The End of the Line

Tuesday 28th August

As I mentioned in my last post, a visit to the old Franklin and Megantic was high on my list of priorities. A little bit more history is in order here, as one of the interesting things about the two footers is in the machinations of getting them built in the first place.

The original Sandy River Railroad was completed in 1879, and ran from Farmington to Phillips, via Strong. Some five years later, the Franklin & Megantic was chartered. Shortly afterwards, construction began from a junction with the Sandy River at Strong, up to Kingfield, some 15 miles to the northeast, and through some fairly challenging terrain, including one section where the grade was 5%!

By 1894, the owners of the F and M had built an extension from Kingfield [1] to Bigelow [2], via Carrabasset [3], a further 15 miles or so north and then west. This extension was built under a separate charter, and was officially known as the Kingfield and Dead River Railroad. This despite being owned and operated by the F and M, and never having any of its own equipment. A lot of interesting financial murkiness lay behind these smaller lines, which is very well documented in Jones' 'Two Feet Between the Rails' - a hefty and very comprehensive history of the entire Sandy River system.

the Kingfield and Dead River RR

My own layout back home, based on the Bigelow to Carrabasset section, is set in 1919, well after the merger, but I've chosen to call it the Kingfield and Dead River Railroad, in part to allow for a slightly altered version of real history so I can justify a few departures from reality in my modeling - for example using equipment from other lines, which the K and DR 'acquired' for their own uses. If anyone is interested, I can expand on this alternate history another day.

Meanwhile, back to the 21st Century. After breakfasting at a funky little cafe on the outskirts of Kingfield, and armed with two sets of fresh camera batteries, I headed toward Bigelow.

One objective of today's mission was to get some good panoramic photos of the area, for future use in a backdrop for the layout. How's that for authenticity? So, a gentle cruise was in order, earmarking potential sites for capture on the way back, when the light would be better.

An easy 20 minutes, mostly following the Carrabasset River, brought me to Bigelow Station Rd, which occupies the original right of way, and right next to it, Bigelow station itself - not much altered from when this part of the line was abandoned in 1923.

Bigelow Station - now a holiday home. The road out front is on the old ROW.

A few metres further down the road I came across the remains of the old Section House, which the track maintenance crew used as their base for looking after this section of the line. Plans for this building were published in a recent issue of Maine Two Foot Quarterly. The plans had me scratching my head a bit, as the arrangement of a lean-to attached to the back of the building was not totally clear, but seeing it in flesh cleared that up nicely.

Bigelow Section House

Another useful acquisition at the convention provided me with some more period photos of this structure, and the general area, so I've got plenty of good reference material to help with my modeling endeavours. In fact if you scroll down to the bottom of the linked page, you can see the very photos to which I refer.

As a bit of a sidebar, I had the pleasure of meeting both book author Peter Barney and publisher Tim Mulina at the convention. I'm just going to have to do some more name dropping as I go along here, because in the rarified world of 2 foot modeling, all the 'Rock Stars' were there. And one didn't have to act like a groupie to enjoy a chat with them, either - all thoroughly nice people.

After finishing exploring Bigelow, it was back on the road, with frequent stops for those background photo ops.

Quite by chance, I found Huston Brook, and what I assume was the original RR bridge on what is now another snowmobile trail.

Huston Brook Bridge

Next stop was Carrabasset, which was pretty much silent as to it's RR past, but very pretty nonetheless.

Looking north up the Carrabasset River. I believe that's Mt Bigelow in the background.

As you can see from the photos, I have been very lucky with the weather in Maine, and apart from that one very welcome evening thunderstorm, have been blessed with blue skies and warm weather.

Back to Portland

Heading south again, I passed through Kingfield one last time, and after a fruitless attempt to locate the old Car Shed, the only RR building remaining there, I headed for Portland. I took a somewhat more direct route than on the way up, and arrived back mid afternoon, in time to check back into my old digs at the South Portland Econolodge, and then went off to the Maine Mall in search of a haircut - I really needed to lose my NZ 'winter coat'.

I was pretty shagged out by this point, so I got some takeaways from 'The Scottish Restaurant', and headed back to the hotel for a bit of vegeing in front of TV (66 channels of sh!t to choose from). Then, another early night - tomorrow being the official start of the convention!