Sumner Heights and Hazelwood Valley Railroad

One of the cars used on this road was a platform, about 2 feet (0.61 m) wide and 5 feet (1.5 m) long, and the diameter of the wheels was 5 inches (130 mm).^[2] The weights of the cars were 100 and 150 pounds (45 and 68 kg), carrying more than six times their own weight, at a speed of 25 miles per hour (40 km/h). The fastest time made was 45 seconds, including starting and stopping.^[1]

It would seem, at first sight, that the whole affair was a mere boy’s plaything, and a dangerous one at that; but a test of its capacity undeceived the proprietor of such hasty judgment. It would appear, to begin with, that the wheels of the car, with their small flanges, would be sure to jump the track at every curve, but by a peculiarity in the way of connecting them with the car (an invention of Mr. Mansfield) they follow the track in every wind and curve as surely as if they were much larger in diameter and had a corresponding depth of flange. Four heavy men could ride in the car, which descended by gravitation, and was under complete brake control. Those who have ridden upon it were surprised at the absence of oscillation.^[2]

George Mansfield subsequently promoted the two-foot gauge. He persuaded the citizens of Billerica in eastern Massachusetts of the economies of a two-foot line, and became general manager of the Billerica and Bedford Railroad when it was chartered in 1876 and built beginning in May 1877. George Mansfield w as obsessed with narrow gauge and reducing what he called "oscillation," a phenomenon which is colloquially called harmonic rock or rock and roll. He did this by placing rail joints parallel to one another. A few years later Mansfield lifted the rails of the Billerica and Bedford Railroad and moved them and the rolling stock to Maine, where it became the Sandy River Railroad and later merged into the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad. Mansfield's influence caused the construction of nearly a dozen two-foot–gauge railroads in the state of Maine.