Turners Island LLC (shortline RR in South Portland, ME)

Great photos!

Awesome photos, ronjenx. If you happen to have any that show more of Atlantic Avenue, I'd love to see them; I believe my great-grandparents lived there towards the end of their lives in a house that was removed for the tank farm, but they had passed away several years before I was born.

Cool to see pics of the line like that. Was that texaco facility on the branch or the spur that went over to where the community college currently is?

markhb wrote:Awesome photos, ronjenx. If you happen to have any that show more of Atlantic Avenue, I'd love to see them; I believe my great-grandparents lived there towards the end of their lives in a house that was removed for the tank farm, but they had passed away several years before I was born.

I have one taken from the tracks by Elm Street, along the tank farm fence, but all the houses in the view are still there.

BM6569 wrote:Cool to see pics of the line like that. Was that texaco facility on the branch or the spur that went over to where the community college currently is?

The Texaco facility in the picture is at the end of Elm Street. The engine was sitting at the intersection of Elm and Palmer Streets.
According to Google's satellite view, the buildings are still there.

ronjenx wrote:

markhb wrote:Awesome photos, ronjenx. If you happen to have any that show more of Atlantic Avenue, I'd love to see them; I believe my great-grandparents lived there towards the end of their lives in a house that was removed for the tank farm, but they had passed away several years before I was born.

I have one taken from the tracks by Elm Street, along the tank farm fence, but all the houses in the view are still there.

OK, thanks anyway!

1937 photo of Turner's Island, via Facebook and the Portland History page there.

Cool!

I have no idea what kind of schedule they run on, but I have seen a yellow trackmobile at the broadway crossing so I can confirm that is what Turner's Island is using to move cars around. Too bad I was in my car and couldn't get a picture!

Thanks for the info, MEC343! In all the years I've lived in SoPo, I STILL have never actually seen that crossing in use, or witnessed T.I. in action.

Was it during daylight hours when you saw it, or at night?

MEC343 wrote:I have no idea what kind of schedule they run on, but I have seen a yellow trackmobile at the broadway crossing so I can confirm that is what Turner's Island is using to move cars around. Too bad I was in my car and couldn't get a picture!

What kind of cars do they recieve? Any spines for Eimskip containers on the property? Weren't they unloading deicer for the Jetport as well.

I've only seen tank cars and maybe a hopper or two on that line. There are some old MEC cars stored down by the switch for the former industrial track that ran over to where SMCC is.

They unload steel for (re)building barges from time to time.


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They seem to run in daylight hours for the most part. I've seen them in the mornings, and this particular time it was in the afternoon. They've been getting tanks of vegetable oil, and gondolas with plastic covers on them recently. If you drive over broadway and see cars on the rigby side a long ways away, it means Pan Am is due for a pick up soon. If there's cars on the rigby side that are fairly close to the crossing, Turner's Island will be picking up soon.

Those pictures are sweet! when I was going to SMCC(SMTC) in 1993, there wasn't a sign of ANY kind of service going on in that area. I'd walk all the way from Rigby to the end of track on multiple occasions and there was never even one car on the entire line. I still have the pics of the oil farms and the sidings that went to them. Never saw any action down the branch though.