Seboomook Lake and Saint John Railroad

Seboomook Lake and Saint John Railroad
Locale	Maine
Dates of operation	1921–1929
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Length	18 miles (29 km) [1]

Last updated February 21, 2019

The Seboomook Lake and Saint John Railroad was a forest railway built to transfer pulpwood between drainage basins in the Maine North Woods. The railroad was built slowly in preparation for anticipated pulpwood harvesting, but onset of the Great Depression caused the railroad to be dismantled when harvesting plans were delayed.

A forest railway, forest tram, timber line, logging railway or logging railroad is a mode of railway transport which is used for forestry tasks, primarily the transportation of felled logs to sawmills or railway stations.

Pulpwood refers to timber with the principal use of making wood pulp for paper production.

A drainage basin is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. The drainage basin includes all the surface water from rain runoff, snowmelt, and nearby streams that run downslope towards the shared outlet, as well as the groundwater underneath the earth's surface. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at lower elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins, which in turn drain into another common outlet.

History

Spruce forests of the Maine North Woods were a source of pulpwood through the 20th century. Trees were bucked into 4-foot (1.22-meter) lengths and loaded onto sleds towed by draft animals or log haulers to the nearest river or lake. Log drives would float the pulpwood logs to a downstream paper mill when the snow and ice melted.^[2] Pulpwood growing in the upper Saint John River drainage was destined for Great Northern Paper Company's Millinocket mill on the West Branch Penobscot River. The problem was getting the pulpwood out of the north-flowing Saint John River into the east-flowing Penobscot River.

A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea, a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. Spruces are large trees, from about 20–60 m tall when mature, and have whorled branches and conical form. They can be distinguished from other members of the pine family by their needles (leaves), which are four-sided and attached singly to small persistent peg-like structures (pulvini) on the branches, and by their cones, which hang downwards after they are pollinated. The needles are shed when 4–10 years old, leaving the branches rough with the retained pegs. In other similar genera, the branches are fairly smooth.

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Maine is the 12th smallest by area, the 9th least populous, and the 38th most densely populated of the 50 U.S. states. It is bordered by New Hampshire to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest respectively. Maine is the easternmost state in the contiguous United States, and the northernmost state east of the Great Lakes. It is known for its jagged, rocky coastline; low, rolling mountains; heavily forested interior; and picturesque waterways, as well as its seafood cuisine, especially lobster and clams. There is a humid continental climate throughout most of the state, including in coastal areas such as its most populous city of Portland. The capital is Augusta.

Bucking is the process of cutting a felled and delimbed tree into logs. This can be a complicated process because logs destined for plywood, lumber, and pulp each have their own price and specifications for length, diameter, and defects. Significant value can be lost by sub-optimal bucking. Cutting from the top down is overbucking and from the bottom up is underbucking.

An 18-mile (29 km) rail route from Fifth Saint John Pond to the Penobscot River at Seboomook Lake was surveyed in 1910 after Great Northern Paper Company acquired forest lands along the Baker Branch Saint John River. Construction delayed by World War I began in the summer of 1919. Ten miles (16 km) of right of way were cleared that year and 60,000 logs were cut for railroad ties and telephone poles. Bridges were built in 1920 and two wharves were completed on Seboomook Lake for steamboats bringing supplies to the railroad. The first was at the railroad's South Terminal and the other was at the northern end of the ancient northwest carry from Moosehead Lake. A sawmill was built at South terminal that winter; and an engine house, offices, cook shacks, and living quarters for a 300-man construction crew were erected in the spring of 1921. The old 2 ft (610 mm) gauge Carry Pond and Carry Brook Railroad over northwest carry was rebuilt in 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge to transfer railway equipment from Coburn Steamboat Company barges on Moosehead Lake to the Seboomook Lake barge Pittston launched on June 7, 1921. Barges initially delivered a narrow gauge work train of flatcars and dump cars. It was followed by a steam shovel, teams of horses, and a standard gauge Climax locomotive with fifteen railroad cars to carry eight to ten cords (29 to 36 m³ ) of pulpwood each.^[3]

Baker Branch Saint John River river in the United States of America

The Baker Branch Saint John River is a 48.0-mile-long (77.2 km) river. This river is a tributary of the Saint John River, flowing in the Maine North Woods, in Maine, in the Northeastern United States.

World War I 1914–1918 global war originating in Europe

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

A railroad tie or crosstie or railway sleeper is a rectangular support for the rails in railroad tracks. Generally laid perpendicular to the rails, ties transfer loads to the track ballast and subgrade, hold the rails upright and keep them spaced to the correct gauge.

The Climax locomotive had been built in 1910 for the Conway Company of Conway, New Hampshire, and was delivered to Moosehead Lake by the Maine Central Railroad in July. New Baldwin 2-6-2 #1 arrived at Moosehead Lake about the same time. Climax #2 arrived at South Terminal on July 6, but Baldwin #1 was returned to the manufacturer. Twelve miles (19 km) of track were laid before construction was halted in the autumn of 1922. Telephone line was strung in 1923, but the Climax rested in the engine house until construction resumed in 1926. Construction was again halted when rails reached Fourth Saint John Pond as attention shifted to pulpwood delivery over the Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad. No pulpwood trains ever ran to Seboomook Lake. The railroad was ultimately used by a Ford truck with flanged wheels to deliver supplies from the lake to logging camps through World War II, and rails were removed converting the right of way to a truck road after the war.^[3]

Conway, New Hampshire Town in New Hampshire, United States

Conway is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. It is the most populous community in the county, and the most populous in the state north of Lake Winnipesaukee. The population was 10,115 at the 2010 census, more than 1/5 of the total population of Carroll County. The town is near the southeastern edge of White Mountain National Forest. Cathedral Ledge and Echo Lake State Park are in the west. There are five villages in the town: Conway, North Conway, Center Conway, Redstone and Kearsarge. Additionally, it shares a portion of the village of Intervale with the neighboring town of Bartlett.

The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1956. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades the world's largest producer of steam locomotives, but struggled to compete as demand switched to diesel locomotives. Baldwin produced the last of its 70,000-plus locomotives in 1956 and went out of business in 1972.

Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-6-2 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and two trailing wheels. This arrangement is commonly called a Prairie.

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References

↑ "Eagle Lake & West Branch Railroad". Richard N. Symonds, Jr. Retrieved 2012-12-20.
↑ "The Northern: The Way I Remember" (PDF). John E. Mcleod. Retrieved 2012-12-19.
1 2 Gove, William G. The Railroad that went Nowhere in Down East magazine

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[1] "Eagle Lake & West Branch Railroad". Richard N. Symonds, Jr. Retrieved 2012-12-20.

[jem-2] "The Northern: The Way I Remember" (PDF). John E. Mcleod. Retrieved 2012-12-19.

[wgg-3] 1 2 Gove, William G. The Railroad that went Nowhere in Down East magazine