In 1939 a Boston & Maine locomotive and one car plunged through a trestle into the Piscataqua River in Kittery, Maine. During construction of a new bridge some pieces were dredged up. One of our own helped bring it to light. Well done Eric!
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20180504/historic-train-wreck-wheels-find-home-at-kittery-museum
Way to go Eric! The Google Plus gang would enjoy this story. And our town’s Model railroad club members.
That is cool!
Eric,
That’s pretty cool! How deep was the wheel set settled in the muck and mud!
These were recovered accidentally during the construction of a new bridge between Kittery, ME and Portsmouth, NH. I’ve been doing a photo blog on the construction of the bridge, which has just been completed. The blog is a bit behind, but I’ll do a final entry soon: http://www.ericreuterphotography.com/sarah-long-bridge-replacement-blog
There have now been three bridges in this location: 1822 (rail added 1842), 1940, and 2018. When the 1940 bridge was under construction, a pneumatic caisson anchor line dragged and pulled out a couple of bents on the 1842 bridge. It wasn’t apparent from the deck, but when the engine got to that point, it collapsed. The engine stayed in that location until 1964, when the Army Corps of Engineers moved it out of the navigation channel. They missed a few pieces, though.
Demolition of the piers from the 1940 bridge involved detonating them and then dredging the rubble. This axle, along with the carriage from the front truck and some tender truck pieces came up in the scoop. I arranged for these to be lent to the museum in Kittery, and have slowly been removing the rust and the bearings. I laid the 3’ of track in the late fall, and we moved the axle onto it this week. Next up is paint and a plaque.
Cool! Great looking display track Eric. Nice job.
Does/will the new bridge carry rail and auto traffic? It looks like the old ones did. Will Amtrak’s Down Easter go that way?
That was a cool thing to save the wheel set for the museum!
Tracks were first laid across the bridge by the Portland, Saco & Portsmouth Railroad in 1842. This line was leased to the Eastern Railroad, connecting Boston and Portland through Portsmouth. The B&M eventually leased and than bought this line, and it became the Eastern Division. At the Kittery end of the bridge was Kittery Junction, which is where the York Harbor & Beach Railroad split off to run 11 miles up to York Beach. A spur from the YH&B was built in 1909 to serve the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (which is actually in Kittery).
The YH&B was abandoned past the shipyard in 1927 and the Eastern Division was abandoned from Kittery to Berwick in 1952. Since then, the track has only served the shipyard. It was fairly active into the 80s, but the only traffic now is spent nuclear fuel from the decommissioning of submarines (they used to refuel subs, but subs are now fueled for their service life). These rail moves are generally once a year or so.
The new bridge carries the track on a lower level, as the previous (1940) bridge did. However, this bridge is unique in that the center lift span only has one level, with rails embedded in the highway. When a train needs to pass, traffic will be stopped and the span lowered to the rail deck. At two trains a year (empties in, SNF out), this is minimally inconvenient. The benefit is that it allows for 60+ feet of clearance when it’s in highway position. One big issue with the old bridge was that the rail deck was only 10’ off the river, meaning it had to open very frequently.
Here’s a photo of the center lift span, just above the highway deck. You can see the rails in the roadway.
Here’s a shot of the first vehicle to cross by rail, about two weeks ago - a tamper coming across to finish up the track on the Kittery side.
The Downeaster runs up the Western Division, and enters Maine at the Salmon Falls crossing between Rollinsford and South Berwick.
Very cool!
Eric, you may, or may not know, that the name Kittery apparently is based on a small manor, which once had a priory, in Kinsgwear, Devon, England. It is just over the hill from where I live. It should be no surprise as Kingwear is a small town on the opposite bank to the larger and more famous town of Dartmouth. Dartmouth and its river Dart estuary, was famous for its sea dogs and other seafarers in days past but that tradition is still in evidence today.
Eric…
That is crazy! I never would have guessed that they would LOWER the bridge to allow rail traffic, though it does seem to make sense operationally.
Eric
Do you have any pics with the bridge in the road position and also showing were the rail section is ?
That’s a lot of expense for tracks that are used “once a year or so”. But that is cool, a dual use bridge, just lower the track deck into place.
Alan Lott said:
Eric, you may, or may not know, that the name Kittery apparently is based on a small manor, which once had a priory, in Kinsgwear, Devon, England. It is just over the hill from where I live. It should be no surprise as Kingwear is a small town on the opposite bank to the larger and more famous town of Dartmouth. Dartmouth and its river Dart estuary, was famous for its sea dogs and other seafarers in days past but that tradition is still in evidence today.
Alan, I knew it was something like that. As far as I know, this is the only town called Kittery in the world. It makes it easy to Google things. Is there anything local to you that bears the name? It would be fun to see photos.
Sean McGillicuddy said:
Eric
Do you have any pics with the bridge in the road position and also showing were the rail section is ?
Here is the project web site, which has some renderings and photos: http://www.maine.gov/mdot/sml/
My blog: http://www.ericreuterphotography.com/sarah-long-bridge-replacement-blog
High-res versions of the photos from my blog: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ereuter/albums/72157661304261886
David Maynard said:
That’s a lot of expense for tracks that are used “once a year or so”. But that is cool, a dual use bridge, just lower the track deck into place.
Apparently, the spent nuclear fuel vessels are too heavy to transport by highway. The cars are about 340 tons each.
The old bridge had no grade, but this one has a nearly 3% grade on the Kittery approach, and 2% on the Portsmouth side. Should be a good show!
Yea, uranium is heavy. Then you have to shield it, and lead is heavy. That makes sense.
Eric Reuter said:
Apparently, the spent nuclear fuel vessels are too heavy to transport by highway.
Pics are from my own personal archive. Would like to note that there are other reasons for traveling by rail other than weight. Security is one of them.
Great thread Eric and Eric (for bringing it up) !
Eric
Are you the job Photographer ?
Great photo’s and it looks like you got to go were most couldn’t.
Hard to tell from the photo’s ….
Is it done yet ? (https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Holy smokes, Eric…you’re a heck of a photographer. I love the abstract features of this one:
