Thanks for the interest Matt; when I was younger, I lived on Ledge St; when the switcher was working, it would shake the house, our signal to head to the tracks and watch them work. Before I go further down the line, Edgecomb had planned to expand thier operations with a new building and product line which would have required large coils of steel. As the tonnage would have been extreme, they asked Guilford to upgrade the track (1.7 miles from the switch off the Hillsboro) they also guaranteed tonnage and a possible exstension of the line to UPS; Edgecomb was willing to pay for half, but Guilford sent a letter back stating if they wanted the track replaced, they would have to pay for it themselves (1.2 million per mile) plus upgrade all of the grade crossings. Of couse, this never happened. Just before the crossing at Seventh St, there was a small yard the WN&P had; I think they called it Yard 4; if you look between Sixth and Fifth St, there is a concrete pier that was part of the signal tower for the yard. About 100 yards before the Eaton St. bridge, there was a switch for a coal and oil company; they took both tank cars and hoppers. I remember Rousseau Oil with a tank car of #2 heating oil on the siding. Just after the bridge, there was a switch for the run around that ran down to the switch at Pine St. On the other side of Pine St was the switch to go into the Millyard. Batesville Casket always had at least two boxcars of lumber, usually Illinois Central cars, protected by a derail; these cars were unloaded by hand and fed down a chute into the basement; heading into the Millyard, at Everett Ave, there was a switch that split the track to both sides of the mill building; to the left along the canal, Lochhead Millworks always had at least two boxcars; further down at the beginning of the Pine St Extension, there was a small switch in the street, this was protected by three pieces of rail driven in the ground; the track went straight into the boiler house for the mill; they use to unload hoppers of coal into a pit; it was no longer used as Irwin Plastics used oil to run the mill; the other track went to NIMCO (Nashua Industrial Machine Corp) and then to a warehouse at the end; I remember large rolls of paper being stored in this building; not sure if it was part of Nashua Corp or not, but both businesses recived service from the B&M. On the other side of the switch on Everett St the track ran up to a switch at Ledge St; this ran to the front of Lochheads building; they had a huge collection box above the ground for sawdust; the box had a trap door to unload the sawdust into a gondola; as kids, we would watch as a man would stand in the rail car with a pole and open the door, covering himself with sawdust; he would have to shovel the box clean and move the dust around to fill the car evenly. the track also ran to the right of the mill; Lochhead unloaded boxcars from the left and loaded finished wood products from the right. further down, there was a switch that went into a small fenced in siding; there was always a tank car of heating oil that Doehla Greeting Cards used; the track continued around the side of the building to the loading docks for Doehlas'; they took three to eight cars at a time. The next set of businesses were located across Main St. just beyond Spring St. I will detail next time. Thanks again.
