Railfanning in Downeast Maine
During the last week in June, we spent several days exploring some fascinating railroad sites in Coastal Maine, from well-known attractions to some unexpected surprises…
The Seashore Trolley Museum
Being our first trip to Maine, the Seashore Trolley Museum was a must-visit stop. This particular museum had been on our list of places to visit for many years. The organization dates as far back as the 1930s, and its collection of rail cars, streetcars, and road-based transit vehicles is second to none. Although advertised as a normal operating Saturday, the day we visited ended up being much more action-packed than we anticipated! The museum happened to be undertaking its yearly exhibit shuffle and spring cleaning, which involved switching many of its active and inactive railcars between display areas and storage barns, providing plenty of opportunities for filming rare movements of items in their collection.
With this being the first spring clean with a full crew of volunteers on the site since 2019, there was much more for them to do than usual, and we ended up being treated to almost a full day of exhibit movements. Non-operational cars, including examples from their extensive rapid transit car fleet, were towed around the site by the museum’s resident switcher; a GE 25 Tonner acquired from the Providence and Worcester Railroad in 2020. Streetcar movements were undertaken by a former MBTA Snowplow, while the heaviest vehicles were handled by a former Oshawa Railway Steeplecab locomotive. Fully restored cars were moved around the site under their own power and two early 20th century streetcars from Wheeling, WV, and Connecticut took care of the day’s demonstration rides.
Finding that much of the collection was kept out of sight from visitors (due to being inactive or under-restoration) we signed a waiver in the afternoon for a guided tour of the back shop and storage yards. Our excellent tour guide granted us full access to all that we wanted to see, including several unique cars such as a Budapest Subway Car, Berlin Streetcar, and Interurban cars from Los Angeles, Chicago’s North Shore Line, and Philadelphia. We soon found that we had run out of time to ride the demonstration line, between videoing the switching action and taking the back shop tour, but this gives us a good reason to return!
Tracking Down Pan Am Operations
One of our secondary railfanning goals was to capture some Pan Am Railways action, given the possible impending takeover by CSX. We first stopped a little south of the border at Rockingham Junction, New Hampshire, on the former Boston and Maine mainline, however after a couple of hours of waiting, we left with only some Amtrak Downeaster catches. Although we did meet a local railfan who offered some insight into catching the local on the nearby Portsmouth branch.
As we continued north into Maine, we made a stop at the large Pan Am yard and locomotive facility in Waterville with the hopes of catching some action there. Unfortunately, the yard was mostly quiet, with the exception of a lone Geep switching cars, which sadly never made it far enough out of yard limits for a photo. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable exploring these unfamiliar mainline locations.
The Downeast Scenic Railroad
Beginning operations in 2010, the Downeast Scenic Railroad is a relative newcomer to the Maine tourist railroad scene. Initially operating on a short stretch of state-owned track in the town of Ellsworth, the railroad moved its operations northeast to Washington Junction, where it now operates on several more miles of former Maine Central trackage through Ellsworth, to a river bridge on the west end of town. With just one run per day on weekends only, we had to plan much of our day around catching them - hence the reason we couldn’t spend more time searching for Pan Am action.
At 1.30pm, their resident ALCO S4 switcher departed with a full load of passengers in tow, and we began our chase. Before heading west to Ellsworth, the train made an interesting movement over the railroad’s reconstructed wye between the former Maine Central line to Calais, and the long-abandoned Sorrento Branch (which connected with ferries to Bar Harbor). This is as far north/east as the train can go, as the rest of the line to Calais is now a rail trail. From here, the train headed west, returning through the Washington Junction yard again, and on to Ellsworth. With the run operating at a leisurely speed of around 10-15 miles per hour, the chase was fairly relaxed, and we caught the train at several interesting spots along the route. We additionally ran into Maine Coast Railfan during the chase, who was also collecting content for his channel.
Roadside Railfanning along US Route 1
For our return trip south, we decided to take the scenic route and forgo the monotony of I95. Besides, we had a few places that we wanted to see along the Route 1 corridor, and we figured we’d probably find a few more unknown ones. This assumption was confirmed no more than a few miles south of Ellsworth when we caught sight of Cascade Green text out of the corner of our eyes. We circled around to find around 4-5 Burlington Northern trailers parked in a semi-abandoned-looking truck lot.
As we progressed further along Route 1, we again caught a glimpse of something unexpected and made a u-turn to find what appeared to be a former gas-electric Doodlebug now serving as a panini shop, along with a building that looked very much like a railroad station. Some online research revealed that this was in fact an original Bangor and Aroostook station building, however, no further info on the doodlebug-looking car could be found.
Upon reaching Belfast, Maine, we took a slight detour off of Route 1 to check out the City Point station of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad. The B&ML was an independently operated short line that handled local freight business until customers dried up in the early 1990s. Since then, the line has operated as a tourist railroad but has encountered several hurdles, including a dispute with the town of Belfast in 2007 which led to their yard and trackage in the city limits being torn up for a rail trail to be built. This left the remote (formerly independent) museum station at City Point as the southern terminus of the line. Scheduled trains don’t run this far anymore, and the site has a somewhat forlorn appearance to it. Despite this, volunteers from the railroad continue to undertake preventative maintenance to the infrastructure and equipment located here. We met one such volunteer who gave us a brief tour of a former mail car, now grounded and used as a storage shed.
Our next stop involved another brief detour from the route, to the small community of Alna, Maine. This is the location of the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway - another fairly new tourist railroad - which operates on a short rebuilt segment of one of Maine’s many abandoned 2ft narrow gauge lines. The museum was closed at our time of visiting, but we had a quick look around and grabbed some shots of the equipment within view.
Our final Maine stop was for breakfast the next morning at the Bagel Caboose in Kittery (which we also stopped at on the way up), a hidden gem on the edge of a roundabout that utilizes an actual woodside caboose (complete with model trains on display inside) and serves up a great selection of freshly made bagels! This was a fitting end to an excellent railfanning adventure that absolutely has us wanting to return for more!