Portsmouth – Dover railway line

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portsmouth NH – Dover NH
as of 1999
Society: PAR
Route length: 17.67 km
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend
Route - straight ahead
 from Boston
Station without passenger traffic
 0.00 Portsmouth NH
   
 to Portland
   
 North Mill Pond
   
 1.35 Freemans Point NH
   
 3.17 Piscataqua NH
   
 5.10 Rollins Farm NH
Station without passenger traffic
 5.81 Dye Plant (formerly Ship Yard)
   
 Connection (formerly Pease AFB)
   
 6.76 Newington NH
   
 Great Bay
   
 7.58 Dover Point NH
   
 8.82 Hilton NH
   
 10.81 Bellamy NH
   
 12.71 Cushing NH
   
 14.51 Goods connection of a factory
   
 15.48 Sawyer NH
   
 16.87 Dover NH Folsom Street
   
 Cocheco River
   
 approx. 17.6 Dover NH Chestnut Street (until 1897)
   
 17.67 Dover NH ( Wedge Station )
   
 from Wilmington
Route - straight ahead
 after Agamenticus

The Portsmouth – Dover railway is a single-track railway line in New Hampshire ( United States ).

history

The plans for the route go back to 1842. On December 21 of this year, the Portsmouth and Dover Railroad was established. The founding treaty was renewed on December 29, 1848, January 8, 1853 and July 7, 1866. The standard gauge 17.67 kilometer long railway line from Portsmouth to Dover finally opened on February 1, 1874. On the same day, the Eastern Railroad leased the company for 50 years. In the mid-1890s, the small freight shed at the junction of the line in Dover was closed. In 1897 the passenger station in Dover was also rebuilt. The former own terminus of the line on Chestnut Street was given up in favor of a joint station with the Boston and Maine Railroad .

On January 1, 1900, Boston & Maine finally bought the train. Due to the falling numbers of passengers, the state decided to convert the bridge over the Great Bay into a combined road / rail bridge in the 1920s. On August 12, 1933, the passenger traffic on the rail between Portsmouth and Dover ended, as did the through freight traffic. A new road bridge over Great Bay went into operation and buses took over the transport duties. In 1934 the railway bridge was demolished and the line interrupted. From Dover and Portsmouth, connecting freight continued to Dover Point and Newington respectively. The section from Dover Point to a factory south of Sawyer went out of service in 1936, and in March 1938 the further line to Sawyer. The official shutdown of these two sections and the dismantling of the facilities took place in 1941. In the mid-1950s, a siding was built southeast of Newington to the newly built Pease Air Force Base .

After the bankruptcy of Boston & Maine, Guilford Transportation took over operations on the two remaining sections of the route in 1983. 1986 the railway from Dover to Sawyer was closed. Only a short stump from the Dover junction to the bridge over the Cocheco River remained in operation for a few years, but was then converted into a car park.

Today only the section from Portsmouth to the Dye Plant in Newington exists to connect the industrial facilities there to the rail network. It continues to be used daily by Pan Am Railways , which emerged from Guilford Transportation in 2006. The connection to the airport is no longer used regularly, but has not yet officially closed.

Route description

The line begins in Portsmouth and branches off the Portland – Portsmouth railway just before the bridge over the Piscataqua River . Shortly after the junction, the train crosses the mouth of North Mill Pond. It leads first along the Piscataquis to the northwest. Shortly before the former Newington station, the siding branches off to the former Pease Air Force Base, today's Portsmouth International Airport . The route ends here today. Directly after the station the route crossed on a truss bridge , the Great Bay . In addition to today's Spaulding Turnpike, the route continued northwards. In the city of Dover, the train ran along the east bank of the Bellamy River to the initial terminus on Chestnut Street. A connecting track led into the Wilmington – Agamenticus railway line . At the beginning there was a small goods shed at the junction. Dover station was later converted into a wedge station. However, the track system was still designed in such a way that continuous operation from Portsmouth on the Dover – Alton Bay railway was not possible.

Sources and further information

Individual evidence
  1. ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 1999.
  2. ↑ Distance kilometers from www.trainweb.org
literature
  • Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
Web links