Page 1 - DEC2022

BRISTOL • BRIDGEWATER • ALEXANDRIA • HEBRON • PLYMOUTH - 10,000 Circ.
2022 VOL. 2. NO. 12
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DECEMBER
JOY ON THE TRACKS... A Newfound Polar Express
By William nieman
The history of model trains is clouded with appropriate mystery. Tradition suggests that Napoleon III built a toy train for his 3-year-old son in 1859. Germany claims the Marklin Company created the first model railroads in the late 1800s. America’s own Lionel Company built this country’s first electric model railroad in 1901. Whatever the case, chil- dren, including this writer ( years ago), have been pleased and somewhat mesmerized by the clickity-clack of these speeding models for decades, and like so many, I have long associated toy trains and trains born of the imagination with Christmas.
For many, Christmas is when toy trains are brought out of storage or given as gifts to excited youngsters. Many years ago, a young man in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
Doug Williams holds a child to get a better view of the model trains.
Chris Van Allsburg, visited Herpolsheimer’s Department Store and was enchanted by a model train running as a Christmas display in the store window. Years later, in 1985, as a writer and artist, he recalled that image as he penned and sketched The Polar Express, a book and later a movie that continue to meld trains and Christmas in the imaginative world of children.
In Bristol, in the 1970s, another young man, a high school student, Doug Williams, watched a small model train running on a 4x8 sheet of ply- wood at the Tapply Thomp- son Community Center. It was part of a modest Christmas display for children. Doug had visited the scene in previous years and had been studying model railroads. On this visit, he volunteered to be the little train’s operating engineer. Ap-
POLAR EXPRESS
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A Newfound Regional Senior Project Brings More Awareness to Jessica’s Law
By Donna RhoDes
BRISTOL – Winter weather is here, and one Newfound Re- gional High School senior is asking people to be aware of the dangers involved when vehicles are not cleared of snow and ice.
In the winter of 2005, Ryan Haynes was killed while work- ing roadside for the New Lon- don Highway Department. A resident of the area headed out to work without cleaning two inches of ice and snow off their windshield. They ran into him and pinned him against his work truck. Haynes was killed due to the collision, but if that driver had paid heed to “Jessica’s Law,” he would still be here today. Ryan Haynes is not forgotten, however.
Jessica’s Law was established in 2001 after young Jessica Smith was killed in Peterborough, N.H.
JESSICA'S LAW
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