The winter of 1899 was rough everywhere. Ice floated into the Gulf of Mexico, the thermometer plummeted to two degrees below zero in Tallahassee, Fla., blizzards ravaged the East Coast.

By the end of February, everyone had had enough. But for a few unlucky passengers who boarded a train in Rangeley, Maine, on a Monday morning in March, winter’s woes were far from over. Snowstorm on top of snowstorm had plagued western Maine that winter.

“A considerable fall of snow the past week and an almost continuous high wind have combined to render impassable highways already in bad enough condition,” reported a Phillips correspondent for the Lewiston Evening Journal on March 23. Passengers on the Phillips and Rangeley Railroad discovered that not only were the highways impassable, but the railways as well.

Western Maine’s narrow gauge railroad system covered mountainous terrain connecting villages and lumber mills from Farmington to Carrabassett Valley and Rangeley. But even by western Maine standards, the line between Rangeley and Phillips was considered especially steep and curvy.

The train left Rangeley on time at 11 a.m. Three miles later it came to halt. In the first pass, wind had packed the snow solidly between the rails. Word went out for men with shovels, and a crew of 40 went to work while passengers waited. The snowdrift cleared, the train moved on with the shovel crew on board.

Snow blocked the line in numerous places along the route, and the trip became a series of small gains and long stops. Passengers found themselves trapped in the railway cars, far from roads or any other hallmarks of civilization, with no choice but to wait out the ride and hope that the next drift would not be as big as the last. No doubt some of the men joined the shovel crew rather than sit idly in a passenger car.

Midnight found them just beyond Redington, a small settlement which at least gave them some relief from the wilderness. Food was taken on board, so crew and passengers could finally eat after 13 long hours of tedious travel. The train inched on. As the sun came up, the travelers had managed to get as far as Johnson’s Ridge, just two miles from Phillips. Here was a drift bigger than any they had yet to see, 50 rods long and 20 feet high.

With Phillips nearly in sight, passengers left the train to make their way into town, either on foot or by sleigh. At mid-morning, a full day after leaving Rangeley, the travelers had finally completed their 28-mile journey. Weary and cold, they were treated to breakfast at the village hotel. Thirty men stayed behind on Johnson’s Ridge, and for 10 hours they shoveled snow to clear the tracks of the mammoth drift.

Bright and early at 7 a.m. the next day, a train left the Phillips station for a return trip, but it’s hard to believe anyone could have wanted to go back to Rangeley badly enough to board that morning’s narrow gauge passenger train.

Luann Yetter teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Additional research for this column by University of Maine at Farmington student David Farady.