Change is the only constant. It is a very repeated expression in life and on the railway. Very often it borders on cliché. But it’s an apt phrase to describe the past four decades on Maine‘s scenic Rockland Branch, a former route of the Maine Central Railroad between Rockland and Brunswick. Over the past 40 years, this stage line has had seven different operators, the longest lasting just 11 years.
Among railroad enthusiasts, the Rockland Branch is considered one of the most iconic sections of the former MEC, perhaps eclipsed only by the famous Mountain Division. For 56 miles, the railway skirts swamps and marshes, passes over ancient drawbridges and passes through picturesque villages. It’s quintessential Maine.
However, despite its pastoral setting, the railway in this area has never been for the faint of heart. It’s a lesson that the newest operator, Midcoast Railservice (a subsidiary of New York’s Finger Lakes Railway) has learned the hard way after losing the branch’s largest customer. It is just the latest twist in a saga that dates back 175 years, when the first stretch of track was built in these parts.
ABOVE: On October 14, 1993, Maine Coast RS-11 367 (ex-Norfolk and Western and Central Vermont) drives west on the causeway at Damariscotta Mills. The empty nacelles at the front were pre-loaded with iron concentrate for a specialized cement produced at Dragon Cement in Thomaston. Timothy Franz climbed a large pine tree to enjoy this view. —Timothy Franz photo
Building the Rockland branch
The first section of what would become the Rockland Branch opened on July 5, 1849, when the Kennebec & Portland Railroad completed a branch to the west bank of the Kennebec River at Bath from its main line at Brunswick. K&P was chartered in 1836 to build a route from Portland to the state capital of Augusta, but an eight-mile branch line to Bath was a logical addition considering the city’s importance as a shipbuilding center. Located 10 miles north of the river’s mouth on the coast, Bath was an ideal location for shipbuilding because it was close to the Atlantic but also protected from storms. The first ship was built in the area in 1607, and at one time, about 25 percent of all wooden ships built in the U.S. came from one of Bath’s 22 shipyards.
The same year the K&P reached the west side of the river, the state granted a charter to build a railroad from the Kennebec River to Rockland. However, where exactly on the Kennebec River was up for debate, as the state said it could be anywhere between Richmond and Bath on the west bank (both communities were served by K&P). Proponents of Richmond argued that their city, further upriver, would provide an easier crossing of the Kennebec for the railroad. But the city of Bath was more enthusiastic in its support and offered the railroad $600,000 to convert it into the terminal. Richmond bid $150,000 for the honor and Bath won. Once that decision was made, construction of the Knox & Lincoln Railroad began. Building a railroad along the Maine coast would be no easy task, particularly due to the hard bedrock that builders had to traverse and the numerous bridges that had to be built. As one surveyor later wrote: “When we come to a river, we bridge it; when we reach a ledge, we blow it up; When we came to a cow, we surrounded it.”
ABOVE: After arriving in 2005, Maine Eastern’s FL9 488 and 489 were used almost exclusively for passenger service. September 18, 2015 would be a rare exception to that rule as they pass through a dock in Wiscasset with cargo. —Dan Nelson photo
It took more than 20 years to build the railroad from the Kennebec River to Rockland, but it finally opened on October 31, 1871. However, the line was not yet connected to the rest of the national rail network and trains had to float. cross Kennebec from Bath to Woolwich on a car ferry. This continued until October 1927, when a bridge was finally built.
The K&P on the west side of the river would eventually be purchased in the 1870s by Maine Central, which had been created in 1862 by acquiring two other railroads. The K&L on the east side of the river would remain independent until 1890, when debts from its construction finally caught up with it and it was purchased by the Penobscot Shore Line Railroad Company. The new owners renamed the line the Knox & Lincoln Railway, but after just seven months they leased it to MEC. In 1901, MEC purchased the line outright and finally united the Brunswick to Rockland Railway under one owner.
ABOVE: In a postcard-perfect scene that would have been inconceivable a few years earlier, Canadian Pacific GP20C-ECO 2279 skirts the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset with train F17 en route to Brunswick on July 24, 2021. CP operated the branch from 2020 to 2022. —Tim Hairston photo
In the early 20th century, Rockland Branch was a busy route for both freight and passenger trains; So busy, in fact, that an automatic locking signaling system was installed in 1910. Two of the line’s largest customers were Bath Iron Works, which built ships for the US Navy (and still does today), and a cement plant in Thomaston.
Passenger service was especially busy in the summer, when people took the train to Maine for vacation. Before World War II, it was common for sleeping cars to come to Rockland from Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. During the postwar boom, when the private automobile became the preferred method of travel, nearby U.S. Route 1 began to de-emphasize MEC passenger traffic; On April 4, 1959, it ran the last regularly scheduled passenger train to Rockland.
ABOVE: On the crystal clear morning of September 22, 2023, Finger Lakes B23-7 2310 crosses the New Meadows River from Brunswick to West Bath with a short train. The headpin car is a load of steel plates for Bath Iron Works that will be seen just east of here at American Steel & Aluminum. —Tim Hairston photo
Freight traffic on the line would remain stable until the 1980s, but the temporary closure and subsequent sale of the cement plant in Thomaston heralded the end of MEC ownership in Rockland Branch. In 1985, MEC (by then part of Guilford Transportation Industries) requested to abandon the line, and in 1986 the last Rigby Yard location in South Portland made its weekly run up the coast; The few customers who remained on the line began shipping their freight by road. In 1987, Guilford sold the line to the Maine Department of Transportation…
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