Weeks Mills – Winslow railway line
| Weeks Mills ME – Winslow ME | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Society: | WW&F | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 23.3 km | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 610 mm ( 2 foot track ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tracks: | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The railway Weeks Mills Winslow is a railway line in Maine ( United States ). It is 23.3 kilometers long. The narrow-gauge railway has a track width of 610 millimeters (2 feet ) and is completely shut down.
history
As early as 1890, the Wiscasset and Waterville Railroad was founded to connect the planned and opened in 1895 Wiscasset – Burnham railway line of the Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad with the city of Waterville . Construction began in 1898 and most of the line was completed by the end of 1899. Since it was originally planned to continue this route to Farmington , the completed section to Winslow has not yet been opened. The railway companies, which already operated a line to Farmington, did not agree to a track crossing of the new railway. A bridge construction would have become too expensive and so the railway company put the plans on file.
In 1901 the Wiscasset & Quebec and the Wiscasset & Waterville merged to form the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railroad and the line was now only completed as far as Winslow. A small engine shed was built in Winslow. The railway went into operation on June 9, 1902. Initially, the passenger trains ran from Winslow to Wiscasset.
A few years later, however, the Lewiston, Augusta and Waterville Street Railway built a tram route from Augusta via East Vassalboro, North Vassalboro and Winslow to Waterville, which ran largely parallel to the narrow-gauge railway and crossed it in East Vassalboro and just before Winslow. The WW&F lost the contract for the coal transport, which was the main source of income for the railway line, to the competition, and passenger traffic also decreased rapidly. In 1909 the last passenger trains ran between Weeks Mills and Winslow. In the summer of 1913, the North Vassalboro – Winslow section was closed and the rest of the route followed in early 1915.
Route description
The line branches off at Weeks Mills from the Wiscasset – Burnham railway line and initially runs northwest to the southern tip of China Lake . The route continues northward on the west bank of the lake to East Vassalboro and is then west of State Route 32. The terminus in Winslow was on the eastern edge of the village on Garland Road in front of the Sebasticook River .
literature
- Robert C. Jones, David L. Register: Two Feet to Tidewater. Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway. Expanded and updated edition. Vermont Evergreen Press, Burlington VT 2002, ISBN 0-9667264-3-X .
- Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
- Robert L. MacDonald: Maine Narrow Gauge Railroads. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston SC 2003, ISBN 0-7385-1179-X .