Although I plan to model 1907, one takes whatever historical information is available and extrapolates what they need from it. I am lucky to have found B&SR freight records from 1908 at the Bridgton Historical Society and couldn’t have asked for anything closer to what I wanted.

The current plan is to operate my layout over a thirty day period covering the end of September and two to three weeks into October, simply because I want to model the fall colors of Maine. Who would’t want to model a scene like the one below?

Today I will share daily freight data from September and October of 1908, which expands upon the generalized inbound/outbound freight summaries were provided in my last post.

The Sundays of the month’s can be noted on the graph as the days freight was not shipped, which matched the B&SR “passenger service every day except Sunday” policy. The low volume of freight delivered on the 7th was due to Labor Day, which officially became an official holiday in 1887.

Here are the September and October 1908 calendars for reference:

At first glance, the data seemed to indicate to me that the railroad did not carry much freight originating on and destined for stations on the line. This data, generated a month or so prior to my February 2015 trip, has been determined to be flawed in that regards. I had assumed all freight sent to the Junction was shipped off-line. Between the data I brought back from the recent BHS trip and an email exchange with Bill Shelley, I learned the assumption was not entirely correct.

The new data has provided some basic insight into the way the B&SR practiced freight movements and at least gave an indication that everything that was delivered to Bridgton Junction did not leave on the MeC.

I’ll leave this topic hanging until a future post.