I know it’s been decades since we’ve seen one, but remember those beautiful (yet somewhat gaudy) “State of Maine Products” billboard boxcars painted red, white and blue? The sides of those cars were divided into thirds, horizontally: the top third painted red, the middle third white, and the bottom third sported a deep blue.
The big home road, Bangor & Aroostook, owned the bulk of this fleet. But somehow the New York, New Haven and Hartford also owned a few, identically painted, “State of Maine Products” boxcars as well. What motivated the NH, a railroad that didn’t even serve the state of Maine, to participate in this freight car decoration scheme?
I thought the colors were the other way around–but a photo should put that to rest.
New Haven’s “State of Maine” cars were insulated, heated box cars used for the transportation of potatoes. There probably was enough of that business between Maine and New York City to justify assigning cars to NH. Without knowing about the actual financing of these cars, it would be hard to say why they got what they did.
An intermediate carrier would have needed to be used between BAR and NH…they don’t seem to have had any of these “State of Maine” cars.
Believe it or not but a bunch of those cars are still in existance. You see up in the middle of Maine theres a storage yard. The town is Oakfield and its just North of Millinocket a few miles. The B&A and NH had friendly management and I can’t remember the entire story but a bunch of the cars went down that a-way.
It was a joint order by both the New Haven and BAR that resulted in this cars and all the fleet being painted Red-White-Blue and the New Haven cars having NH reporting marks on this scheme. In the white, the was a NH reporting mark, “NEW HAVEN”, and a script herald, so they weren’t painted indentically to the BAR cars…
The reason for the purchase was the New Haven was a big-time transporter of potatoes from the BAR… These were indeed insulated, heated boxcars – a charcoal heater sits underneath. The New Haven even had a special potatoe train that ran daily when in season I believe… It was a big business and they apparently wanted to own some of these cars and ordered jointly with the BAR… They came on around 1953.
It was in the 1950’s that many of these bilboard style cars were produced for model railroading in “O gauges,and HO” Many model sides were printed on cardboard, and were quite colorful. Certainly,they made REAL train watching and model railroading quite interesting, but were apparently killed because of the up-keep factor[?]. In this day and time the graffiti artists would have them quickly trashed out, What a shame, as they would really be interesting!
There were actually two intermediate carriers involved. The Maine Central would receive the cars at Northern Maine Junction (Bangor) and forward them to the Boston & Maine at Portland, ME. From Portland the cars would be moved to Worcester, MA, for interchange with the New Haven.
Boy does this bring back memories of both Lionel and my first visit to Horseshoe curve as a 10 year old in 1955. We were at the curve just before dusk and a westbound train had a State of Maine and a Boston and Maine box car in it. The B&M car was light blue with an interlocked BM on one end that was as high as the car. I thought they were the two coolest cars in the entire train.
Thanks, everybody. I gladly stand corrected as to how the colors were layed out: the stripes were blue over white over red! The photos you enclosed are entirely correct.
As to someone’s comment about the graffiti artists having a field day with these cars, imagine what would happen if one of these beauties made its way into Los Angeles. Between two of the area’s most notorious and constantly feuding street gangs - The Bloods, whose colors are red, and The Crips, whose colors are blue - my guess is that none of those “STATE OF MAINE / PRODUCTS” boxcars would get ever get out of “La-la land” without being torched.
MMA 1 did roll down the CN rails through Vicksburg, Michigan towards Battle Creek, MI a few months ago.
There usually are a few MMA Boxcars in manifest freight trains on the CN.
A photo of MMA 1 is on the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Website. It was painted in the State of Maine scheme as a one year commemoration of the newly formed rail tranportation company.
