Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad (BML) Discussion

BML's new SW1 off the Adirondack Scenic was in Rigby earlier today.

Cool! And good for them.

A quick off-topic but semi-related question that you might know the answer to: what's the status of Pan Am SW-1 #007? Haven't heard about it in a while.

They were using it sometime in the last 6 months. Its in the deadline and is dead and drained, guessing it had a mechanical issue arise. The few times I have seen them moving stuff into the shop, I have seen them use the trackmobile or a geep.

I fear that the efforts to restore 50 and 53 to service may have been lost somewhere in the meanwhile, they keep adding other units to the roster with no reports of progress on the original BML units that I am aware of.

Don’t get me started on that subject…
53 has been undergoing a rebuild on and off for a decade now with little progress to be seen. The group and management running the operation need a major overhaul themselves. Very little of the actual BML equipment is being preserved, money generated seems to go towards buying more half finished projects that have no historical value to the railroad. I understand you have to have equipment to fix the tracks, or to run the tourist trains but there seems to be way too much emphasis on buying more stuff, than fixing what is already there. Plus I don’t think from Thorndike to City Point is even passable anymore. I think they have just fixed the washouts on that section while letting it go. They had to use their grapple truck to haul some cars up from Waldo a few years back.

I could write a book on the poorly made decisions and the impulse purchases they have made over the last 10 years, but I don’t want to give anyone a stroke.