Departing from Boston at night, even under less than ideal weather, was interesting. The M/S Carnival Victory is a modern ship (launched in 2000) and has thrusters mounted fore and aft (front and rear). These can move the ship sideways and this makes tugboats unneeded most of the time. We cleared Boston Harbor around 2300 hours and set course for Portland, Maine. We arrived there early Monday morning.
Watching from my stateroom I could see a lobsterman picking up his pots. While the boats used have changed over the years, the process itself has not. You put your pots into the water and they are marked by your floats. Each lobsterman has floats with a distinctive color and design.
I remember from my days of living in Massachusetts and Rhode Island years ago, I learned that you risked legal difficulties and grave personal injury (not necessarily in that order) if you fooled around with someone’s lobster pots. As we entered Portland Harbor we passed by a row of pot markers that indicated that two different people were working those waters.
Following breakfast, I settled down to work on E-mail and blog entries. Lunch was a relaxed affair with TCA members Gary Spears and Richard Vagner. Most of the conversation revolved around the Amish community in Lancaster County, PA.
I then went ashore and took a short walk to the grounds of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum. I had seen the freight cars used by Maine two-foot gauge railroads from the ship. The real eye-catcher was a boxcar painted red and touting Ocean Spray Cranberries. Desert Division President and fellow passenger Katie Elgar had called me earlier to tell me about the museum.
The Museum houses an interesting collection of Maine two-footer passenger cars and a caboose. There is also a rail bus and an automobile converted to run on narrow gauge track. The walls are lined with dioramas and exhibit cases with small artifacts. Portland was also the home of the Portland Elevator Company and there is one, a freight version, on exhibit.
A significant part of the museum collection came from the Edaville Railroad in Massachusetts. The owner of some cranberry bogs purchased the rolling stock of some Maine two-foot gauge railroads and moved it to his cranberry bogs. Eventually, he made more money giving rides to tourists.
Things went downhill and with the exception of a standard gauge Climax geared locomotive, the collection ended up back in Maine. The Climax, one of only a few remaining (built by the Climax Manufacturing Company of Corry, PA), is at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA. I discussed this with a female staff member who was busily engaged in multi-tasking. She was running the gift shop and ticket counter and cleaning a model of a narrow gauge steam locomotive. When I mentioned the Climax she said, “I knew there was one but I never knew what happened to it.”
Museum admission of $10.00 includes a ride on the narrow gauge train. Unfortunately, there were no operating steam locomotives but there was an interesting diesel. The train consisted of a coach, an open car (a coach with the windows and most of the sidewalls removed) and a caboose. The ride went to within a block of the pier where we tied up and then changed direction and traveled along Casco Bay. We stopped just before venturing out on a trestle that ran to a swing type bridge that was old, rusty and in a permanently open position to permit river traffic. The trestle itself had been damaged by a fire set by vandals many years ago. Grand Trunk, the operator at that time, decided that repairs were not justified and abandoned the line. The Museum came along and that brings us up to the present time.
