As work on the tracks of the railway continued, Clergue purchased a
10-ton locomotive Manchester Locomotive Works, the same company that
had built the locomotive for the Mount Washington Cog Railway a
several years previously.
Transporting the 20,000-pound locomotive from New Hampshire to Eagle
Lake would prove to be a real challenge , as the steamship originally
intended to transport the locomotive proved to be to small, and
Clergue was forced to charter the schooner Stella Lee to transport
the locomotive from Manchester to Mount Desert Island. The Stella Lee
reached Hamor’s Wharf in Eden on Wednesday, April 18th, almost a week
after its departure from Manchester. A team of 14 horses were used to
drag the weighty locomotive from Bridge Street, Then called Bar Street,
to the north shore of Eagle Lake. The locomotive averaged less then a
mile per day, arriving on April 21st. the final leg of the journey, the 1.5 miles
across Eagle Lake to the base of Green Mountain, had to be delayed until a
sufficient amount of ice could be removed from the lake to allow the
locomotive to be ferried across.
