Part 1
As young teens, Joe and I had been fascinated by New England
railroads. We were especially fond of the railroads in Maine,
particularly the Maine Central, Bangor & Aroostook, Allagash,
and Atlantic Great Eastern. Our exposure to them was limited
to the railfan magazines of the time, but that was more than
enough to pique our interest. As we grew up, the itch to actu-
ally do some serious railfanning in Maine on our own became
unbearable.
Joe had spent time at school in Plattsburgh where he played
ice hockey, but transferred over to Scranton. He had recently
obtained his drivers’ license and had his car with him at school.
We were both juniors there, and were doing our share of seri-
ous partying. Now it was time to get serious about seeing some
trains. We had the wheels – we just needed a plan.
Interestingly, one of the railfan magazines had published an
interesting article, essentially a trackside guide to current
operations for the railroads of Maine. We picked up a copy at
the local hobby shop and studied it cover-to-cover. Where to
go? Maine Central? Bangor & Aroostook? Or maybe one of the
short lines such as the Belfast & Moosehead Lake or Aroostook
Valley? We considered all of the options and finally settled on
the Allagash Railway (AGR). The AGR had a cool mix of first-
and second-generation power from both EMD and ALCo, and
rumor had it that they recently picked up a bunch of vagabond
former-Conrail ALCos. As of the year before, they also had a
few F-units and a couple of RS3s still running around, but they
were probably in the deadline.
We booked a small mom-and-pop motel in the town of Weld,
Maine, located right next to the AGR’s Androscoggin Subdivision.
Journey to Allagash Part 1 - 2
MRH-Jan 2014
