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In 1835 the Boston & Maine Railroad was chartered in New Hampshire to build a line across thesoutheastern area of the state to connect Maine with Boston. Shortly thereafter, the Andover & Haverhill Railroad started constructing a line to connect the B&M with the Andover & Wilmington Railroad, which had trackage into Boston. The Andover & Haverhill was renamed the Boston & Portland Railroad and was being operated in conjunction with the The B&M. On New Year's Day, 1842, the entire line in New Hampshire and the state of Massachusetts was merged into the B&M. By year's end the The B&M extended to South Berwick in Maine, where it connected to the newly constructed Portland, Saco & Portsmouth Railroads, which had a connection to Portland. In the year 1900 the The B&M had consolidated many many shortline roads, and had an large rail line system, with mains and branches in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York,Vermont, and Canada as well as the U.S. Before the great depression arrived in 1929, the The B&M had already started abandoning parallel lines in rail network. The great depression hit, and after 1929, the The B&M accelerated the number of its abandonments. The B&M was now in competition with private vehicles, trucks, public transportation funded by the States in which it served and getting more popular on a grander scale every day. To compensate for this turn of events, the The B&M entirely removed, or cut back on passenger service on a lot of its privately owned branches. When the 1930s arrived, the B&M had hit its bottom and was actually about to file for bankruptcy. The events of World War II made a large difference and increased traffic, which gave a lot more income to the railroad and abandonments just as quickly stopped also. Large amounts of capital were spent to convert steam to diesel, which later brought purchases of new rail equipment for passenger service. Even after all of the aforementioned new income from the war years and how well it served the nation's railroads changed conditions very little in New England. Goods in New England were now moving to truck shipments, taking freight shipments from the rail lines. The start of aircraft and creation of toll roads and better highways gave new forms of getting around than passengers had on long distance trains. The next event affected the B&M greatly. The Rutland Railroad, New England's weakest major carrier, was hit with a strike and suspended operations in 1961 and later was abandoned in 1962, causing large decreases in northeastern freight traffic on the B&M. Another famed collapse of a railroad was the Penn Central in 1969, the largest railroad failure in the U.S. The Boston & Maine followed the Penn Central into bankruptcy. In 1983 Timothy Mellon took control of the Boston & Maine, along with the Maine Central and Delaware & Hudson Railroad, and consolidated them into Guilford Rail System. Today the Boston & Maine still retains some of its identity, and its name can still be seen on Guilford engines and other rolling stock. Also, various pieces of equipment have been preserved or have found new homes on other railroads, while other pieces have been scrapped or left to sit in freight yards and forgotten. Railroad stations of the Boston & Maine have become homes for businesses and also unique homes for people. |
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