The Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad is a forest railway line built to transfer pulpwood between drainage basins in Maine North Woods. The railway runs only a few years in a very remote location so that the steam locomotive is never thrown away and remains exposed to the elements. The trail lies in Penobscot County and Piscataquis County
Video Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad
Histori
The pine forest of Maine North Woods is the source of pulpwood throughout the 20th century. Trees are cut down into 4-foot (1.2 meters) long and loaded onto boards held by livestock or log haulers to nearby rivers or lakes. The log drive will float the pulpwood to the downstream paper mill when the snow and ice melt. Pulpwood is harvested in the Allagash River drainage over destined for the Great Northern Paper Company paper mill at the Penobscot River West Branch in Millinocket. The problem is removing the pulpwood from the Allagash River that flows into the Penobscot River that flows to the east.
Umbazooksus and Eagle Lake Railroad
During the winter of 1926-27, ÃÆ' â € ° douard Madawaska Lacroix Company used a wooden carrier to move heavy rail equipment from Lac-FrontiÃÆ'¨re, Quebec to Churchill Depot and then pass through Lake Churchill and the frozen Eagle Lake. Hauler logs deliver two steam locomotives, two Plymouth-powered gasoline switchers, miles of steel rail, and sixty train cars to carry pulpwood. Each railway car has a length of 32 feet (9.7 m) with high and sloping sides to hold 12 ropes of pulpwood. Three diesel-powered conveyors were built to lift pulpwood from Eagle Lake to a height of 25 feet (7.6 m) above 225 feet (68 m). Each conveyor can fill the train car in 18 minutes. Lacroix completed Umbazooksus and Eagle Lake Railroad to a dismantling wooden bridge at the northern end of Lake Umbazooksus. The Lacroix train includes a 1,500-foot (460 m) bridge across the north end of Chamberlain Lake.
The Great Northern Paper Company received the Lacroix train on June 1, 1927 and renamed it with Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad .
Operation
Inventory to operate the train arrived from the opposite direction. Delivery of the national rail system to Greenville, Maine is transported over 45 miles from the road, and then across Chesuncook Lake on the side wheels of A. B. Smith's steam vessel. The Great Northern Paper Company built Chesuncook and Chamberlain Lake Railroad from the steam landing at the northern end of Lake Chesuncook along the east coast of Lake Umbazooksus to the pulpwood dismantling dock at the north end of Lake Umbazooksus. Both steam locomotives have been converted into fuel oil, so the drum of petroleum products for pulpwood conveyor fuels, switchers and steam locomotives becomes the main freight commodity on Chesuncook Lake.
The routine operation involves two moving trains of ten or twelve wooden pulp cars loaded south from Eagle Lake to Lake Umbazooksus, and empty wooden porridge cars to the north on a round trip takes about 3 hours. Both trains will pass in the middle of the road. One Plymouth switcher accelerates loading cars at Eagle Lake and other dismantled cars on Lake Umbazooksus. The inland rail of a 600ft (180m) pulpwood dismantling dock is six inches (15 cm) taller than the lake edge rails to accelerate the demolition. The floor of each pulpwood car sloped 12 inches (30 cm) to the disassembly side; and the car's sloped side hinged at the top to swing open when the lock was removed so that the pulpwood would slide out of the car to Lake Umbazooksus. The skin that breaks the pulpwood trunk accumulates so that the transition of Plymouth periodically drags rakes near the dock to keep the water deep enough to transport the discarded pulpwood. The normal operation of moving 6,500 pulpwood straps per week allows the Great Northern Paper Company to produce about one-fifth of the annual paper production of the United States.
Demise
Paper demand decreased through the Great Depression until pulpwood transfers ceased in 1933 after a railway line carrying nearly a million pulpwood ropes. The Plymouth divers found work elsewhere while the steam locomotive waited at the engine house to improve the economy. Great Northern trucks were found to be more cost-effective than restoring trains when businesses returned after World War II. The trestle gradually collapsed into Chamberlain Lake, but Maine Forest Service employees continue to use motor vehicles over two miles of lanes between Eagle Lake and Lake Chamberlain. The engine house became a popular snowmobile destination in the 1960s; and fittings such as gauges, bells, headlamps and license plates began to disappear from the locomotive before the # 1 wooden engine taxi was destroyed when the engine house caught fire in 1969. The locomotive boiler jacket and asbestos aberrations were removed in 1995 but stripped of the locomotive shell remained a reminder unique from the industrial revolution in Maine North Woods.
Maps Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad
Locomotive
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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