Maine Narrow Gauge Museum Discussion

Also see this article in the Bridgton News.

The Bridgton News wrote:Following a meeting on Monday with the “stakeholders” of a proposed Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Bridgton, a public forum will be held in upcoming weeks to inform the public of what is known to date, Director of Economic and Community Development Alan Manoian announced Tuesday.

http://www.bridgton.com/selectmen-will- ... -railroad/

Mike

Mike.....from both the blog and the article, I see one major issue...

No business plan.....

how do you go to a meeting with a town that you want to move some/all of your operation to and have no business plan?

I kind of feel bad for these people in Bridgton....it sound like they are getting their chains yanked....

I go to the Museum at least once or twice a year....I could never have imagined that these folks would go to a meeting and say

Hey, if you're on board, cool....but if we have some dissent....we'll go fly our kite elsewhere....if I was on that board I would have banged

my gavel and said.....enjoy your trip to Gray....and maybe you want to consider getting on the same page and figure out exactly what it is

that you want to do with your museum before you waste the time of yet another city/town in talks such as these

Railroading question.....what would DellaPrescoli have done with the G&U had he bent to the dissent?

I think this was meant to be a continuation of a series of meetings held between the MNG and Bridgton. Trying to get some reaction to see if the MNG would be a good fit. Unfortunately, they MNG was prepared for a meeting, but not for a fight. This is not over yet. More meetings to come, hopefully without the onesided blogger.

Mike

Thank you Dylan, good job!

"OK, I had to laugh when I read Mr. Lopez' quote. Someone needs to explain to him that there's a very big difference between standard gauge mainline railroads and 2-foot gauge branchline/industrial railroads. There is no way that it's going to cost MNGRR $1 million a mile to (re)build a line in Bridgton... unless the plans have changed and they're planning on electrifying it and running at very high speeds. Jeeze... use a little common sense. This is a 5 MPH narrow gauge tourist train, not the Downeaster."

$1 million per mile sounds absurd. But then again, so does $25K per mile. What would a narrow gauge treated tie go for? I'd swag it at $10-15/tie * say, 2,800 ties/mile. Already the MNG budget's blown. Add any bridge and culvert construction/improvements, ditching, grading/improvements, ballast, spikes, machine rental, fuel, contractors, permitting...

MNGRR is getting some grant money to help restore steam locomotive #7:

Portland Press Herald wrote:The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad has been awarded a $3,000 grant which will go toward restoration of a nearly century-old engine.

The grant is from the Amherst Railway Society, an organization of rail enthusiasts in Massachusetts.

Read more at: http://www.pressherald.com/news/Maine-N ... grant.html

I'm glad they are getting some help with #7. It will be nice to have her running again. Does anyone know what they are doing with #8? If I remenber correctly 8 was running in 1999-2000ish, but was chewing up a lot of coal, and there was talk of putting her to bed because she cost a lot to run.

I'm a bit out of the loop on the current status of MNGRR's steam locomotives. The last time I saw #8 in person was in 2002, as seen here:

That same day they ran a triple-header with 3, 4, and 8... one of the coolest things I've ever seen! And what a sound!

Now that's cool! Too bad that won't happen again for a while with the two monson engines being apart now.

I was able to operate #3 once that year, and what a fun experience that was. Despite being the smallest steamer on the MNGRR roster, she was very peppy and her whistle resonated all through the Old Port.

MEC407 - this is off topic but you reminded me of it.
The steam engine at Loon Mountain is open one Saturday each month until October for anyone wanting to get some operating time behind the throttle. I posted the information in the correct thread back in July but figured I would remind people on this thread in case nobody bothered to look.
Now back to the regular scheduled program.

Last I checked, #8 is stored, out of service. Guess she was in the engine house when it caught fire, but wasn't really that damaged (I saw a video of it on youtube being pulled out of the enginehouse back in 2007) Here's a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i57dgWmo3Dw

Yes. #8 is all the way in. I got to walk by it this spring to view the work being done on #7. Hopefully it is next for the rebuild but time and funds will tell.

Mike

If there's a better thread to discuss this in, please tell me. Does anyone here know anything about the Sprague lawsuit with the City of Portland over the value of their ROW? So far as I was able to tell, the Portland Company, which once made things (including I believe locomotives) out of iron and steel, had a siding easement to the Grand Trunk. This easement, which would have been impacted by some of the proposed developments in the area, was valued by Sprague and eventually the court as being worth something in the area of 6 figures. What I don't understand is, how can that easement be worth that much when the railroad it connected to was torn up over 20 years ago? If anyone has any idea or can point me to a better thread, please do so.