US odds and ends

[highpeak]

I am not organised enough and don't have enough pictures to create web sites like some of the wonderful photographers who post here, but I thought I might share a few pictures of oddities and mundane details that might help or inspire somebody to model them.

First up is a home-made steam generator built in the Maine Central workshops for the Portland Terminal to use at Rigby. PTM used various means of generating steam to clear ice from switches and heat the roundhouse, 2-8-0 #501 did duty for a while, followed by Hudson #702, then they built this:

The larger of the tanks looks like it was recycled from a steam locomotive tender. My guide to Waterville yard said he thought it might have come off one of MEC's 2-10-2s based on the beading. I wondered if the number had anything to do with MEC's solitary 0-8-0 which was numbered 199.

Pictures were taken in October, 1978 at Waterville.

[highpeak]

Maine Central 901 was built by St. Louis Car Co in 1935 as a baggage motor car. It had been a demonstrator for Ingersoll-Rand who provided the engine. In 1950 it was converted to a Maintenance of Way tool car. It was still around in the summer of 1979, minus the power unit but keeping it's six-wheel power truck.

[Oldddudders]

Maine Central 901 was built by St. Louis Car Co in 1935 as a baggage motor car. It had been a demonstrator for Ingersoll-Rand who provided the engine. In 1950 it was converted to a Maintenance of Way tool car. It was still around in the summer of 1979, minus the power unit but keeping it's six-wheel power truck.

Love the doodlebug! It looks at least 70' long, so a typical St Louis product of those days, although Ingersoll Rand is a new name to me in power provision of this sort. Was it gasoline or distillate? The 6-wheel truck has a sort of PS aspect to it, but would be easy enough to mock-up with modified sideframes on a flexicoil etc truck, I imagine. Lack of windows means loads of room for a sound decoder and decent speaker, too!

[highpeak]

Love the doodlebug! It looks at least 70' long, so a typical St Louis product of those days, although Ingersoll Rand is a new name to me in power provision of this sort. Was it gasoline or distillate? The 6-wheel truck has a sort of PS aspect to it, but would be easy enough to mock-up with modified sideframes on a flexicoil etc truck, I imagine. Lack of windows means loads of room for a sound decoder and decent speaker, too!

I think it was a diesel-electric. I-R was a pioneer in that field, see the boxcab project on here.

I think MEC used it on lines out of Bangor for the most part. It towed a trailer for passenger accomodation. There isn't a lot of stuff about it in any of the books, partly because it was well off the beaten track for most photographers up in Northern Maine.

It ended up on the Belfast and Moosehead Lake during the period where they were operating as a tourist road with a Swedish steam engine and rolling stock. When that operation ended (in 2008?), all the rolling stock was put up for sale, including the remains of 901. $9.500 would have bought it, though what you would then have done is questionable, as the prospectus notes that it "is not moveable in current condition". No idea what happened after that. Without the I-R engine and generator, it really wasn't much of a collector's item.

It was always fun trying to work out what MOW stuff had been in a previous life.

[highpeak]

This kind of unloader is a space-saving way to add a traffic destination to a layout. This one was at Danville Jct, ME

 

[sunshine coast]

Some excellent details ,thank you once again for your insight into the MEC and surroundings ,most helpful for us over here to add more relevant areas to our modeling..please keep them coming ..

 

Regards Trevor ...

[highpeak]

This simple loading ramp was at Rockland, ME. Sorry about the rather poor scan, the photos are on a matt finish paper that seems to have confused the scanner.

[highpeak]

MEC placed a phone box at the far end of the yard in Brunswick. Switching generally happened during the day, so the switch stand was not fitted with any lights. Most switching was done at the other end of the yard to avoid blocking the grade crossing.

 

Switching took place round the clock at Rigby, so these stands were used. Tomar makes one similar to the short one, not sure if anybody makes the taller type.

[highpeak]

The scale operator didn't have particularly splendid accomodations at Rigby Yard:

Every so often the scales had to be calibrated, which is where this car came in handy. If ever there was an accurate scale model, this is it. The car had only a handbrake and a through air pipe, so that the weight wouldn't change as the brakes wore. The scale car normally travelled next to the caboose when in transit. I was going to say this allowed the conductor to weigh up if anything was going wrong with it, but I don't think I will.

[highpeak]

I should perhaps note that back in the day, it was quite easy to get permission to wander round places like Rigby yard. All you had to do was go to the Maine Central offices, which was a trip back in time when it came to the office furniture, floors and so on, and sign a release form. Once in a while, if you dealt with Brad Peters, the assistant to E Spencer Miller, MEC President, you'd come away with an annual report or some other goody. I once got a copy of Mr. Miller's address to the Newcomen Society, a very interesting account of running a railroad from the perspective of top management. At Rigby, all you had to do to avoid getting chucked out was stay on the dirt roads that ran down either side and not do anything daft like wander across yard tracks where switching was going on. It meant you had to use telephoto lenses quite a bit, but that was a small price to pay.

Waterville was not quite as friendly, though there was more ways of getting in trouble there. You could still get permission to take pictures. Smaller places like Brunswick were pretty easy as my friend knew quite a few of the operators. You could usually count on getting some paperwork, old Form 19s and so on, the bulletin of the day.

All gone, I doubt you'd get permission to do much photography in a yard these days.

"Those concerned" included would-be photographers!

[highpeak]

Maine Central yard facilities were a bit spartan, but adequate for the job. My impression was that there would be long periods of tedium with some moments of excitement.

The operator at Yarmouth Jct. enjoyed this office, that needed a lick of paint in the late 70s. The structure had been the baggage part of the old Yarmouth depot.

Yarmouth Jct was an interchange point with the Grand Trunk Portland-Montreal line. Maine Central normally ran two southbound Bangor-Portland freights which might drop cars for the GT (shown as Canadian National in the employee timetable) at Yarmouth, and a job from Portland to Augusta and back, which typically just passed on by. BR-2 left Bangor at 9:30pm, BR-4 followed at 1:00am, so the chances of seeing either in daylight weren't that great unless BR-4 was running late. The Canadian National would not drop anything for MEC at Yarmouth since they'd want to take it all the way to Portland to get more mileage, and in fact the layout of the interchange would have made that quite awkward.

You'll notice there are no corresponding northbound trains from Portland to Bangor. That's because back then the MEC operated a sort of double-track mainline, southbound freights passing through Augusta and Brunswick (the Lower Road), northbound freights going via Lewiston (the Back Road), the lines meeting at Royal Jct just north of Portland and at Waterville. Northbound trains might pick up cars from the Canadian National at Danville Jct.

 

 

Brunswick came to life from mid-morning to after lunch. The operator had a tidy little wooden building with a phone, a train order signal and the assorted paraphernalia for record-keeping. And that was about it. It was a good place to visit around breakfast time to get a lineup and shoot the breeze with Henry Preble the operator. BR-2 and BR-4 had probably passed through, and RS-1 usually left Rigby around 8:15am, so the fun would start around 10 or so. RS-1 would drop cars for the Lewiston Lower and Rockland branches and continue on its way, somewhat lighter, to Augusta. It might also drop a locomotive to swap out power from one of the branch trains.

Train 318 left Lewiston at 11am, train 324 left Rockland at 7:00am, which normally meant the Rockland job should reach Brunswick first. But that didn't always pan out, especially if traffic from the cement plant in Thomaston was heavy, and you could often catch both jobs in town at the same time, clogging up the fairly compact yard. They'd swap their traffic and disappear back whence they came as trains 319 and 325, leaving just the return SR-2 to pick up whatever had come off the branches for onward transit to Rigby.

The Lewiston and Rockland trains were timetabled trains, there being no operators on either branch to give orders to the crews.

 

Things of course don't always go according to plan, and once in a while there'd be a surprise in store. Here, RB-1 stops for orders at Brunswick, diverted from the Back Road for some reason. Trains obeyed the arm pointing to the right as they looked at the order signal. The trio of Independence class baby boats is led by #404 Kenneth Roberts

[JWB]

Interesting name for a loco, Kenneth Roberts (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Roberts_(author))

[highpeak]

Interesting name for a loco, Kenneth Roberts (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Roberts_(author))

To celebrate the Bicentennial many roads painted a locomotive in a commemorative paint scheme, so of which were attractive and others quite forgettable. Maine Central took a slightly different approach and dubbed their 10 U18s the Independence Class, naming each locomotive for a local person or event associated with the Revolutionary war. The locomotives also wore an eagle emblem on the nose rather than MEC green rectangle that had adorned the GP38s.

[highpeak]

Jordan spreaders were quite interesting and versatile MOW cars. This one was at Brunswick, no doubt off to do a spot of ditch clearing on one of the branch lines.

 

[highpeak]

Maine Central car 333, originally named NITUNA was built by Pullman in 1924, was 83 feet long and every bit a heavyweight, tipping the scales at 91 tons. While the Bangor and Aroostook was painting their business train in circus colours, Maine Central was rooted in tradition, and the business car showed it. There was a bit of rivalry between the two managements,MEC's E Spencer Miller resisted all attempts by the Bangor interests to merge the roads. There had been quite a tussle in the 50s over the division of revenues, negotiations and hearings before the state railroad commission went on from 1955 to 1962 before being resolved in MEC's favour. I think Mr. Miller made sure MEC wasn't outdone by the Bangor folks when it came to a bit of prestige.

 

[JWB]

Thanks for the spreader photo. Walthers did a kit for this style of Jordan in the 1990s (I think). A lot of interesting lines had this type, Lehigh Valley, D&H, B&M, in addition to MEC. I don't think any got repainted for Guilford, they just got rustier. Here is a Walthers:

They did them in some roadnames that had them, like BN, and a lot that didn't, while they neglected the interesting roads above. I don't know if they'd ever rerun them, as it would probably be pretty expensive to bring them out RTR, even if the assembly were done in China. Sort of a shame, as they're interesting as static models, but also useful on work extras in operation.

[shortliner]

currently one on ebay.co.uk - 150432819718 - 30 hours to go as I post

 

also 350339753249 , 230459423603

[signalmaintainer]

This kind of unloader is a space-saving way to add a traffic destination to a layout. This one was at Danville Jct, ME

 

 

Is Danville Junction a location where the MEC and GT interchanged? I seem to recall a nice HO layout design in Railroad Model Craftsman early 1986 ("South Paris Switcher" or something to the affect) that featured Danville Jct.

[highpeak]

Is Danville Junction a location where the MEC and GT interchanged? I seem to recall a nice HO layout design in Railroad Model Craftsman early 1986 ("South Paris Switcher" or something to the affect) that featured Danville Jct.

Yes, Danville Jct is on the Back Road and is (was) one of three interchange points with the GT (called Canadian National in MEC timetables). The MEC and GT came together in Portland, connected by the street trackage along Commercial Street, and crossed paths at Yarmouth Jct on the Lower Road and Danville Jct on the Back Road.

[steve1]

Thanks for the spreader photo. Walthers did a kit for this style of Jordan in the 1990s (I think). A lot of interesting lines had this type, Lehigh Valley, D&H, B&M, in addition to MEC. I don't think any got repainted for Guilford, they just got rustier.

 

And Roundhouse did a kit of a much earlier type. I have one stashed away to build. Every time I get the box out to look at it, I go "Eeek!" and put it away again.

 

steve

[highpeak]

And Roundhouse did a kit of a much earlier type. I have one stashed away to build. Every time I get the box out to look at it, I go "Eeek!" and put it away again.

 

steve

If you want a kit to make you go Eeek! try the Tichy kit for the crane. It probably isn't that bad, because Tichy made nice mouldings, but there's a lot of small bits in it.

Jordan spreaders had lots of bits of the kind"if this moves that way, that must move this way, right?" which can make them fearsome prospects. I never bought any of the offerings, but I must say that Bertiedog's dabblings in vintage models is shoving me in that direction.

[alastairq]

I made up a Roundhouse Jordan Spreader many years back......the paintwork has gone a bit 'orrid over the years..will dig it out for a snapshot.....took some working-out how it didn't go together [some of it must be scratchbuilt.......which rather makes a nonsense of it being a kit?]....those 3-in-1 MDC kits are more like puzzles than kits.....

[highpeak]

TOFC (Trailer On Flat Car) traffic was never very significant on the Maine Central. There probably wasn't much demand once I-95 was completed, and clearance issues hampered attempts to develop the business. The 1977 ORER shows only 2 flat cars suitable for trailers, and they were only 45 footers.

Consequently MEC didn't bother investing much in facilities for TOFC, and loading and unloading trailers at Rigby Yard in Portland was about as basic as it gets. You don't need acres of space to replicate this kind of thing:

 

[JWB]

For what it's worth, I just got a DVD of Maine Central 1974-1984 that has several shots of a fairly large block of TOFC on the train to Calais in the early 1980s. They were all the last style of B&M trailers with the blue and black stripes, and while it was hard to see, I assume they were on TTX flats. MEC/B&M/Guilford blew hot and cold over intermodal, still have more or less except for MOAY/PAS.

 

The B&M had a similar minimum intermodal ramp in West Leb, NH in the 1960s. You're right in your implication that this would add a seldom-seen feature in UK exhibition-style layouts, even given the apparent fondness for B&M/MEC/GRS prototype. With some attention to runaround clearance, etc., you could run 89 foot cars.

[highpeak]

Simulating accident damage is occasionally covered in the modelling press. This CP Rail boxcar would be a bit of a challenge. It was in a pretty decent wreck on the Mountain subdivision in Conway, NH. Hulcher (http://www.hulcher.com/) was called in to help get it all back together and this wreck showed up at Rigby a couple of days later.