Flying Yankee Restoration Group President Brian McCarthy says the refitted streamliner will serve as a rolling classroom and museum (Photo: David Lazar)

LINCOLN – Charlie Downing was 17 and fresh from a day at the circus when he handed the Boston station agent his $2.50 and boarded a bullet headed for Portsmouth.

More than 70 years later, it is a ride and a memory that never fades.

“From the moment it first came down the tracks, I fell in love with it,” he says. “I’d never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like it since. You just marveled at the quietness. It was so streamlined, and so comfortable. It really had the power to fascinate you. I hated to get off in Portsmouth! They’ve got some great trains today that have come along… But they’re not the Flying Yankee.”

That was 1936. Fast forward nearly three quarters of a century and the bullet that sparked Downing’s imagination and that of thousands of travelers and sketchpad-wielding schoolchildren is being recalibrated and readied for a re-launch.

Indeed, there is an air of World’s Fair anticipation as you approach the mysterious shrouded figure that today towers over the Hobo railyard in this mountain community.

For eleven years, a team of dedicated residents and enthusiasts has toiled away in partnership with the state to bring back to life one of 20th century America’s most striking forms and technological expressions. After thousands of hours – including one local quilter’s hand-restoration of all 132 plush purple seats – the Flying Yankee Restoration Group is finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

“We know the Flying Yankee had the power to inspire us a generation ago,” says Carl Lindblade, a North Conway resident and restoration group board member. “We believe it has the capacity to inspire generations ahead.”

To unzip the massive silver vinyl flap and cross the shadowed threshold is to set foot in a different era and view a masterpiece in every sense.

It has been 51 years since the Flying Yankee chugged its final ‘flight’ as the train of its age and more than a dozen since Storyland founder and Granite State icon Bob Morrell rescued it from a muddy demise in a Massachusetts railyard. Morrell would plug $1 million of his own money to bring the Yankee back to New Hampshire and donate it to the state for restoration as a rolling classroom.

Introduced in 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Flying Yankee arrived at a time when trains were in decline. The Philadelphia-based Budd Company, the leading manufacturer of stainless steel streamliners, would produce three ultra-lightweight trains that for the first time in history used a ‘hybrid’ diesel-electric engine. The result was a train that took on the form of a bullet, both in appearance and velocity; a train capable of traveling at 112 miles per hour, or 35-plus mph faster than its steam-powered counterparts, all the while offering unprecedented comfort. It was the first ever to offer air conditioning and electric heat and to serve hot meals to travelers on trays at their seats. Operated by the Boston-and-Maine line, the Flying Yankee was capable of making its Portland-to-Boston run 51 minutes faster than the modern day Downeaster.

“Seeing this train roaring through your town was like driving a Model T and then, all of a sudden, seeing a ’Vette coming through,” says Brian McCarthy, the restoration group’s president. “It was bold. It was fast. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen. Like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was more than just a train. It helped give people a sense of hope that the country was moving forward.”

More than 10,000 packed the streets of Nashua (and 20,000 down in Boston) to witness the Yankee’s launch in 1935 as it embarked on a show tour around the region. For the next 22 years, and more than 2.75 million track miles, the Flying Yankee wowed riders, transitioning from a commuter workhorse to an excursion train – the Mountaineer, traveling through Conway and Crawford Notch – when its 132-seat capacity proved too small to meet daily demand. The Yankee would perform its final service shuttling travelers between Boston and New York as the Minuteman. President Eisenhower’s National Defense Highway Act, which jumpstarted construction of the Federal Interstate Highway System, accelerated its retirement in 1957.

“We have oral histories of kids who remembered taking the train to Boston with their fathers to go to the Boston Garden or to Fenway Park,” Lindblade says. “They couldn’t remember what happened at the game, but they could tell you everything about that ride on the Flying Yankee – where they sat, what they ate, how sleek and quiet and modern it was for its time. What we remember are the exceptions in our lives and that is precisely what this train created.”

More than 10,000 spectators lined the streets of Nashua in 1935 to witness the launch of the Flying Yankee. (Photo courtesy of the Flying Yankee Restoration Group).

It was those exceptions Bob Morrell understood when he spied the Yankee, up to its haunches in mud and neglect in a Carver, Mass., railyard. Left for dead, its once stately interior had become a rusted-out nest for squirrels and mice, its generator and engine inoperable.

“Bob Morrell had a vision, he wanted to see it done, and he had the means to do it,” says Dick Hamilton, chairman of the restoration group. “He knew its history and dreamed of it being an icon for the state of New Hampshire, both as a tourist attraction and a classroom. We are maintaining that dream.”

As with any project of this magnitude and devotion, the restoration remains a work in progress.

A train that cost $285,000 to build in 1935 is costing an estimated $3.5 million to restore. With its shiny exterior almost back to original specs, wheel trucks ready for installation, and its middle passenger car fully returned to plush-seated, green-carpeted opulence, McCarthy estimates another $2.5 million will be needed to get the train out of the station by 2010.

The group is raising the money by, among other things, selling naming rights to seats, and is soliciting donations or assistance as it attempts to track down a replacement – potentially biodiesel – engine. Once completed, the Yankee is expected to run excursions on the state-owned line between Lincoln and Ashland, and to serve as a school field trip destination during the off-season in Concord.

Planners see the Flying Yankee as both a rolling tribute to a bygone era and a bullet-like beacon for reviving rail transit and inspiring so-called ‘green’ technology.

“It is an example of transportation from our past, of course, but it could also apply to what we are seeing today,” says Lou Barker, Railroad Planner for the state’s Bureau of Rail Transit. “Given the congestion and surging fuel prices, we are increasingly looking at rail transport as a serious and viable option for the future. … I think this would be huge as an educational opportunity.  The secret to getting people interested in trains and in this technology is to get them to see them in person; to board them; to ride on them and see the engine.”

For folks like Charlie Downing, now 90 and living in York Beach, Maine, the infatuation began the moment he sat in that plush purple chair – third window seat from the rear on the right side – and looked up to suddenly see a light pole moving out of sight.

“When this train comes rolling down the track in 2010, it is going to be such a spectacle,” Downing says. “People will line up to see it, and as it’s zipping by, they’ll say, ‘This train is how old? Wow!’”

For Lindblade, meanwhile, it will forever serve as a monument to American grit and ingenuity.

“Americans have the capacity to turn to technology in times of adversity,” Lindblade says. “With the economy and rail transportation in the weeds, the Boston-and-Maine Railroad turned to this new, new technology; this shiny, sleek ray of hope. It created a level of excitement you couldn’t imagine. It was about the ability of technology to restore not only the economy but the soul.”

In the shadows of the Hobo railyard, this restoration is happening once again. A time machine capable of kindling the soul is being reborn.