Staying on track

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If you stand on the platform at the old Bangor and Aroostook Railroad station in Oakfield, you might see the light on the front of a diesel engine as it idles in the railroad yard a half mile to the north.

As the light gets brighter, you can anticipate that soon the train will pull past the station, rocking and rumbling at a breathtaking 30 miles an hour as it heads south with a load of lumber, wood chips, some boxcars and maybe a tank car or two.

You are, for a brief minute or two, a kid again.

The Golden Age of the railroad in Maine may be long past, but it is still vibrant at the Oakfield Railroad Museum on Station Street.

There, in the restored railroad station of a town that was once the hub of the railroad in Aroostook County, one can find models, scrapbooks, scores of photographs, period communications equipment, clothing, maps, tickets, a restored weather vane shaped like a steam locomotive, which once graced the B & A water tower, and a massive collection of railroad magazines.

“Oakfield grew up around the railroad,” said the Rev. Mary Miller, president of the Oakfield Historical Society, which runs the museum. “You get a lot of people coming through who used to live here or had family members who used to work on the railroad.”

“It was the heart of the town,” adds Patty Boutilier, a museum volunteer.

Built in 1910 by the B & A, the station was used full time until September 1961, when the railroad discontinued passenger service. After that, it was used primarily to house maintenance crews until 1984.

In 1986, the railroad announced plans to demolish the structure. That action was headed off when the Oakfield Historical Society formed for the express purpose of saving the station and purchased it for $1.

Five years and $15,000 later, the station was reopened as a museum to preserve not only the history of the railroad, but also the surrounding towns that depended on it.

The museum is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of only three remaining wood-framed Bangor and Aroostook Railroad stations in Maine between Searsport and Fort Kent.

Clyde Boutilier is as much a part of the museum’s history as any of the displays. He retired from the railroad after 42 years, his last job being that of a hostler, whose job it was to move locomotives around in the area of the long-gone roundhouse.

It’s Boutilier who can tell the stories and background behind so many of the displays at the station.

The train-order hoop is a good example.

The wooden hoop was held out to passing trains so the crew could get its orders. The station agent or operator would hold the hoop out and as the train passed, the conductor would hook his arm through the loop, retrieve the message, and droop the hoop back outside along the track.

“The distance down the track where the hoop was dropped depended entirely on the popularity of the agent or operator on duty,” said Boutilier with a grin. “That is quite true.”

Or he can tell you about the first portable telephone, which amounted to nothing more than a multi-sectioned wooden pole that was used to reach up and make contact with the telephone lines 12 to 15 feet overhead. The wires on the other end were connected to a field telephone that could be used by train crews.

“Which way you wanted to call depended on which [overhead] wires you hooked onto,” said Boutilier.

He can also explain why tobacco cans were kept inside the resonator box on the telegraph, and smiles when he tells visitors why there were two waiting rooms, one for men and one for women.

“There were quite a few woodsmen who used to use the train,” he said. “That’s where you could swear or spit on the floor.”

Outside, the station looks much as it did throughout its active years. It has been repainted in two tones of green and there’s a mechanical train signal overhead and a Railroad Express Agency sign over the door. Nearby are two restored wagons that were used to move freight and baggage to and from the train along the platform.

Nearby, there is a red and yellow caboose that has been almost fully restored. On the north side of the station is a section shack that houses a 1940s motor car used by maintenance crews as they traveled along the tracks, and an earlier version from the turn of the century that crews powered by hand.

According to Miller, the vast majority of items at the museum have been donated over the past 10 years.

“People don’t have a lot of room when they’re closing out a house or moving to a nursing home,” she said. “They know these things are important and they don’t want to throw them out, so they give these things to the museum.”

The museum is open weekends through Labor Day on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.

Beginning at noon on Sunday, Aug. 19, the Oakfield Historical Society will hold its second annual Railfan Day at the museum. The day will include a display of model trains, a barbecue sponsored by the Oakfield Community High School Alumni Association and music by Terry Levesque and The Aroostook Acoustics.

“It reacquaints people with the railroad,” Miller said of the day.

More information about the museum is available at its Web site at www.ainop.com/users/oakfield.rr/, by e-mail at oakfield.rr.museum@ainop.com or by telephone at (207) 757-8575.