One of the things about the model railway hobby is that it incorporates a lot of different disciplines and interests in a wide variety of prototypes. So whilst I am busy finishing off scenic details like trees and buildings on my very English Snailbeach & District Railways inspired Pontesbury Sidings, like the butterfly my attention is being drawn to the next attractive flower that has just opened. What other layouts with other themes might also fill the same space in my study?
Well I own a reasonable collection of New England railroad models in HO, ranging in date from 1945-80 so that started me thinking. The larger New England railroads in the 1940s/50s started spinning marginally profitable branchlines off to newly formed shortlines; selling or leasing not only the line but lots of second hand equipment.
One of my favourites of this ilk is the St Johnsbury & Lamoille County (at various times also called St Johnsbury & Lake Champlain RR, Vermont Northern RR, Lamoille County RR and finally the Lamoille Valley RR). Originally operated by the Boston & Maine this bumbled 100 miles from the New Hampshire border across northern Vermont on old light rail traversing pastoral meadows and sylvan hills with numerous picturesque covered bridges along the way. By the 1950s as an independent shortline it dressed its roster of mostly second hand GE, later EMD and Alco, road-switchers in snappy paint schemes, and was tacking a caboose on the end of its daily freight well into the FRED era. It was a bridge route for forwarding traffic towards the ice free tide port at Portland, Maine but also served a surprising number of industries on its own line too (feed mills and milk, gravel and stone quarries, lumber, furniture and plywood mills, an asbestos plant, and a heavy engineering works to name a few); from a modellers perspective there’s really nothing not to like about it. The StJ & LC soldiered on for 120 odd years until the mid-1990s, finally succumbing to flood damage and becoming yet another bike trail.
A few years ago I built a layout called the White Mountain Branch layout in my garden shed - this was set in New England supposedly somewhere near the eastern end of St J & LC line. Maybe I'll post some history some other time? When the White Mountain Branch was dismantled for a house move 10 years ago, I kept the scenes I'd called West Cambridge and Johnsboro engine terminal more or less intact in the hope that I could re-use them at some stage. The engine terminal has not weathered being stored in the garage well, but the West Cambridge scene which was the most complete is in reasonable condition. With some track realignment to provide a loop and narrowing the scene down it fits the space nicely.
The latest photos from West Cambridge would seem to suggest that the now 10 year dormant line is destined to be yet another bike trail as the rails are being torn up. But wait! The line has been sold off to the newly incorporated Johnsboro & Lake Champlain Railroad. The demolition work is in fact the start of some track realignment that the new shortline needs to do now its not part of the B&M/MEC family. They hope to be recommencing service to the local industries soon....
This article first appeared in the "Rail Replacement News" newsletter of Alton Model Railway Group
