There was at least a couple things that whomever put the captions together, didn't know!
A railroad car? Uh, no. Sophie was not a Navy supply ship. The General, who a short while later became the Doris E, was built to be a service boat for their company. I suspect they got their history about the Navy because that is who took the Mount's engines and boilers.
Old photos were used... Our very own Weirs Beach Boater, the skipper in two of the photos, left the company at the end of last season.
According to WBB, Santa was at Camp Lawrence.
On the site Honoring
Byron Carl Hedblom, this is how they describe Sophie:
We were being pushed at the end of WWII in 1945 by the New Hampshire Utilities Commission as to when we would resume operations by the Mount Washington. We answered, as soon as engines could be obtained. (The Mount's engines and boilers had been taken by the Navy for the war effort.)
We decided to build a 65-foot boat to run short excursions from Weirs to Wolfeboro, until the Mount Washington was running. I designed a vessel to carry about 150 passengers. We had a General Motors Diesel engine, which we could convert from Electric Generation to Direct Reversing Mode. We also had steelworkers available for the job.
We built the hull in the Mead Morrison shop, installed the engine and trucked it to NH where we finished it. We installed the superstructure in New Hampshire, launched the boat fully completed and named it "Sophie C" in memory of my mother.
The Sophie C. was Christened by Byron Hedblom's eldest daughter Dory Ann Hedblom and named for his mother, Sophie C. Hedblom.
We had a trial trip on VJ Day in 1945. It was successful and it went into service immediately. At the same time, we built a 45-foot service boat to carry men and materials to ships away from our plant. The boat was called "The General". After it was completed and tried out, my father said to send it up to Lake Winnipesaukee it's too nice to use as a service boat. We all made very good use of it. We were also sponsoring a Little League Baseball team. Our foreman electrician took care of the running of this operation and did very well."
Sophie C at the dock in the Weirs
Clockwise from top Left: Byron Hedblom, Carl Hedblom,
June Sophie Hedblom, Sophie Caroline Hedblom,
and Ruth Caroline Hedblom