Boston & Maine Eastern Route Portland Division

Doing a little Research on this Subdivision. The Eastern Route Sub is named after the Eastern Railroad Company. This route basically ran from Boston, MA to Portland, ME via Portsmouth, NH. The first segment to be abandoned was between North Berwick, NH MP 74.68 to Biddeford, ME
MP 93.63. I Show this segment abandoned in 1944. I show approximately 12 passenger trains a day traversed this route as of May 23, 1943.

I am curious if anyone knows what happened to this line and why it was abandoned.

I am zeroing in on this line for a number of reasons. I am interested in the prospect that many people believe that active railroads decrease property values. This argument doesn't seem valid as I have looked at situations where reactivating commuter train service on rail lines or establishing them on existing lines has actually increased property values. I am wondering if the perception that rail lines decrease property values may be a hold over from the steam era? To test this theory I would like to compare the impact on property values for say a 2,000 square foot house located within 1/2 mile of a steam railroad and look at what happened to the property values while the railroad was active and 1 year after it was abandoned. I believe in order to have a real impact on property values the railroad would have to substantially degrade the quality of life near the tracks. Heavy use of Steam Locomotives with their soot, gas and ashes most certainly could do that. However; I don't think 2 trains a day would. This Eastern Sub looks like a rare situation where a line that has substantial traffic ceased operating during the steam era.

I have another line that is an excellent study and that one would be the Northern Pacific Stampede Pass Line. Diesel Operations ceased between Cle Elum and Auburn in 1983 and resumed in Dec 1996 by 1997 at least 10 trains a day were operating over this line. Town for study here would be East Auburn, WA. What happened to property values 1 year after operations ceased and 1 year after operations resumed?

Comparisons between The Eastern Line abandonments and Stampede might be insightful.

With the situation of intercity transportation seriously degrading airlines are cutting back and gas prices are going thru the roof the importance of intercity rail passenger service is increasing. I would like to put the arguement that restorations of rail service have a negative impact on property values to bed.

Best Wishes

Howard

There is a discussion on this subject at

http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51707

PBM

Seems HSSRAIL is initiating a broader discussion than just the failure of the Eastern Route. Is the Stampede Line passenger rail? Commuter rail? If it's just freight it seems that is a whole other ballgame in regards to property values.

I'm not in the real estate business but a friend of mine is. In general discussions about life (work, family you get the point), I have noticed that a community with public transportation tends to have a higher property value than a community that doesn't have public transit. As far as the freight side of it goes, I don't have a clue.

My interest in the topic is in a broader context than just this route.

The popular explanation for the abandonment between N. Berwick and Portland was that, the Portland-western division being a more direct route, management deemed this portion of the Portland-Eastern division redundant.

The link to a previous discussion said that the Western Route went though industrial cities like Biddeford. I am sure that outside the real population centers, near Boston, two routes were not needed. This was more of a case after the highways were improved. I do understand that the New Haven had started to improve the Eastern Route north of Boston, when they controlled B&M.
I have a 1951 employee time table. By this time, the line had been cut north of Berwick. The remaining part had several reasons why it was not as useful. First, the e.t.t. says that the P3 was the largest passenger engine, and the largest freight engines were the Limas. Salem tunnel had to have some freight cars detoured around it. The Western Route could connect with the New Hampshire Div. at Lowell Jct. This could avoid Boston all together. This was a plus for cross country freights headed to the Fitchburg, or WN&P, for Worcester, via Lowell Branch and Stony Brook (similar to Guilford's present "Freight Main"). The freights to Boston usually came Western Route to the Wildcat, then they went to the New Hampshire Route. This route was the easiest entry to the classification yards, Wasn't it Yard 8?