Memories of Trains

Seaview Railroad Station.

Sometime in the fall or winter of 1938 I heard the train whistle blow just after I was put to bed. I went to the window and lifted the green shade and looked across the field beside the Sea View railroad station. I could see the lights of the passenger train going south. The lights were blinking on and off. Later in life did I realize the lights were not blinking, the trees along the side of the tracks made them appear to blink!

The trains did not stop at this station anymore and it was boarded up. The Nicholson family lived in the apartment above the station, and Sherman was my friend, 12 years my elder. Sherman showed me how to put coins on the tracks and have them flattened by the train! This must have happened early 1939 -- I was 5. My mom gave me 2 pennies and let me go with "Sherm" to the tracks. He placed a nickel on and I put my pennies down. 

I never heard or saw the train that flattened my pennies. The next day we went to the place where we put the coins and found nothing! Sherm searched up and down and finally found his nickel and one of my pennies. They were flat! I kept that flat oval shaped penny for years.

The trains were discontinued that year. The tracks were pulled up in 1940/41. A huge crane on a flat car would lift a length of track, swing around to a flat car behind it, and lower it down. Two men would unhitch it then scramble down to hitch up another. A small "donkey " locomotive would haul it off, filled. This was quite of an event for a 6-year-old.

The last train to pass through, at the Marshfield Station.

by Ray Freden

Originally published in the Marshfield Mariner, April 9, 2008