Decades ago, Marcia Brown’s second graders sang The Circus Train for a school play during a unit on Westford’s history. Brown’s simple lyrics told the true tale of elephants, monkeys, pythons and more roaming the streets of town, causing quite the calamity.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was a traveling outdoor show that romanticized the legends and tropes of the ‘Great Frontier.’ In addition to jugglers, plate spinners, and colorful performers, it featured an array of exotic animals, including elephants, monkeys and snakes, all of which escaped during the Stony Brook derailment, near the Brookside Station on May 24, 1911.
Now Brown’s song is immortalized in print. The song appears in Chelmsford author Kathryn Cryan-Hicks’s new historical novel “Derailed” which has been nominated for the 2026 Children’s Book International Award and the Kirkus Indie Award.
“It wasn’t [called the] derailing at the time,” Brown recalled. “It was the story about Buffalo Bill. My next-door neighbor told my parents about the train going off the track when she was a girl, nine or eleven, and how her mother woke her up saying ‘Jenny, there are elephants coming down the street!’ … I didn’t realize why the circus animals were there until I read Kathy’s book. She had really found out much more about the true story than I had known.”
Brown began teaching in 1961 at Abbott Elementary School. She taught second grade at a variety of different places in Westford, including the Cameron, Sargent and Frost schools, before returning to Abbott. She retired in 1997.
It was during her time at the Frost School in the late 1980s that Brown wrote her song, titled The Circus Train’. The year Brown wrote the song, the Frost School was putting on a play about Westford History. Brown remembered the story her neighbors once told her, and thought it would be a great addition. She’d grown up singing and writing songs with her family, which led to her decision to turn the story into a song.
While writing, she conducted her own research in Westford. Just like Cyan-Hicks eventually would, Brown spoke with local historian and “train buff” Arnold Wilder about the derailment. She also interviewed her neighbors and her father, the latter of whom worked at the Stony Brook Quarry with her grandfather.
The Circus Train details a fictional account of Buffalo Bill’s animals, including a python, monkey, and elephant, exploring the streets of Westford while chased by the local townsfolk. It closes with a description of a “great big snake” that is implied to still live in Westford’s woods. This addition was inspired by Brown’s husband.
“When I got to the end of this song I was putting together, my husband said oh, I know what you should do! You should say they never found the snake and it’s still in Westford … A friend had told me that there had been two sightings right along the railroad tracks in Nabnasset of a big, long snake, just where the track goes into Fletcher’s. And so it went right into the song.”
It wasn’t until many years later that Brown met Cryan-Hicks at the Chelmsford Library. When she found out that Cryan-Hicks was writing a novel, Brown was “delighted, because it was a treasured story for me, too.”
“I’m delighted with the book,” Brown said. “It was a kick to have her [Cryan-Hicks] put my song in.”
When reflecting on her career as a whole, Brown has this to say, “It’s such a joy to see children understand a concept and be able to read and be able to write. I love teaching in all aspects, but I especially love teaching writing and got some wonderful stories from the kids.”
“Derailed” is available locally at Picture Yourself Gallery in Chelmsford Center, Summer Street Grocers, and LaLa Books. You can also get it online through Amazon and from other bookstores. Perfect for readers interested in local history, Wild West history, and historical fiction.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the July 22, 2026 print edition of The Westford Villager.
