The Bangor and Aroostook railroad

[Allegheny1600]

Hi guys,

I've had a vauge interest in this small line for many years now, since i got "Americas Railroads, 2nd generation" by Don Ball in the early 90's in fact!

This interest has been piqued lately due to my increased love for the EMD F units! Of which, the BAR had quite a few F3's running until the early 80's?

My main source of information so far;

http://users.silcon.com/~lgoss/Homepage.htm by Larry Goss. Nice website!

I've also found some information on wikepedia & "fallen flags" and thats getting to be about it!

Just wondered;

Does anyone on here know of any historical society for the BAR? (i've looked through the NMRA's directory of web pages - 0!)

Is it modelled very much in the US or anywhere for that matter?

Just out of interest, i like the solid blue scheme from the late 60's just up to the early 80's tricolor scheme!

Thanks in advance for any help or pointers anyone can give,

John E.

[Redkiterail]

some pictures for you:

Link to pictures

[pH]

'Fallen Flags' website has quite a few photos, including F3s (and BL2s) up till 1986: Bangor and Aroostook

[Jim Martin]

The Model Train Magazine Index lists 90 articles for the keyword "BAR" (it searches on reporting marks, rather than road name). Several of them are actually articles about bars of various kinds, rather than the BAR, and others are very old (the MTMI goes back a long way), but most are relevant to BAR subjects. Check them out for yourself at http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&sort=D&output=3&cmdtext=BAR

 

If you're looking to buy magazine back issues, I can say that I have dealt with Railpub, who sponsor the MTMI (not surprisingly, given that it must generate a fair bit of business for them) and I found their service to be very good.

 

Hope this helps

 

Jim

[tebee]

I've a BAR loco roster in speadsheet form, not sure where it came from or why I have it !

 

if someone can tell me a way of attaching it, I'll upload it.

 

It's currently in ODS ( open document) format but neither this or excel format are allowed.

 

Tom

[Allegheny1600]

Hi chaps,

Many thanks for the replies so far - great stuff, cheers!

Jim,

Thats an excellent resource, thank you! It'll give me a guide as to where in my collection of Trains & Model Railroader to look (i very rarely look through my old back issues!) and i'll look out for some of those other magazines.

Tom,

Sounds great, thanks - unfortunately i can't help with how to upload your spreadsheet - unless you can save it as a "picture" perhaps?!?

Cheers all,

John E.

[alcoRS1]

here is a link to a BAR roster

BAR roster

 

they had some fine looking Geeps, it would be a great line to model, Lots of Alcos from other shorelines were in the area of operation, would make for a very interesting layout. BAR interfaced with Boston and Maine, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, Claremont & Concord Railroad, New Brunswick Southern Railway, Eastern Maine Railway, New England Central Railroad, Quebec Central Railway, Maine Central Railroad (lots of alcos here), Pan Am Railways, St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, Washington County Railroad.

 

Maine is one of my favorite area in railroading, I am big Also S and RS loco fan, and new england area had a load of them.

 

BAR did a lot of logging and wood pulp in its day. lots of paper mills.

[highpeak]

In the period you mentioned the main interchanges for the BAR were Brownsville Jct (Canadian Pacific), Van Buren (Canadian National), Washburn Jct (Aroostook Valley) and Northern Maine Jct (Maine Central)

The B&A was pretty frugal and the big attraction by the end of your period of reference were the F3s and the BL2s, examples of both of which made it into the final BAR paint scheme. E7s lasted quite late since they were regeared for freight operations after the end of passenger service, but they were traded in on the GP38s so strictly speaking you couldn't have both. The E7s did get the blue paint scheme though.

I'm not sure that the BAR rubbed shoulders with Alcos that much, at least not at Northern Maine Jct. The interchange of traffic was handled by MEC's Rigby-Bangor jobs which didn't typically get Alco power for most of the time period you're interested in.

A nice touch was the repainting of one of the BL2s in the delivery paint job in 1980, I was lucky to catch it at Northern Maine Jct before it got the American Railfan lettering:

But the other paint schemes, especially the blue, would be more typical for those engines.

[Allegheny1600]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the updates, some great info again.

alcoRS1,

Yes! i love Alcos too which was one reason i was "put off" the BAR for so many years - it was pretty much an EMD only road - but i have my New Haven interest to cater for my Alco-holism!!!!! Now i need fixes of G-M's as well!!!!!

highpeak,

Thats a lovely shot, thank you! It was the Lifelike/P2K model of this, at a swapmeet in Buxton, England with my good friend T.D. (Meester Teem of this parish) that first appealed to me about American outline modelling - back around 1988 or so!!!!!

Perhaps things have come full circle, now?

Cheers all,

John E.

[alcoRS1]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the updates, some great info again.

alcoRS1,

Yes! i love Alcos too which was one reason i was "put off" the BAR for so many years - it was pretty much an EMD only road - but i have my New Haven interest to cater for my Alco-holism!!!!! Now i need fixes of G-M's as well!!!!!

highpeak,

Thats a lovely shot, thank you! It was the Lifelike/P2K model of this, at a swapmeet in Buxton, England with my good friend T.D. (Meester Teem of this parish) that first appealed to me about American outline modelling - back around 1988 or so!!!!!

Perhaps things have come full circle, now?

Cheers all,

John E.

 

that is very simple, Maine Central (MEC) had lots of those u-boats.

[Oldddudders]

I think I know two very small things about the BAR, aside from it having F units well late in the game.

 

1. It hauls potatoes big time

 

2. When Kalmbach put their toe in the video water about 25 years ago, one of their handful of tapes was "First Generation Diesels : The Survivors" which included a long-ish sequence on the BAR, including film of F3s etc, and a brief interview with one of the staff. He pointed out that an F unit was less than ideal for switching, requiring the engineer to lean out of the window when reversing "which causes a lot of discomfort". He surely wasn't kidding, given the ambient Winter temperatures in what is, I believe, called the North East Kingdom!

[alcoRS1]

I think I know two very small things about the BAR, aside from it having F units well late in the game.

 

1. It hauls potatoes big time

 

2. When Kalmbach put their toe in the video water about 25 years ago, one of their handful of tapes was "First Generation Diesels : The Survivors" which included a long-ish sequence on the BAR, including film of F3s etc, and a brief interview with one of the staff. He pointed out that an F unit was less than ideal for switching, requiring the engineer to lean out of the window when reversing "which causes a lot of discomfort". He surely wasn't kidding, given the ambient Winter temperatures in what is, I believe, called the North East Kingdom!

 

according to wikipedia - in 1968 pen central lost 3 - 4 shipments of potatoes, which were entire harvest, this lead to farms going broke, and never using rail again. but before 1968, yes BAR helped feed america on potatoes.

[highpeak]

I think I know two very small things about the BAR, aside from it having F units well late in the game.

 

1. It hauls potatoes big time

 

2. When Kalmbach put their toe in the video water about 25 years ago, one of their handful of tapes was "First Generation Diesels : The Survivors" which included a long-ish sequence on the BAR, including film of F3s etc, and a brief interview with one of the staff. He pointed out that an F unit was less than ideal for switching, requiring the engineer to lean out of the window when reversing "which causes a lot of discomfort". He surely wasn't kidding, given the ambient Winter temperatures in what is, I believe, called the North East Kingdom!

It has been quite some time since the B&A (note: B&A usually refers to the Boston and Albany, but in Maine it's the BAR) hauled potatoes. In 1968 they shifted 13,000 car loads but that was the year I-95 reached Houlton and truckers started to take the business. The other big factor was the poor service provided by connecting roads. Spuds left Maine very efficiently, courtesy of the BAR, Maine Central and Boston and Maine, but once they reached the fiasco known as Penn Central it was a different story. The spuds ended up rotting in the reefers well before they reached their destination. There was some export traffic that lasted longer as the traffic stayed on B&A rails all the way to Searsport for shipment to Europe, but that traffic eventually died too for a number of reasons (supplies of spuds from Eastern Europe, containerisation being two of them). By the late 70s there were large numbers of stored reefers all over the place as the spuds went by truck. There was some traffic in frozen french fries, but nothing on the scale of the 50s and 60s.

The Northeast Kingdom generally refers to an area of Vermont. B&A territory is "the county" (aka Aroostook County), a pretty cold part of the country as well. The remarks about switching with an F3 are correct though.

[shortliner]

For BAR info, you might need to try the Maine Historic Railroad Assn. - I remember a layout in SMT way back called Eastport and Calais,Nov 1989 by Julian Andrews, and I think he got a lot of help from them. Email me if a copy of the article would be useful. He also had an article about that area with some trackplan ideas in CM away back - Nov 99 Maine Coast and Belfast and Moosehead Lake. Also an article about a small space MEC layout alled Rockland North Yard in MRR June 1999

[alcoRS1]

found some interesting articles about the potatoes business with BAR

My link

 

this one talks about the BAR Bulk potato car

My link

 

local paper talking about the the business coming back to the rail in the 1980's

My link

[tebee]

And here,I hope, is the roster I could not add before - thanks Andy for fixing this !

 

bar roster.xls

[highpeak]

That 1983 Bangor Daily News article about the trucking strike pretty well sums up why potatoes don't ride the rails. Look at the transit times to market: three days to Portland, four to five for Boston and seven to ten to NYC. The line from Northern Maine Jct to Rigby was in much better shape back then, lots of 10mph slow orders these days, crews running out of hours, parked trains and so on.

Plenty of truckers looking for back-hauls too, so the sight of long blocks of BAR reefers won't be coming back any time soon.

One interesting aspect of the spud hauling business was the the peak and trough of power demand was the opposite of Great Lakes ore hauling, so BAR power that was surplus in the summer was leased out to (I think) the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie.

The reefers went west during the summer time as they were surplus to requirement. Bear in mind too that in winter, the reefers weren't iced, in fact they required heaters to prevent the taters from freezing. But the insulation characterstics were the same.

[highpeak]

For a small road that had to watch its finances carefully, the BAR was a class act. In the late 70s one of the venerable F3s emerged from the works looking pretty spiffy.

It was at Northern Maine Jct with the business train, also looking pretty sharp.

Carrying the markers was the Burnt Hill, shame it wasn't a brighter day (and shame on me for having B&W loaded that day)

[highpeak]

One of the challenges to modelling the BAR (or really any of the New England roads that hauled pulpwood) is representing some of the cars that were hacked around to carry wood. This one wouldn't be too much of a problem as long as it ran loaded. I am not sure how you would model the ends if it was empty, though it probably wouldn't matter much if the viewing angle was high. They were painted a rather weird green as I recall, a bit like Penn Central

I don't think anybody makes the more normal racks either.

The boxcar fleet is a bit less of a challenge.

[scaro]

A colour shot of a model of one of the BAR pulpwood cars, in TT of all scales: http://www.ttscale.com/photos/w-colect_2.htm

 

Ben

[highpeak]

A colour shot of a model of one of the BAR pulpwood cars, in TT of all scales: http://www.ttscale.com/photos/w-colect_2.htm

 

Ben

That looked pretty good. There were at least two styles of door, I have a picture of the type modelled there but it's not very good quality.

 

The only road-specific model I know of is a kit by Northeastern (I think) for the long cars built by Magor for both BAR and MEC. The kit is fun to build if you enjoy chopping up little pieces of wood, the challenge is getting it to weigh anything when empty. The real thing had a similar problem in the other direction, you couldn't actually load them to capacity.

[sunshine coast]

Posted back in the mists of time on Rmweb version ???

hope it may be of some use ...

 

Woodchip car

 

Regards Trevor..

[Northpoint]

If you look hard enough on ebay you might find an Atlas HO GP38 in BAR colours - ref 9116, 9117 or 9118, released May 2002.

[Allegheny1600]

Thanks Nick!

One has arrived just the other day, sans numbers so i fancy doing it as 88 - well it is a nice shade of blue (not too different to the S&DJR!!!).

When i've a bit of track on my challenge layout, i'll post a pic on here!

Cheers,

John E.

[doctor quinn]

Thought you may be interested in a couple of BAR cars I did to use on Wheelock Mill;

 

The first is a Con-Cor/AHM PS1 40' boxcar with the roof cut off and the sides raised using styrene sheet and Evergreen I section for the strengthening rib on top of the original sides. on the protoype, the sliding doors were replaced with hinged ones of plywood - styrene on the model. Paint is Tamiya Coral Blue and decals are by Highball. The one in Highpeak's post is a AAR 40'boxcar with Dreadnought ends and has had the side doors sealed up - it pays to work from photos.

 

 

The second is an old Bachmann pulpwood rack body from an NMRA meet, Roundhouse trucks and underframe knocked up from styrene and oddments. Painted Tamiya Hull Red with decals pieced together from various sources including Fox Transfers.

 

 

All the best

 

Nick