| Posted by RNP47 on November 10, 2015 | |
Nice! I used to attend Mass at St. Mary Catholic Church which is right across the street from the tracks in Rollinsford and quite often the Downeaster would rumble by right during the homily...
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The stone bridge pier in the foreground is interesting, as it appears low enough to cross under the existing track at an angle. Any idea whose it was or where it went. Suspect possibly a trolley or interurban line as they were plentiful in this region.
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Rich,
The ashlar pier on the left last belonged to the Boston & Maine RR’s Conway Branch, until 1890 the Portsmouth, Great Falls & Conway RR (leased during the 1870s by the B&M’s archrival, the Eastern RR). The branch line did indeed cross the Salmon Falls (Newichawannock) River diagonally and pass under the main line of the Western Route of the B&M’s Portland Division (ex-B&M Western Division) without interchanging there. At the western—i.e., New Hampshire—end of the visible iron and steel deck-truss trestle are two deck-plate-girder bridges arranged in tandem, the larger, more easterly one spanning the former trackbed and the smaller, more westerly one crossing over Church Street in Salmon Falls Village. The village is not only the downtown center of Rollinsford, NH, it is the locus of the town’s 19th century water-powered textile mills.
Until the 1930s and its abandonment, the branch line provided a connection between Jewett in South Berwick, ME, on the Eastern Route of the B&M Portland Division (ex-B&M Eastern Division; ex-Portland, Saco & Portsmouth RR, a subsidiary of the Eastern RR, both of which came into B&M hands in the early 1880s), and Somersworth (Great Falls), NH, on the B&M’s previously existing Conway Branch. The then-converged track continued north to North Conway and Intervale, NH, where it interchanged with the famed Maine Central Mountain Division. The B&M Eastern Route was mostly abandoned and torn up in 1944 and 1952, but that part of the Conway Branch that ran from Somersworth to the B&M Western Route main at Rollinsford Junction survives today as the southern portion of the New Hampshire Northcoast RR.
To correct one misconception, although Steve Barry took the photograph from the street bridge between Salmon Falls Village, NH, and South Berwick, ME, the railroad trestle runs to Berwick, ME, because the town line between the two Berwicks lies just shy of the track alignment on the eastern side of the river. The trestle presently sees use by the owning Pan Am Railways and by the Amtrak Downeaster.
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Off forum, a colleague has urged me to clarify a few points in my previous posting, which I concede includes one gloss-over. All readers know that railroad history can be complex, with both changes and synonymies in names threatening to confuse things.
In 1842, the Boston & Maine RR built to what later became Rollinsford, NH, where construction ceased for a few years on the west bank of the Salmon Falls River, viz., at Salmon Falls Village, then a part of Somersworth, NH. In the late 1840s three important things happened: (i) The B&M bridged the river to Berwick, ME (forty years later, the timber deck truss bridge was replaced with an iron deck truss structure). (ii) The southeast or Salmon Falls half of Somersworth separated from the northwest or Great Falls half of the town—the lower half became Rollinsford, while the upper half retained the original name of Somersworth. The Salmon Falls or Newichawannock River flows through both municipalities, as suggested with numerous waterfalls along its course. (iii) The B&M built its Great Falls Branch, from the main line at soon-named Rollinsford Junction north to the interchange with the Great Falls & Conway RR. Because the GF&C held the state charter to grade to Conway, NH, in order to interchange with the Portland & Ogdensburg RR (later the Maine Central RR), the B&M was forbidden to continue beyond Great Falls. An 1851 map shows both railroads interchanging there, but not the Great Falls & South Berwick RR yet in place. Both the B&M’s Great Falls Branch and the reorganized Portsmouth, Great Falls & Conway RR, running through both ME and NH, appear on a map drawn twenty years later.
By the 1890s, all of the local rail lines had gone to the B&M. At some time, likely around World War I with the redesignation of the Eastern and Western Divisions as same-named Routes of the new Portland Division, the access lines from the Eastern Route (at Jewett) and the Western Route (at Rollinsford Jct) to Somersworth were brought under the umbrella of the Conway Branch. The B&M terminated service on the leg between Jewett and Somersworth during the mid-1930s, with the abandonment of the part of the Eastern Route from North Berwick to Kittery Junction, ME, done in 1952. That segment of the Conway Branch from Ossipee, NH, south—through Rochester and Somersworth—thrives today under the New Hampshire Northcoast RR, carrying sand and gravel to Dover, NH (a Pan Am crew takes over there for the final leg to Boston).
I hope this account elucidates that single ashlar pier standing in the Salmon Falls River at the NH village of the same name.
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An error crept into my comment of April 29th. The construction by the Boston & Maine RR did not stall at Salmon Falls Village in 1842. Rather, the B&M had bridged the river by early 1843 and built a few more miles to South Berwick Junction in order to interchange with the Portland, Saco & Portsmouth RR. The PS&P thereupon hauled the cars of both the B&M and Eastern Railroads on to Portland. That arrangement fell apart in the early 1870s, forcing the B&M to grade to Portland and creating the line that later became its Western Division. The B&M’s Eastern Division resulted from its purchase of the Eastern and PS&P RRs in 1884. As indicated above, both divisions were consolidated as the Portland Division around the time of World War I.
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