Now don’t get me wrong,…I love the big mainlines as much as the next guy,…but these just something about the little guys out there, the short lines. The way they do things is just a little different. They have a flavor all their own, ya know?
I’d like to propose that we kind of gather some info on these miniscule giants of trade, and post them here as a kind of a reference point for all things short.
I’ll leave the definition of “short” up to you, but I’m thinking of roads like the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR, or Sandy River & Rangely Lakes kind of stuff.
It could be smaller or larger, eastern or western, standard or narrow guage, you decide.
Recently the main yard of the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR was dismantled. The yard tracks have just finished comming up as you read this and the Armstrong turntable (vintage 1870) has been removed and the pit filled in. This WAS the sixth oldest continually operating railroad in the country, until recently.
In June, 2005, the venerable 125-old short line was evicted after defaulting on its lease (they owed a paltry $4000.00 or so) on the City owned waterfront property which had been continuously occupied by the railroad’s main yard since construction began on the line in 1868. The road’s 33-mile grade across Mid-Coast Maine’s Waldo County from Belfast to the Maine Central’s main line at Burnham Junction was originally tracked during construction (1868-70) with 56lb iron “pear” rail imported by ship from Wales to Belfast harbor. That was eventually upgraded by the MEC (which operated the B&ML under lease as its Belfast Branch from1871 to December 31, 1925) with 67lb rail and finally with the 75lb steel rails being hauled away here all of which are branded as having been rolled by Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co. between 1890 and 1906.
Some parts of the railroad survive, but this was the main yard at the end of the line and the main reason for it’s being.
The road has currently 1 operating steam loco (BML 4-6-0 #1149), 1 diesel (BML#52, a General Electric B-B 140/140, 600HP Cooper-Bessemer powered 70-ton yard switcher purchased new by the B&ML in May, 1951), about a dozen vintage heavyweight passenger cars (all operable), some MOW equipment (including a Russel plow), and various vintage boxcars and the like.
The steam loco is what I find to be so intresting. You see, it was purchased from sweden in the 1990’s along with 9 swedish passenger cars. The train had been in dry storage in sweden since the end of WW2 and so it was perfectly preserved. They shipped it across the big pond and reguaged it to run on North American tracks.
As a famous railroad author once said…A short line is such a down home thing.
Of course I agree with that 100%…Over the years I have found short lines to be more friendlier as a rule then their big brothers.
I am a big fan of short lines, all the way down to small industrial railroads, but a short line common carrier has such modeling potential–all sorts of freight coming through, serving an area and trying to be a Class 1 on a short line budget.
A favorite of mine is the Arcata & Mad River Railroad, the first common carrier on California’s northcoast. Another is the Sacramento Northern, while technically owned by Western Pacific most of its life, it had a character and style all its own, including California’s last 5-cent fare streetcar and California’s last electric freight motor operation in Marysville-Yuba City.
The only bit of the SN still in operation is what used to be the Woodland Branch, stretching from Woodland, CA to West Sacramento, operated by the Sierra Railroad, formerly the Yolo Short Line. Freight trains and a riverside excursion train trundle across a nearly 100 year old trestle and wend through the northeastern end of the Sacramento River delta–a fun ride.
The problem, perhaps, is that it is such a diverse subject. Perhaps it would help if you asked questions of us shortline fans rather than just asking us to discuss the subject?
I could never reasearch the plethora of small railroads out there and ever hope to catch all the good ones. But you all know them. Lets share that information, thats all I’m saying.
The SN that you mentioned is a great “little” (all 185 miles of it) road. I will be looking into it, especially the ferry operations, to learn more about it. That is one big electrified run for the little guys.
I haven’t looked at the Arcata & Mad River Railroad yet, but with a name like that, it should be a treat.
As far as the subject being diverse, you’re right, it is. But that was kind of the point. I was thinking that this could be a kind of a jumping off point to share ideas, discovery’s, and so forth in order to get a better feel for the subject matter. Those of us who are intrested in such roads have such a large amount of info to sift through (and by that I mean that there were a lot of short lines, not that there is tons written about each one) that it might be handy to have someplace where all the basics of the subject were in one place.
I think it would be intresting to see how different lines handled some of there problems on their shoestring budget for example. Comparing different roads and their solutions to similar problems might be fun and enlightening. That kind of stuff.
Take for instance, when the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR was laying out it’s rails and the builders came to a point were they had to cross what was essentially a bog. Instead of going around it, they went through it. They set the rails on double length ties spaced twice as close as normal and basically “floated” the rails across the bog. It’s a wacky idea that has worked since the 1870’s.
That kind of stuff is what I find to be so intriguing about the smaller roads.
Thats the kind of thing that I envisioned this thread being used for.
The A&MR is an absolute hoot–it started out as the “Union Plank Walk & Wharf Co.” with a horse-drawn railcar to serve the Arcata wharf. The first railcar’s gauge was decided by the length of a spare piece of iron bar (it was 90 or so inches long) and they used a gauge of 45-1/4" (I think, something oddball like that) for fifty or sixty years before going to standard gauge in the Twenties. They had a collection of handsome rod engines for carrying general freight, and the little logging railroads that they connected with ships in Arcata Bay ran everything from homemade gypsy locomotives on 30" rails to big chunky Heislers and at least one Mallet articulated logging locomotive. The “Annie & Mary” ran around 30 miles, from Korbel, CA down to Arcata through little communities like Blue Lake, where there is still an SN station standing that is also a local history museum!
The SN’s ferry is definitely an interesting story–the first ferry was the short-lived “Bridgit,” built when the Oakland, Antioch & Eastern (the railroad that later became the south end of the SN) still had designs to build a bridge across Suisun Bay. The “Ramon” took over duties in 1915 (the “Bridgit” was destroyed in a fire), and operated until 1954. It is unique as the only interurban/electric car ferry–it even had a lunch counter to serve passengers until 1940! Since the trip across the bay only took a few minutes, lunches could be a very rapid and indigestion-inducing experience.
After 1954 and the decommissioning of the “Ramon”, the SN slowly fragmented into several detatched “islands” of railroading that sent their freight back and forth via Western Pacific rails or interchange or right-of-way agreements with the SP or AT&SF. The best-known lease was the famed “SN Detour,” inaugurated after the collapse of the Lisbon Trestle under the weight of a train of rolled steel coils, which featured SN’s pair of F3As dragging 29’ gondolas full of steel on AT&SF tracks from the East Bay to Stockton.
If you want to do some research on them a good place to start would be the book “Slow Train to Yesterday” - it documents one man’s travels on short lines. It was written in 1945 but it is easy enough to find a copy either in the library or on one of the book search sites.
Just 2 days ago I bought the book “Images of rail, MAINE NARROW GAUGE RAILROADS” it gives a shortend history of the Maine two footers,
these are the ultimate shortlines IMHO.
if you can find a copy of this book buy it, you won’t be disappointed!!!
The just about a month ago, the Buffalo and Pittsburgh opened a new branch line that goes past my store. The govenor came to town in his private coach to dedicate the new line. What do they use to pull it. Their SD-40? Nope. The GP-38 that Atlas used as their prototype? Nope, they sent in The Twins.
An interesting short line was the Chesapeake Beach Railway which ran from Washington D.C. to Chesapeake Beach, Md on the west shore of the Chesapeake Bay (about 30 miles or so). The line ran from 1898 to 1935. A remnant, the East Washington Railway survived into the 70’s as a small switching line of a mile or two. When its main customer a power plant converted from coal to oil the line went out of business. There is book by Ames Williams that may still be available from the museum http://www.cbrm.org/index.htm .
One of the interesting things about the line is that it was planned as a passenger line to take people out to the resort town of Chesapeake Beach. The town was created by the railroad and was very popular. In D.C. the line connected with the streetcar system. The coming of the automobile doomed it as people started driving out to Chesapeake Beach. There wasn’t enough freight business to keep it going, except for the small remnant in D.C.
