Local stop A
t first glance these photos may seem to have little in common. While both were taken on the Boston & Maine, they are separated by 34 years, several miles, and are in different types of communities serving different purposes on the railroad. They do, however, share a home
state, New Hampshire, and are on branchlines. A closer look can provide similarities applicable to a model scene set almost anywhere. Let’s start with specifics. Contoocook is 76 miles northwest of Boston and was on the Claremont and Concord Branch. The train is headed compass west, and there is a railroad covered bridge 180 degrees behind the camera, just a few hundred feet away. Even though the sun is out, it is cold, bone-chilling cold. The long winter shadows make this No. 3807 or 8124 between 3:15 and 3:30, the former headed to Claremont Junction, the latter to Winchendon via Henniker Junction. The year is 1920. Seven daily except Sunday trains stopped here each way; on Sundays there were three. Con- toocook was a rural, farm service town and looked like the archetype New England village. It still does. The tracks came up in 1962. We have the train number for the second photo. It is No. 3600 eastbound at Rockingham Junc-
tion on a morning in late 1953. By then service was down to a single round trip; the gas-electric will come back as 3601 around six. The branch connected coastal Portsmouth with Manchester 40 miles west. The junction, M.P. 55.4 on the inland Boston to Portland line, had a wye connection to the mainline on the south side of the crossing. While a settlement grew up around it, Rockingham Junction existed for the convenience of the railroad. Citizens’ business could be conducted at near- by Exeter or Newmarket. The timetable gave each branchline trip a 20 to 25 minute wait by the station to meet a through train to Boston or Dover, also locals. The Flying Yankee came through here, too–flying. The depot is still there, as is half of the wye. The 30 miles behind the gas-electric, to Manchester, were abandoned in 1982. Pan Am Railways now uses the east leg of the junction and the tracks to Portsmouth. So much for specifics. Let’s look at some “universals,” starting with the equipment. Surprisingly, the doodlebug and steam locomotive are interchangeable. Boston & Maine did not fully dieselize until 1955 and was running open-platform wooden coaches behind steam in the early fifties, while the gas electric is a classic Electro-Motive Corporation product designed in the mid-1920’s to re- duce costs on local and branchline runs. “Form follows function” certainly applies to the motive power and cars but also determines the purposes of the trains and their schedules. Often more im- portant than linking on-line communities with each other, the timing for branchline runs was nor- mally built off mainline connections. That the familiar Railway Express Company baggage wagons, the hand trucks, and wide, planked platforms at Rockingham were part of “operations” is less evi- dent. It is how baggage, express, l.c.l. and mail bags were handled whether they were being moved between trains or passing through the freighthouse. Rockingham Junction had a small freight shed diagonally opposite from the depot on the main. Contoocook’s larger building, with its wide, trackside platform, was next to the depot and as large; a steel bridge plate placed from the doorway of the l.c.l. car to the platform facilitated loading and unloading shipments. The order boards are immediately recognizable as “station details.” The one on the junction’s station is out of the photo on the substantial post by the “bill box” (for waybills) by the door. Al- though the color light signals seem “modern,” Sam Insull’s North Shore Line had them in 1926. We simply accept the presence of the pole lines and wires. They were always there–back then. Railroads no longer rely on a copper web with green glass insulators for communication. Six wires drop to a short pole and phone box at Contoocook, a part of that day’s World Wide Web; and a lightning arrestor is perched on the pole to the right. Notice that the top-most wires cross the tracks, something seldom modeled. Other details include the telltale to warn of low clearance ahead, the stubbed-off pole sistered to
a new one at Contoocook (next to the station sign), the ties and spare switch points half-buried in the snow, and the myriad of bolts, joint bars and braces on the diamonds. Change the paint and trim on the buildings, re-letter the equipment, and these local stops could be just about anywhere, even on your layout.
WILLIAM C. SCHAUMBURG
38
JANUARY 2014
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