York Utilities Corporation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The York Utilities Corporation was a railway company in Maine and New Hampshire ( United States ), which owns a network of intercity trams operate.

history

The York Utilities had several predecessor companies that had built smaller tram companies along and near the coast between Saco and Portsmouth . The Mousam River Railroad between Sanford and Springvale was opened as early as 1893 . The line had a rail connection to the Portland – Rochester railway line in Springvale . In 1899 the Sanford and Cape Porpoise Railway opened the line from Sanford via Kennebunk and Town House to Cape Porpoise on the coast. In 1900 the Atlantic Shore Line Railway (ASLR) was founded, which opened its first line from Kennebunkport to Town House on July 4th of the same year. On April 1, 1904, the ASLR bought the other two companies and the Sanford Power Company. In addition to passenger transport, goods traffic, especially general cargo, took place on the routes.

The Kennebunkport – Town House route was extended to Biddeford on July 24, 1904 , where there was a connection to the Biddeford and Saco Railroad at the Birch / Alfred Street junction . On February 1, 1906, the ASLR acquired the Portsmouth, Dover and York Street Railway , which in addition to a ferry from Kittery to Portsmouth tram routes from Kittery via York Harbor to York Beach and via Eliot and Great Works (now Jewett) to South Berwick , as well as one Cross-link from York Point to Eliot and a branch line from South Berwick Junction south of Great Works to Dover, New Hampshire . The section in New Hampshire belonged to the Dover and Eliot Street Railway , which had been leased by the Portsmouth, Dover & York. The terminal in Kittery was on Badgers Island at the ferry station. These routes were completed in 1903. A connection between the two networks between York Beach and Kennebunk was opened on July 21, 1907. In July 1909 the company acquired the Alfred Light and Power Company. In 1910 the railway company went bankrupt and was reorganized on January 1, 1911 as the Atlantic Shore Railway .

After another bankruptcy in 1915 and the resulting re-outsourcing of the Portsmouth, Dover and York Street Railway (PD&Y), the York Utilities Corporation was finally founded in 1922 , which took over the railway - without the PD&Y. In 1923, the last new line, a rerouting of the line between Sanford and Springvale, went into operation. In the following years, however, the network was gradually shut down. On March 31, 1924, traffic on the 17-year-old route between York Beach and Kennebunk ended; PD&Y had already ceased operations the year before. In 1925 the line from Arundel to Cape Porpoise was closed. This was followed in 1927 by the route from Sanford via Kennebunkport to Biddeford. The remaining line from Sanford to Springvale, which is only about 3.5 kilometers long, was operated until 1947 and sold to the Sanford and Eastern Railroad in 1949 , which dismantled the electrical systems and continued to use the line for freight traffic until 1961.

The Seashore Trolley Museum on Log Cabin Road north of Arundel was founded in 1939 and has operated a museum tram route for several years. It begins at the museum and runs on its own track along the route of the former York Utilities route northwards towards Biddeford. After about two kilometers, the route ends in a track loop. The museum owns the route to Biddeford and plans to rebuild the route up to there.

literature

  • Roger Borrup: Mousam River Railroad and Atlantic Shore Line Railway. (Transportation, Volume IV.) National Historical Society, Inc., Stratford CT, 1950.
  • Osmond R. Cummings: Atlantic Shore Line Railway: Its predecessors and its successors. Connecticut Electric Railway Association, 1957.
  • George W. Hilton and John F. Due: The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 1960. ISBN 0-8047-4014-3
  • Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
  • First Annual Report, Public Utilities Commission, State of Maine. Sentinel Publishing Co., Waterville ME, 1915. Pages 175-6.

Web links