A Real Postcard From Dickens Station

A real postcard from a fictional town. How can that be?

Three years ago, when choosing the location for the fictional town for my upcoming novel, I needed a white Christmas. So, Florida was definitely out of the running. I picked Vermont because it seemed the ideal state for a Dickensian Victorian Christmas-themed village. To evoke the romance of guests arriving by train, I picked a spot in southern Vermont that offered an excursion train between Rutland and Bellows Falls. I researched Vermont railroads and discovered that in the late 1800s, when my fictional town was founded, southern Vermont would have been serviced by a Mogul 2-6-0 steam locomotive. I couldn’t use an actual railroad name in my story, so the Green Mountain Railroad became the Vermont Southern Railroad in my world.

And so, I wrote the opening chapter of Marley’s Curse, A Dickens Station Treasure Hunt Mystery, about a modern-day namesake of Jacob Marley returning home on a Mogul 2-6-0 steam locomotive to his beloved, Christmas-themed Dickens Station.

Months later, I came across this postcard of the Green Mountain Railroad #89, a Mogul 2-6-0 locomotive, taking on water at the Chester Depot on the former Rutland Railroad line. When I looked up Chester, Vermont, on a map, I discovered it to be exactly where I had envisioned my fictional Dickens Station. Well, whaddya know? There really is a town there!

So, here it is, a postcard of a 2-6-0 Mogul steam locomotive taking on water in Chester, Vermont, a real picture of the train that transports my fictional characters to a Victorian Christmas experience at the same (and real) location as my fictional Dickens Station. A real postcard from a fictional town.