Tracking news and events in the railroad industry

The Boston & Maine on the eve of Guilford

	Until it gave way to the new Fleet Center in 1998, the 1928 facade of Boston’s North Station (home of Boston Garden) clearly identified the railroad that was centered there. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	A shot from the “railfan bridge” at East Deerfield yard is probably mandatory in any collection of B&M photos. We’ll get that requirement out of the way with this view of the short-lived road slug set (slug unit 100 with GP40-2 parents 300 and 301) leaving town for another attack on the Berkshire grades. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	Well on their way up the hill, a mixed set of GP38-2s and GP40-2s climbs through the snows of Shelburne Falls, Mass., on a cold January afternoon, headed for the summit that lies deep inside Hoosac Tunnel. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	On a much warmer day in the hills of western Massachusetts, a GP40-2 trio swings through Erving, headed for Portland with an eastbound freight out of Mechanicville. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	A loaded Bow coal train roars up the grade through Orange, Mass., with a B&M GP38-2 leading a mix of seven B&M and Conrail four-axle diesels. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	The B&M’s six GP18s were personal favorites. The classic lines of engine 1754 are outlined in this panned shot at Shirley, Mass. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	On the southern end of the Connecticut River Line near Bernardston, Mass, Canadian Pacific runthrough train CPSP ( Newport, Vt., to Springfield, Mass.) swings through an s-curve behind two B&M GP9s and a CP Alco C-424. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	Way up north on the same line, train EDWH (East Deerfield to Whitefield, NH) rolls along the Connecticut River near Norwich, Vt., in the care of a pair of GP9s. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	In the early 1980s most general freight into the Boston area moved on East Deerfield-Salem train EDSA. It was scheduled into Boston before dawn, but a heavy snowstorm has delayed it this February day as it creeps through drift-covered Somerville behind a GP9 quartet. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	On a hot June evening, local freight BO-1 is ready to return to Boston via Waltham after switching the cold storage warehouse at the end of the weedy Bemis branch in Watertown. Today the tracks here are long gone and the seeming indestructible warehouse has been replaced by a new condo/office complex. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	Another scene of branchline railroading is this shot of local freight NA-1 eastbound on the Hillsboro Branch near Milford, NH, behind a solo GP9. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	Prior to 1986 and sale of the Conway Branch to the state of New Hampshire, the Ossippee gravel train was an all-B&M operation. On a hot summer morning, three bright blue GP9s haul northbound BODO through Sanbornville. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	The B&M expanded into Connecticut in 1982 when it took over a cluster of former Conrail branch lines. Local freight WA-1 out of Waterbury is running south along the Naugatuck River at Beacon Falls on Metro North trackage. Photo by Tom Nelligan.
	We end the brief tour in Mt. Tom, Mass., not with one of the big coal trains that terminate at the power plant here but rather with ancient SW1 1127 on Springfield-based local freight SP-1, about to crawl down an industrial siding to pick up a car on a quiet October afternoon. Photo by Tom Nelligan.

By Tom Nelligan/Photos by the Author
Originally published January 15, 2007.

In rail the railroad world, as in life, what’s here today may not be around tomorrow. So it’s always a good idea to enjoy what’s in front of you while you can. Back in 1983, it was apparent that the purchase of the Boston & Maine by Guilford Transportation Industries would bring some big changes to New England’s largest locally-owned railroad. On one hand, the sale successfully concluded the financial reorganization that had begun with the B&M’s 1970 bankruptcy, and without the loss of corporate identity and local control that inclusion in Conrail had meant for the other Northeastern bankrupts. But at the same time, it was also clear that days were numbered for the “classic” B&M image as the Guilford organization put its own people in charge and its own ideas into play.

The previous dozen years had been something of a roller coaster for the B&M. The company had declared bankruptcy in 1970, a victim of truck competition, a shrinking New England industrial base, deferred maintenance, and poor management. Liquidation or inclusion in Conrail were both real possibilities, but a hard-working management team headed by president Alan Dustin pulled things together and convinced the Federal court that was overseeing reorganization that the railroad could make it on its own. There was a huge marketing push, and traffic was stabilized around a core of paper, pulpwood, lumber, feed grain and food products. Branch lines that were beyond hope were trimmed back to save costs, and a major cash infusion came from the sale of Boston-area commuter trackage to the MBTA. By the early 1980s the revitalization of the line was much in evidence on a busy railroad with good track and a fleet of largely new or rebuilt EMD locomotives painted a bright Imron blue.

Trios of bright blue GP40-2s and GP38-2s ruled the Portland, Maine to Mechanicville, New York mainline. Over on the Springfield, Massachusetts to White River Junction, Vermont Connecticut River Line heavy lash-ups of GP9s and GP18s pooled with CV and CP power on the daily run-throughs from the north. Mechanicville had a busy hump yard, Boston still had respectable freight facilities including an intermodal terminal, and EMD switchers could still be found shuffling cars in small yards all across the railroad. The B&M had become an impressive little operation, run by people who cared about what they were doing. Unlike today’s mega-railroads, it had a sense of place and tradition that made it as much of a New England icon as covered bridges or maple syrup. It had the appeal of an underdog that had finally won the day.

With the Guilford era emerging between 1983-1984, I made a special effort to document the entire 1574-mile Boston & Maine from end to end and top to bottom--from Portland to Rotterdam Junction, and from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the recently acquired ex-New Haven branches in central Connecticut. These photos were among those that wound up in a long out-of-print book that I put together in 1986 called Bluebirds and Minutemen (McMillan Publications), where they were joined by contributions from a half-dozen fellow photographers who had also spent a lot of time around the B&M in the decade before Guilford. It was a farewell to an era, although looking back now, it doesn’t seem like it’s been over twenty years. Today, of course, the B&M exists as something of a ghostly presence in the Guilford/Pan Am world, as a corporate entity that owns tracks and locomotives but no longer has an operational identity in a system that ironically is now painting diesels blue again. A significant part of the B&M’s early-1980s route mileage has been abandoned, embargoed, or transferred to other operators in the intervening years, the locomotives seen here are gone, as are most of the union and management people who kept things going back then.

Such is life. Enjoy things while you can.

About the Author
Tom Nelligan grew up in southern Connecticut and lives outside Boston, where he works as a senior engineer for an instrumentation company. Since 1967 his articles and photos have appeared in Trains, Railfan & Railroad, Passenger Train Journal, and Railpace.