July 1, 2009

History was made on Saturday, June 20, when Conway Scenic Railroad delivered two halves of a transformer to the siding at Depot Road in North Conway. The transformers originated in China and were received at the deep water port at Searsport, Maine. The heaviest load was placed on a Schnabel car and the lighter load went on a depressed center flat car. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railroad moved the cars from Searsport to Lennoxville in Quebec, Canada where they were interchanged to the Saint Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad for the move south to Groveton, NH. At Groveton the New Hampshire Central Railroad moved them to HAZEN in Whitefield, NH. From Whitefield to North Conway the Conway Scenic Railroad had the last forty two miles of the (rail) journey from Searsport.

I had heard that there was a possibility of a special move into North Conway about two years ago, and at the time I didn't think much about it, figuring that the move would probably eventually take place over the highway system. About six months ago it began to seem like it might actually happen; word was that the customer wanted us to keep the mountain open from December right through the winter until the loads were delivered and the empties returned. Given enough money almost anything is possible, but as it turned out the only move we made was on December 3, 2008, when we ran the snow plow from Depot Street to Hazen to clear the line so that a Hy-Rail truck could be run to check clearances. Word came down that the transformers would not arrive in the USA until springtime so it was not necessary to maintain the mountain in a state of readiness during the winter.

We had been planning on doing a tie job out on what I call the "west end," which is anything beyond Fabyan, during the summer of 2009 but now with the imminent arrival of a one million pound load, we thought it best to accelerate the pace of the work and get it done before the move. This we did with the help of MAINE TRACK MAINTENANCE, Inc. of South Portland and Fairfield, Maine. Between our track gang of four men and the MTM crew, we installed approximately 3,400 ties in an eleven mile stretch including the replacement of more than 50% of the tie plates. We also replaced numerous joint bars and changed lots of joint bar bolts. The replacement joint bars have come from two different places, either the section of the Mountain Division that Guilford Transportation Industries removed or more recently from the Calais branch. Both locations used exactly the same kind of 85 lb rail and bars that we have in service here. Just 3 days before the move, MTM removed a small bridge at MP 86.47 and did some work on the abutments. This involved using some of the best timbers that were recently removed from Frankenstein Trestle. All other bridges and trackwork on the line were found to be in a safe and suitable condition to handle these loads.

I had given a lot of thought to the power and braking requirements of this train, and so I ultimately decided to go with a 3 unit lash up of the two FP-9As and the GP-7. We tried them out on the hill in North Conway. The MU (multiple unit) equipment all worked just fine. My thought was that this would give our engineer three units of independent braking as we were coming down the mountain. Consequently it also gave us 5,000 HP with 12 axles and 24 wheels on the rail. That makes for a lot of traction which as it turns out came in pretty handy. The train itself weighed in at just over 1,000 tons. The stretch of track from Fabyan to Crawfords is five miles of steady 2% grade and then there is the eleven miles of heavy downgrade to Sawyers River. I wished we had had dynamic braking available! I put #573 on the point for the move east as a tribute to the many Maine Central freights that had come before. It was great to see her head through the Notch with a freight once again.

We ran the power and a couple of our own cars out to HAZEN on the 19th where we met the NHC crew with the train. Crews from both railroads worked together to assemble the train. The guys from Emmert (owner of the Schnabel Car) required that the train be in a certain order and so we switched it out. The next day we departed from HAZEN and made it all the way to Crawford depot with only having to make one stop at Fabyan to check clearances on the bridge beside the BASE Rd. The load cleared there by 3 inches.

We used the passing track at Crawford due to the close clearance of our handi-cap ramp located on the main line. We made a planned stop at the Gateway where it was known in advance that the Schnabel car would have to be shifted to the North in order to clear a rock outcropping there. At the girders the load was shifted back to normal. At this point retainers were turned up on the two loaded cars before the descent down the mountain began in earnest. I watched the cars go by at Notchland and the brakes were smoking hot but this was necessary in order to keep the train under very tight control all the way down the hill. Rudy Hood was the engineer, and he did a perfect job. At Bartlett we had to wait for the regular 2:30 Bartlett train to arrive and depart, and I took advantage of that time to put #573 on the rear of the train to help with the switching at Depot St. There were slow downs to check clearances at all of the remaining bridges and we finally arrived in North Conway around 5 PM where the train was switched out, and the big load was spotted for transfer to truck. All in all an interesting couple of days on the CSRR!

In other matters, we have just received our shipment of 2009 HO rail cars and this year's offering is a modern ACF Covered Hopper. It is numbered CSRX 2009. CSRX is Conway Scenic's actual reporting marks. In the past we have used CSRR but I thought that CSRX would be a nice touch. Enjoy!

Thank you for your interest in and support of Conway Scenic Railroad. Be safe and ALWAYS EXPECT A TRAIN.

Paul Hallett