Category Archives: Rolling Stock

Simply, Red

16 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Historical, Reference, Rolling Stock

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In 1908 Hugh G. Boutell made his first visit to a Maine two footer, the B&SR. Immediately thereafter he submitted an article to “Railway and Locomotive Engineering,” published in the November volume of that year.

Hugh traveled the route many “day trippers” did in the Northeast: A ride out to Bridgton Junction via the Maine Central, a ride up to Harrison on the B&SR, then a leisurely steamboat float back to Portland.

A couple of the highlights of the article, in my opinion, are:

  • Hugh captured an image of engine #3 in front of the fourth stall of the Bridgton round house
    • According to this image, “Roundhouse at Bridgton,” the forth stall was built far in advance of #7’s arrival
  • Locomotive #1 is still in use
    • This confirms my belief that #1 was being used (per picture showing it was fitted with an automatic coupler; Jones pg 39), rather than being shoved onto a siding (per Jones pg 70)

With this article in hand, a few insights can be gained:

    • The picture of Mel Caswell (Jones pg 224) was likely taken by Boutell on this trip.
      • McLin attributes that picture of Mel to Boutell in “24 inch Gauge RR at Bridgton,” pg 20.
      • If one can visualize walking around to its right side of #3 in “Roundhouse at Bridgton,” it matches closely with its position with respect to the car shop.
    • The photos of Harrison, attributed to Boutell in Jensen’s Short and Narrow Rails #15, are from 1908 or later, not 1901 per the article.

In the end, the title of this post is not a tribute to the Pop music composers for “Miami Vice” or “American Psycho,” but simply a reference to the color of the Standard Oil tank car in 1908: Red.

Equipment Register

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Historical, Reference, Rolling Stock

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After the Bridgton & Saco and the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes came under ownership of the Maine Central, the railroad’s equipment was added to The Official Railway Equipment Register. This is, to the best of my knowledge, a fair assessment, as I have not been able to locate a B&SR list in Registers that pre-date MeC acquisition.

Below is a PDF copy of the B&SR equipment list from March 1914, as published in the April 1914 edition of the Register.

The Official Railway Equipment Register Apr 1914 – B&SR

A complete digital copy may be viewed here. For the Sandy fans, the SR&RL list precedes the B&SR list on pg 342 in the complete copy.

Note that the sole tank car on the line at this time is #22. Review of the 1912 through 1917 Registers confirmed this was consistent and not a typographical error within a given year’s publication.

Note that most of these scans, if you choose to download a PDF version, are between 100 and 400 MB in size.

Portland Box Car Roofs

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Historical, Reference, Rolling Stock

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During the last week I searched a large portion of my engineering drawing collection for information on the roofs of the B&SR’s box cars. The search gave me the opportunity to also catalog more than 200 drawings, which I was sorely in need of doing.

While I was hoping to find information on the Laconia cars built in 1882, I was not successful. The search, however, did turn up this bit of useful information pertaining to the Portland-built box car roof surfacing:

Excerpt from Portland drawing of 28' & 30' B&SR Box Cars

Excerpt from Portland drawing of 28′ & 30′ B&SR Box Cars

The drawing excerpt represents the 28 and 30 foot cars built for the 1895 through 1900 orders.

If anyone is aware of a drawing or order specification for the 1882 Laconia cars, please share with us.

History: The Loss of Information

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Historical, Rolling Stock

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History is the search for information that was once readily available.

It is interesting that when that historical moment was the present, all of the information we, as modelers could want, was readily available. Now, more than 100 years later, we scour photos, drawings, books and any other resource we can find to understand even the basics of what was.

How did the railroad manage trains in 1907? What color were the stations painted in 1898? What were the boxcar roofs made of?

This latter question has recently been debated, again, on the Maine On2 Yahoo! group. The group is a great asset, as it prompts me to consider and question my direction on designing and building. When the construction of the boxcar roofs surfaced again, I turned to Google, the library and other information outlets. There are great pictures on the On2 group that show metal sheathing on the top of 1898 Sandy River boxcars, and comments that the B&SR cars were sheathed as well.

Was this the way it was at the beginning, when the first cars were built, or sometime later on, as in the sheathing was added as a maintenance effort? A great publication I found is “Boxcars-The Roof Problem,” by Randy Hess, which indicates that metal sheathed roofs did not become commonplace until the 1890s. The comment is that they were not commonplace until the ’90s, which means the application was started sometime earlier.

Were the Maine narrow gauge builders, such as Laconia, at the forefront of this movement, the forefront of this new technology? That appears to be the opinion of some on the group, and there is material to substantiate this within a certain timeframe. For myself, it is a matter of time. Did the first boxcar out of Laconia have a double wooden roof, which was commonplace in 1883, or a single wood with metal sheathing, the abnorm?

I don’t have the final answer, as I only have a photo of the interior of a B&SR boxcar (below) which shows it had the typical board roof, but it doesn’t tell me whether or not there was another layer of wood planking on top of it, or metal sheet. There are photos within Jones’ book, on pages 208, 209 and 218 which show wooden roofs on the boxcars. Based upon the end view of one of the boxcars, I would surmise the cars were built with double sheathed wood plank roofs.

Maybe, at sometime in the future, a piece of history will materialize that shows all of the construction details of the B&SR boxcars. Until then, with regards to my modeling, I am going to build at least some of my B&SR boxcars with double plank wooden roofs and consider others with metal roofs, as it does add additional detail and character to the cars and I like that. I will mull it over.

An Alternative to Laser Cutting

05 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Rolling Stock, Structures, Uncategorized

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My new toy arrived Friday. After watching a clip about the Cricut Explore on Trainmasters TV, I had to have one, but was willing to wait for a sale to materialize. Sadly, Michael’s coupons explicitly state the large discounts cannot be used on Cricut products, otherwise one of those 40% or 50% coupons would have come in most handy.

With the advent of the Cricut Explore Air (the Bluetooth-equipped version), a minor discount has been applied to the regular Explore on Amazon. At $200, I have great hopes for this device. My initial thoughts of use were focused on the homes and structures surrounding the railroad, I have since been contemplating the manufacture of rolling stock, even locomotive cabs.

Once I get the unit set up, it will take some time to play with and understand its capabilities and limitations. First and foremost, I want to find out if the system registers to the sheet product to be cut, such that one piece can be removed and re-inserted, with the cutter aligning itself to the sheet’s edges and designating the same point home (0,0). After that, I’ll be looking for ways to manipulate the cut depth within the same sketch, with the intent of making scribe and score cuts within an image which also designates full depth cuts.

The toy will, unfortunately, wait. The next two months will be consumed by a significant amount of overtime, as an important test program gets underway at work. I will be working on my layout plan in the meantime, as that requires a pencil, paper and reading historical literature from time to time.