A very condensed story of a remarkable two footer.

        



                       A Brief Summary of the Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad: 1835 to 1933.

    The Baltimore and Ohio Railway opened the first American commercial line in 1830, a scant three years of the Rain Hill Trials in the U.K. three years earlier. By 1835, the Maine legislature introduced a proposal to build a rail line from an ice free port in southern Maine to Quebec to facilitate trade. Sailing craft were at the mercy of ice and storms. In the following generation, railroads became the dot com of the age. The prevailing notion was buy railroad stock, and get rich. The utility of railroads was undeniable in an age where everything had hitherto traveled by canal barge or at the speed of oxen. 
        

    Nothing much happened north of Portland, until 1867 for two reasons: one the Civil War had brought venturesome investment to a standstill, and Maine was an unpopulous agrarian and sea faring state in a far corner of the Union. There simply was not as much to invest in, compared to the burgeoning Midwest and Californian cities served by the Transcontinental Railroads. 
     

    It is on the heels of the Transcontinental success that renewed attention was given to a North/South route to tap the Canadian market of Quebec, and serve as a conduit for Maine produce, most famously potatoes, dairy, and lumber. Funding was generally provided by villages in Maine, notably Wiscasset, in the form of common stock, as well as some individual investing. The general sales thrust was, "buy railroad stock and you shall prosper."
    

    Building a railroad is geographically complex and it is expensive. To keep costs down, the most level route must surveyed, even it means winding around hills, which in turn means generally following river and stream courses. Making a cut in a hillside with pick and shovel, or spanning a chasm is a profound financial undertaking. As to rail and rolling stock, a substantial saving could be incurred by using the smaller narrow gauge commercially available. Thus was the direction taken by the ambitious Wiscasset and Quebec railroad, which assumed a variety of place names, such as Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington as the desired terminus varied by such events as being eclipsed by the standard gauge Maine Central in the race for Canada. As a guess from memory, I believe the WWF spanned a seventy mile passage, at its zenith. 
    

    Both these decisions, in addition to cut throat competition by the Maine Central, doomed this small, but determined public effort. In the navigation along stream beds and rivers, annual washouts, flooding, and overflowing ice flows in the Spring decimated long stretches of the 2 foot line that closely paralleled waterways, such as the Sheepscot River; idyllic in summer, and a monster in the spring thaw to any nearby man made structure. Severe New England blizzards also had a devastating effect upon rail travel, causing massive delays of time sensitive dairy and potatoes. Heroic efforts were made to clear the lines using wedge plows, and it was not uncommon for the snow to pile up under the plow car derailing both snow plow car and locomotive. On one such occasion, in 1905, a snow clearing train derailed, stranding a crew for several days who stayed alive by keeping the fire lit. 
    

    A ready market developed for agricultural products along the line, as it wended up the Sheepscot Valley to the mid-southern interior of Maine, but among other things, potato cars required insulated and heated cars to keep the potatoes from freezing, which would ruin them. This alone was an expensive proposition of building and maintaining coal fired stoves on narrow gauge cars that in turn had a reduced useable payload taken up by double walled insulation. And the primary ingredient of produce and dairy is water, which is heavy, meant that one could not simply stack things to the roof, as the excess of weight would be too much for the truss rods, arch bar trucks, and wooden bridges. Not to mention, a narrow gauge locomotive is lighter than its standard gauge counterpart by far, and had its own service limitations in terms of tractive effort.

    Any items reaching the terminus of Wiscasset for transshipment anywhere south, such as Boston or New York, required off loading at a dual gauge depot onto the competitor Maine Central, thus further reducing the utility of this narrow gauge venture to that of a back water feeder line. Labor costs were exponentially driven up for the crews required to re-load items from a narrow gauge car to a standard gauge car or onto a sea going ship.   
    
    The rail line was kept operating, hemorrhaging money decade after decade, by dint of the most perseverant work ethic, finally turning a slim profit during the latter part of WW I for two years, and then continued into a slow decline into the Internal Combustion Age. If the previous factors were not enough to bring this enterprise to its knees, matters were made worse by the recklessness of railroad engineers who took a certain glee in "pushing the envelope" which resulted in a vicious diamond crossing collision where the narrow gauge cut across the standard gauge Maine Central and finally in 1933 a speeding engineer tried to "straighten out a sun kink" laying the entire train onto its side. That was the final straw.

    Today, the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Preservation Society runs a three mile stretch of track from Alna, Maine, north of the old station, about 15 miles north of Wiscasset. When I road the line, an exquisite Porter 0-4-2 (a former Chicago EL unit from about 1905, prior to electrification starting around 1911), which was a typical sort of piece one would have found on the turn-of-the-century WW&F. To contain cost, salvaged subway rail was used for track. Two extant narrow gauge coaches from its Wiscasset and Quebec incarnation (it never went further than mid-southern inland Maine) restored to turn of the century perfection trailed behind an open flat car and trailed by a caboose combine rounded out the train, which huffed and shrieked along the archeologic roadbed through meadows and woods. Cinders peppered my white shirt (I was informed by the fireman that such an event would be charged "extra" for the privilege) and savory coal smoke perfumed the clean Maine air.

    The next year, 2002, the Porter was down for flu replacement, looking forlorn in an engine shed, and the consist was pulled by an interesting, but growly little jack driven shunting diesel. I don't know what has become of the WW&F, but a recent glimpse of the website, wwfry.org, shows a gleaming narrow gauge consolidation, quite a step up from the diminutive Porter, and a roster of 2016 events, so it is apparently up and steaming.

    A considerable amount of archival research has been printed under the auspices of the late Linwood Moody. My briefest of summaries is gleaned from "Twp Feet to Tidewater," by Rovert C. Jones and David L. Register, Evergreen Press, Burlington, Vermont: 2002.