A WN&P division "what-if"

Greetings!

I'm AJ and I'm new to the forums, but at least one of you (MEC407) knows me as the founder and moderator of the Proto-Freelance Modelers SIG over on Y!G for the past 14 years. A great deal has changed in the hobby over that time, and those changes include my modeling interests. My new focus is on the MEC and NH in the late 1950s (in N-scale), but definitely still with a proto-freelance / what-if angle. And that leads me to the reason I'm here...

I know the NH & MEC never directly connected, but that's not stopping me from making this theme work.

First, I've heard hearsay that there was a proposed connection between the two roads, but I've not been able to turn up such a proposal via Google. Has anyone here ever heard of such a plan?

Second...
My own idea for linking them is to steal the Worcester, Nashua & Rochester and the Portland & Rochester from the B&M. The obvious options are to have it as part of the Old Colony or a major westward extension of the MEC. A third possibility is to have it be a bridge line, ala the Lehigh & Hudson River, jointly owned by the NH, MEC, and NYC/B&A as a bypass around the B&M's stronghold on Boston-Portland traffic. Impressions? Opinions?

~AJ

Welcome to RAILROAD.NET, old friend!

In the real world, at the peak of its financial legerdemain the New Haven secured its access to Maine by getting control of the B&M, which in turn got control of the MEC. I've never heard any discussion of a 4th route between eastern Massachusetts and Portland; the three lines in service as of 1911 were less than 10 miles apart for most of their lengths. I've never seen a profile of the W,N&P but everything I've read about it includes complaints about operating over the grades. Given the engines they had in that era, this could have been as little as 1.5%. New Haven money could have helped, but it couldn't have turned Epping, NH into a big traffic source...

Not only was it a roller-coaster, it was also unsignalled. I recall reading in a B&M Bulletin from years ago that it had a number of bad accidents. It was also a very rural route, once you got north of Nashua (the junction point at Rochester an exception) -- not much business in between. It probably would have expedited the NH bankruptcy by decades!

Don't make it an MEC bridge line - if you do that, another modeler will have to abandon their Mountain Sub pike!

The WN & P was equipped with Style B semaphores the entire length of the line excepting where ball signals were in use, Nashua, Rochester, probably Epping.

That B&M Bulletin I was referring to was the Summer of 1979 issue, with its lead article on the WN&P. H. Bentley Crouch wrote, "shortly after the turn of the century the main line handled the greatest volume of freight traffic of any single track, non-signaled line in the country."

Apparently, block signals were added in 1913 and this helped cut down on the accidents.

"The cause of all this travail [accidents] of course was the volume of traffic being handled under prehistoric conditions. Single track, no signaling, an up-hill-and-down-dale profile with many curves which well-nigh made long distance observation impossible, all were factors. But the single biggest contribution came from the movement of trains by the book of rules and train orders."

History is an interesting thing. Model railroaders might invent interesting what-if scenarios and while sometimes they might approach reality, history itself can present what-if cases that, if the modeler had "invented" it on his/her own, they would be laughed at for being too fanciful.

Today, a copy of George Pierce Baker's The Formation of the New England Railroad Systems: A Study of Railroad Combination in the Nineteenth Century landed in my hands. On pages 166 and 167, Baker discusses the B&M's acquisition of the Worcester, Nashua & Rochester Railroad in 1886. If anyone would like to see the exact text, I'd be glad to scan it for you, but the gist of it is as follows:

Starting in late 1884 a syndicate working secretly for the B&M bought a large amount of WN&R stock, this ushered in a new board of directors who were looking to sell off the company. The WN&R was in a bit of a financial pinch. As others have all but said here, the Nashua-Rochester portion of the route was a money drain on the company - the Worcester-Nashua line having been the bread and butter of the company. They were looking for a better return on their investment, which Baker states was 3-per-cent in the mid-1880s. The syndicate's string-pullers aside, the WN&R had three potential suitors: The Old Colony, the Boston & Albany, and the Boston & Maine.

The B&M's motives were obvious, they wanted to have a monopoly on Portland traffic. Baker states: "The next acquisition [after the Eastern] followed in 1886, when the Boston & Maine leased the Worcester, Nashua & Rochester Railroad, thereby making absolutely sure of its Portland traffic and also making a more satisfactory connection for New York and for western business."

The Old Colony wanted an entrance into Worcester - something that the B&A did not want them to have. The Boston & Albany's main interest in the line appears to be to block the Old Colony; however, preemptive acquisition of the WN&R would have given them a line right into the heart of B&M territory, and would have called B&M control over the WN&R's Portland gateway, the Portland & Rochester Railroad, into question. B&M had control of the P&R but did not have a lease of it, so losing it was a possibility.

And so, through the work of its syndicate (a term that, to my ears at least, sounds very organized crime-ish) the B&M gained control of the WN&R to block the B&A. The B&A was content with this lease. Baker makes no mention (in the part I've read thus far, at least) of the Old Colony's reaction. There was, however, much objection from the Boston & Lowell Railroad, and while this was insufficient to block approval of the lease on the State level, it did scare the B&M away from pursuing a lease of the Portland & Rochester at that time.

I have much yet to read in this marvelous book, but just from the bit that I have - 5 pages total - I've found that my proposed scenario isn't far off from what might have happened.

History is fun!

Fascinating! Thanks for the info.

There was some agreement that the New haven and B&M got into. The B&M would be north of the B&A, and the New Haven south, except the two branches that the New Haven already had (Fitchburg and Lowell).
There was probably not enough traffic to warrant 3 lines to Maine besides. The Western route was the best, and hence it go upgraded to handle the largest power. It had less grades than the WN&P, and it could connect to the Lowell Branch, which led to the Stony Brook, and western connections. This was important because it could connect to the west without entering Boston, which the Eastern Route could not.

by Engineer Spike » Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:44 pm
The B&M would be north of the B&A, and the New Haven south, except the two branches that the New Haven already had (Fitchburg and Lowell).

At the risk of seeming to pick nits, even though it was off to the west and out of WN&P consideration, there was also the NH acquisition of of the New Haven & Northampton, with branches north of the B&A to Holyoke, Williamsburg, Shelburne Junction/Falls, and Turners Falls. Ronald Dale Karr's The Rail Lines of Southern New England: A Handbook of Railroad History covers that line in detail on pp. 68-73 of the 1995 edition.

On a related real-life "what-if," I happened upon this nugget in a January 1924 issue of the Nashua Telegraph:

"W, N, & P Division Control Before Commission: William S. Linnell of the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Charles H. Blachford of the Maine Central Railroad, were before the Interstate Commerce Commission this morning in favor of Maine Central, Bangor & Aroostook, and New York Central, taking over the Worcester, Nashua, & Portland Branch of the Boston & Maine.

The Boston & Maine and the New York, New Haven & Hartford appear against consolidation."

A very interesting rethinking of the railroad map of New England in this scenario.

IM

Very interesting indeed! Yes, the line from Nashua to Rochester was saw-tooth profiled and single-tracked, with hardly had any online traffic. And yes, it probably made sense that B&M abandoned it for lack of traffic. HOWEVER, the more you look at the line and pick apart its history, the WN&P was a very valuable line... valuable to other railroads, and thus a very dangerous piece of trackage to the B&M. This many years removed, it's unlikely that any answer could be discovered, but I cannot help but wonder how big a part other roads' lusting for the WN&P played in the B&M's decision to abandon segments of the line when it did. Some of an answer, I would suppose, could be gleaned from researching property deeds and comparing how quickly the B&M divested itself of the abandoned WN&P right-of-way vs. how fast it did so with other abandoned lines - theory being, the more private owners there are, the harder it is for another railroad to buy and reactivate the old route.

Came upon another mention of the MEC-WN&P connection in a Sept 1923 Nashua Telegraph -- MEC President Morris McDonald gave a speech before the Portland Chamber of Commerce, saying that the railroad's board of directors discussed attempting the acquisition of the WN&P to give the MEC a trunk line. " I don't see why Maine can't have a trunk line," he said. "All the rest of New England has trunk lines and why can't we hook onto one?"

The argument in favor seems to be that it breaks B&M and NYNHH monopoly on New England business by allowing MEC trunk access to the south with connections to the Central. An MEC attorney testifying at the ICC said, "The proposed Maine Central combination breaks the neck of the bottle as far as Maine is concerned, establishes a double route from Boston to Portland, and assures competition ... We believe the New York Central will be of the greatest aid in building up the port of Portland."

So the idea stuck around for several years in the 1920s.

IM

I suspect that the only reason that the ICC never ruled in MEC's favor was the Ripley Plan for consolidation of the railroads. Though it was published in 1929, William Ripley had done the bulk of his research by 1923. Assuming that he was in contact with the ICC during that time, they were probably aware of the notion that New England was to be divided into four companies (CN-GT-CV / BM-MEC-BAR-D&H / NYC-B&A-RUT-VGN / NH-NYOW-LNE-LHR) and didn't want to act on expanding a company that, in theory, would soon be folded into the very company they wanted to get a piece of.