History of Cape Ann Rail
Presented by the Jonathan Bayliss Society and the Sawyer Free Library
Saturday, November 14, 2026, 2:00-3:00 pm
Sawyer Free Library, Dale Avenue, Gloucester
Free and open to the public; advance registration required
Join us for an fascinating program about the development of rail on Cape Ann. Retired locomotive engineer Alan MacMillan – famous for reading poetry and providing weather updates to his passengers on the Rockport-North Station line – will illustrate his talk about the local history of freight and passenger service with slides from his extensive photograph collection.
MacMillan, who was introduced to locomotives as a young boy by his railroad-construction-engineer father, worked for 44 years on six New England railroads and currently serves on the Board of Massachusetts Bay Railroad Enthusiasts.
Gloucester writer Ken Riaf – whose plays include My Station in Life, Think of Me Tuesday, and Copy and Acknowledge - will read brief passages about rail from the Gloucesterman novels of Jonathan Bayliss (1926-2009), who in the early 1930s lived near the Rockport train station and was treated by an engineer to a locomotive ride on the turnaround loop.
Sign up here.