The
weather has not been kind this winter to the Potomac Division and its
plans for home tours. First an ice storm in December greatly reduced
the attendance for John Sethian and Richard Wright’s home tours and
then a sudden snow storm forced the cancellation of Dale Latham’s and
Glenn Paulson’s home tours altogether, but at least they have all been
rescheduled for later this year. In any event, on the 11th of February
we tried once again to resume our original planned schedule by visiting
Jim Hellwege’s N scale Bangor and Aroostook Railroad in Alexandria and
this time we were highly successful (in other words, the weather
finally cooperated). I also have to admit to an affinity for New
England railroads, and not just because I model a New Haven-B&M
free-lanced version of one myself; it’s mainly because I grew up with
them. While the BAR, being farther north than the rest, is not
one that I’m particularly familiar with, it was part of the six
railroads that were once referred to as the New England family of lines
along with the then New Haven controlled P&W, the CV, and
others roads that members of the Potomac Division have made their
primary modeling interest.
Jim’s
U shaped walk-around layout takes up a 12’ by 8’ space in his basement.
The intent of the original layout design was predominately for watching
trains - continuous running - although operations can now be
incorporated into it with the numerous industries on the three
independent mainline loops, with passing sidings and interchange
points. The scenery on the layout is 100% finished and the walk-around
feature allows for different views of the many scenes and vignettes
along the way, including the numerous bridges and tunnels in the
mountainous regions of the Pine Tree State. One of them, a long bridge
that carried one line across another part of the railroad and resembled
a Howe Truss, was particularly impressive. Although the
prototype BAR disappeared into the mist of the past years ago
(it’s called the Central Maine & Quebec today), Jim has
preserved its memory by maintaining both first generation diesels and
their more modern incarnations in various past versions of BAR
paint schemes including the early F-3s, the slightly later BL-2s (you
don’t see many of those running around), the GP-7s and 9s, and
eventually the GP 38s. And there was an E-7 tucked into a diesel house
awaiting its turn to haul Jim’s custom painted passenger cars on the BAR’s premier train, the Aroostook Flyer. His rolling stock
also reflects the BAR as it was back then; who could forget
those State of Maine Products cars for the bulk shipping of potatoes
with their distinctive red, white, and blue tricolor-like wide striped
paint schemes; the New Haven also owned and operated cars like those
and Jim keeps his fleet of them ready to roll for the early fall potato
season. Running mostly through the Maine woods, another major bulk
shipper on the BAR would have naturally involved lumber and
wood products. Jim has made one of the more prominent industries a
sizeable lumber mill with the large log trucks bringing in the raw
material and a fleet of high-ended lumber cars carrying out the
finished boards. At the end of one of the loops, he had placed a small
engine house and turntable with two plows sitting on sidings beside it;
a standard Russell and a rotary waiting patiently, no doubt, for one of
those highly anticipated Maine winters to gear up, but his present
scenic background is summer, with a lot of forest cover using both
commercial trees and modified real Maine vegetation. As I mentioned in
the December tour write ups, one of the advantages of O-gauge over the
smaller scales is that the size-weight ratio makes for better tracking,
fewer derailments, etc. That size-weight ratio was particularly
problematic in N gauge which, early in its existence, had all kinds of
tracking difficulties, especially if you wanted to have operating
sessions where other people are pushing and pulling your trains around.
Jim has long solved that with carefully laid and maintained track work
using PECO flex track and turnouts. Everything was running perfectly,
as it should be of course, but it doesn’t always work that way.
Jim
has done a marvelous job of modeling both the details and the
atmosphere of Northern New England in a relatively small space; I’d
have liked for him to include some Maine lobsters, but in N scale they
would probably have been hard to see. I haven’t been to Maine in many
years but, as Yogi Berra once said, it was like “deja vu all over
again.” I’d also like to thank Elizabeth Boisvert, our “unofficial”
photographer, for her recent outstanding photo contributions; it saves
me having to write (and you having to read) many thousands of
additional words.