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Bridgton & Saco River RR

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Bridgton & Saco River RR

Category Archives: Structures

125 Years Ago, December

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Rick in Historical, Operations, Right of Way, Structures

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A few posts from the 09 December, 1892 Bridgton News:

Baldwins aplenty:

In the first three weeks of November the Bridgton railroad carried from this immediate region 6500 barrels of apples.

The railroad is in a fine state of affairs:

The State Railroad Commissioners, who not long ago made an inspection of the Bridgton road, report that “it rides as good as any railroad in the State.”

Expansion of operational capabilities:

At the Ingall’s Road station the side track has been extended and changed so that four or five cars can now be loaded at one and the same time.

And the new Junction station is underway:

A handsome new station is being built at Bridgton Junction by the Maine Central Co.; extended platforms, awnings; etc., in short, will correspond with those at Fryeburg, and other of the larger stations.

Bridgton Mill Research at the Smithsonian

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by Rick in Historical, Reference, Structures

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Last week I spent a day in the archives of the National Museum of American History. During one of my deep Google searches for information on Forest Mills, one of the woolen mills served by the Bridgton & Saco River RR, I came upon a PDF list mentioning both the Forest and Pondicherry Mills within one of the holdings.

After a few starts and stops, I finally reached out to the museum to set up an appointment to visit and access the Lockwood Greene Collection, of which drawings of the Bridgton mills are included. Per the Smithsonian’s web site, the Lockwood Greene Company, which moved their headquarters from Boston to South Carolina in the 1960’s, was, at the time, specialists in mill design and renovation. They were some of the first industrial designers, and were well sought after. The company expanded and became renowned for many aspects of industrial and and architectural design, and operates today as a subsidiary of the CH2M Hill Company.

The Balto-DC MARC

The Balto-DC MARC

My journey to the museum started with a brief ride on the local light rail to catch the MARC train from Baltimore’s Penn Station down to Washington DC’s Union Station. Although it was misting, I enjoyed the 30 minute walk to the museum. I arrived approximately 30 minutes after the museum opened and proceeded to wait in line to enter the building. After completing the required paperwork and watching a brief video on the proper handling of archive materials and data usage, I was led to a set of three tables which functioned as my desk.

Shortly thereafter, three large folders were brought to me on a flatbed dolly and it was time to carefully flip through the drawings, many of which were E and F size sheets, hand drawn on linen. Having spent time reviewing drawings on various media, linen is by far my favorite. The drawings for the Forest and Pondicherry mills were still crisp and clean and, aside from a crease or two caused by folding and some dirt from handling, there wasn’t a tear or obliterated dimension, which is much more than I can say for some of the drawings on kraft-style paper in the collection.

Although the hope was to find a complete set of mill foundation or elevation drawings, this was not to be had. The collection included drawings for the improvements performed on the mills in 1899 (Pondicherry) and 1901 (Forest), which were the addition of the boiler houses. These drawing were quite complete and, although they were not drawings of the complete mills, do provide scale for the rest of the structures via other drawings and images within my collection. I will spend the next week or so cataloging the data I recorded during my visit and incorporating it into my other mill data.

Author Reviewing Lockwood Greene Drawings in the Archives

Author Reviewing Lockwood Greene Drawings in the Archives

The Spartanburg library of South Carolina also received a donation of Lockwood Greene drawings from CH2M Hill and I eagerly await their positing of an inventory to find out if other Bridgton mill drawings might exist. In the meantime, I look forward using the acquired information to model these structures as near to full size as I can manage, as they were important pieces of Bridgton’s economy and the B&SR’s livelihood as importers and exporters of freight.

An Alternative to Laser Cutting

05 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by Rick in Rolling Stock, Structures, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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.

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