New rail line raised hopes, fears in 1905 Bangor

Railroads were once the backbone of progress. If your town got a new railroad line, it was time to celebrate. So when the new Northern Maine Seaport Railroad began its first passenger run at 5:50 a.m., Nov. 27, 1905, from Searsport to Lagrange, newspaper reporters were there to record the event. Hardly anybody else was on board at that early hour, however, except the crew and a few “deadheads,” the term for railroad employees and others who rode on free passes.

“There was no imposing ceremony, no firing of cannon or waving flags. Conductor L. R. Norwood just told Si Messer to let ‘er go. Si yanked the throttle on old No. 14 while Jack Wallace shook up the fire a little and train No. 101 went rolling down through the cut and skirted the harbor shore bound northward,” wrote a groggy reporter for the Bangor Daily News.

The train passed over 15 new steel bridges and by 16 new stations, including the one in North Bangor near Six Mile Falls, where Bangorians could make the connection by riding the electric trolley from downtown. There was already talk that Bangor businessmen would be able to hop aboard the train after work to visit their families at summer vacation destinations on the coast and return the next morning in time to be at their desks.

Just 29 passengers had boarded by arrival at Lagrange two hours later. On the way back, whole delegations boarded from some little towns. At Searsport, hordes of “young lady snap-shotters” were on hand. The total that day was a modest 144 paying passengers on this new branch of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad.

Before it built the Northern Maine Seaport Railroad, the B&A’s southernmost terminal was at Old Town, where it connected with tracks to Bangor owned by Maine Central Railroad. Getting lumber, potatoes, paper and other products to a port such as Bangor’s was becoming more expensive and inconvenient. The cost of the coal it loaded from ships was seriously inflated by the situation. The fact that Bangor was iced in three or four months of the year added to the problem. The new railway and the creation of coal, freight and passenger terminals at Stockton Springs and Searsport would give the B&A the kind of independence it needed to stimulate the economy of northern Maine, said Franklin W. Cram, the railroad’s president.

People in the little towns along the new road were excited about the economic boost they thought was coming to their towns. Stockton Springs, for example, already had enjoyed a land boom when the railroad bought up much of the harborfront property. “Resurrection of Stockton Springs,” declared a large headline over a lengthy story in the Bangor Daily Commercial. Businesses were expanding and the population was on the rise after years of decline.

People in the Queen City, however, had mixed feelings. They hoped the new line would lower freight and passenger rates by giving the Maine Central some competition. But some feared that the new tracks to the sea would deal a crippling economic blow to the port at Bangor, diverting lumber and potatoes to the coast.

A description of the construction in the December issue of the Industrial Journal, a Bangor business newspaper shows they had reason for concern. At Mack Point, not far beyond the Searsport station, a huge dock about 500 feet long and 40 feet wide for discharging coal and an immense coal handling plant were under construction. At Kidder Point, between the Searsport and the Stockton stations, there was a steamship landing with a wharf 800 feet long and 150 feet wide and buildings for freight and passengers under construction.

At Cape Jellison in Stockton Springs, construction of “mammoth terminals” for cargo was underway. “An idea of the stupendous magnitude of these terminals … can be gleaned when it is stated that the main wharf is 1,600 feet long, 600 feet of this being 80 feet wide and 1,000 feet of a width of 200 feet,” said the Industrial Journal. Steamships were lining up for business. The steamer Foxhall had already left Stockton harbor with a load of potatoes bound for Texas.

Nevertheless, the Bangor Daily News took a boldly optimistic position. In an editorial entitled “Bangor’s Emancipation,” the newspaper said, “The tidings of great joy for Bangor are in the air. After being tied up to the ringbolt of one railroad during all of its active existence, this city is soon to have a second outlet by land to the markets of the world … Whatever rates that may be arranged from now on can no longer be decided by the fiat of any power from which there is no appeal.”

But just to be on the safe side, a group of Bangor businessmen applied for a charter to start their own connector line from downtown to Northern Maine Junction in Hermon, where the new train would have an interchange with the MCRR.

Would Bangor benefit from railroad competition or lose a seaport? When asked about this dilemma, President Cram was hardly reassuring. He told a BDN reporter that “…what was good for the big and growing country north of Bangor was good for Bangor; that business must follow natural channels – the most economical ways, and that, if in the resultant development of the north, Bangor failed to get a rich share, then it would be because Bangor merchants and others lacked in enterprise and ability to grasp opportunities.”

At the end of his story, the reporter informed his readers with newsman’s license just what they wanted to hear: “Bangor will always be a great seaport, and in the natural course of events, she must become an important commercial city, and in the great country to the north are money-making opportunities for legions of workers, and as storekeeper for these money makers she stands beyond competition.”

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.