver Rail, Inc. is in the process of securing the original equipment either by purchasing it or leasing it, Flagg said. While many of the original trains and track was bought by the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad, the Maine company has agreed to lease some of it back.

And while the company plans to modernize a few aspects of Edaville, most features, especially the trains, will remain much the same as they were when the park first opened its doors over fifty years ago.

"We're going to try to reclaim Edaville as a family park. It's not going to become a honky-tonk amusement park," Flagg said.

Flagg hopes to capitalize on Edaville's reputation to win back customers. The company plans to have Edaville up and running in time for Memorial Day, 1998.

"It hasn't been closed so long it's lost it's name," Flagg said. When the second graders came to visit, it was the first year the children had not heard of Edaville, he said.

An unpublicized run last Columbus day weekend with two completely steam-run trains drew more than 8,000 people in three days to Edaville, Flagg said.

The re-opening also wouldn't be possible without hundreds of volunteers putting in thousands of hours working on the track, scraping and painting cars, repairing and greasing equipment, and generally sprucing up the place, Flagg said.

"It's a tremendous amount of work and money and it wouldn't be possible without the tremendous numbers of volunteers who love Edaville," Flagg said. He received a call last week from a gentleman in Rexhame who wanted to donate heavy tools to the machine shop.

"They love Edaville and they love to go down there and work on it," Flagg said. "Edaville probably would not succeed without them."