The Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway

Writing about walking the old Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth (PS&P) right-of-way got me jazzed up about South Berwick's railroad history. An evening at the library revealed many sites to check out and I had a chance to head to some of them earlier today.

First, let's review:

Three railroads ran through South Berwick at one time. The PS&P, the Boston & Maine (B&M), and the Portsmouth, Great Falls, and Conway (PGF&C since I guess we must).

The PS&P came first in 1842. It is primarily associated with the Eastern Railroad, which competed with the B&M for about 40 years; however, the section between South Berwick and Portland was jointly leased by the Eastern and B&M for about 30 of those years. Both of those companies wanted to offer a route to Portland and it was easiest to use the existing track. I suspect that whoever built the PS&P did so with such a lease arrangement in mind. Its track is now the gas line / power line right of way, although the gas line seems to be more consistently aligned as evidenced below:

As an aside, you can learn so much from tax maps! Viva l'internet and thanks to the town of South Berwick for putting them there!

SW of Emery's Bridge Road (the route of the recent walk), the gas line land (12-80) and CMP land (12-95) are side-by-side. But, then the CMP cut turns more sharply east while the gas line continues over the Knights Pond causeway, which we know to be the old railroad route. You can see that they come closer once again, then go their separate ways near Dennett Road, with Google Maps' satellite view. Try it!

Anyway, so we've got the PS&P running from Portland to Agamenticus Junction, south to Kittery, into NH over a predecessor to the Sarah Mildred Long ("Middle") bridge, and onto Boston. The track on the bridge is still used occasionally to transport waste from the Naval Shipyard.

Today's trip began with a drive over the Sarah Long bridge. No pictures, but I conveniently have some 2-year old video from a boat trip up the river with Mom, Jim, and Jim's brother Chip.

Railroad #2 is the Boston & Maine. It had run track from Dover to South Berwick, but not beyond there. Upon entering into the PS&P lease agreement, it built a spur to Agamenticus Junction to join with the PS&P main line. After the lease agreement ended, they built their own line and that's the line now used by the Downeaster.

The third railroad is the most confounding and mysterious, and thus of course the most compelling. The track in South Berwick was originally built to connect to Great Falls (remember, that's Somersworth) but didn't serve much of a purpose before it was folded into the larger PGF&P project. It left the PG&P at "Jewett" - near today's 91/236 intersection - wound its way to downtown South Berwick, crossed the river near the B&M and road crossings, and merged with some B&M - constructed track a bit south of Great Falls, where the merged line met the line from Conway.

Fun fact: That B&M line was a spur line to Great Falls that left its Dover - South Berwick train in Salmon Falls (remember, that's Rollinsford), so there were actually two trains between Salmon Falls and Great Falls for a while. Strange, but for about 10 years there were also two trains between South Berwick and North Berwick. The jury's still out on which of those is most guffaw-worthy.

Funner fact: When Rt. 236 swings left near the Rt 91 intersection, it is actually moving onto the former route of the PGF&P! So, as you drive north from Marshwood High, you move from one old rail corridor to another. Where you leave that corridor and where it goes after that is less clear.

Funnest fact: The PG&P and PSF&P combined at Jewett with the help of a turntable; the turntable "pit" remains are very much visible and are actually just off of Rt. 236, at Fife Rd. I can't believe I never noticed it in 8 bazillion trips up and down 236.

I really hope that isn't a giant mushroom in the last photo.

The sign in the second one is too cryptic to be of much use to me yet. Need to spend some more quality time with the books to get all the name changes, bankruptcies, and buyouts straight. I think "dizzying" is the operative word here.

The lawn around the pit was very nicely mowed. Thank you, landowner!

From here, I took Fife Rd to Oldfields Rd and Dover-Eliot Rd (101) to avoid downtown South Berwick. A nice side effect is having to had Oldfields Rd to the "places it'd be okay to live" list. Lots of interesting old houses.

After crossing into NH, I took Sligo Rd (named by the region's Irish settlers) through some absolutely gorgeous woods / farmland. Maximum verdance. "Very reminiscent of the Seattle area" says this somewhat-elitist-for-having-lived-there (however briefly).

Eventually, I ended up in Salmon Falls village and set off in search of PGF&C bridge remains. I was armed with memories of last night's big breakthrough.

Jackpot!, even though I have no idea what "Northern Line" refers to. This map is from 1925. Thank you, Dover library online resources! Your local library...even more awesome than online tax maps. Well, that's debatable.

Having not printed the map out, I couldn't remember where to start and first went too far south, around the back of an old mill turned into small businesses. There was a nice view back up-river but nothing that looked like a bridge.

One book had said that a station house on the line had survived until 1995 (50+ years after the line was abandoned) and was being turned into a park. So, I looked for a park.

I found one N of Main St just over the bridge from Maine. The image ahead looked promising. I doubted very much that the railroad had left an underpass in its trestle for what is today a heavily pot-holed dirt road. It must have been the PGF&P. Indeed, the 1925 map confirms this.

(The underpass on the left is for Church St, which was Dover St in 1925 but was a relatively major road both then and now.)

Now I knew roughly how the line ran in Rollinsford but still had nothing on how it came from Maine. So, I headed for the Main St bridge, paused to respond unnecessarily frumpily to a friendly phone call, and finally spotted some evidence.

With the Main St bridge on the left:

Now, this could just be part of an old road bridge, but I really don't think it is. Its placement is just too perfectly in line with the "steel trestle" from the map. Nothing that looked like an abutment on either side jumped out; returning with a printed copy of the map might help.

With the rain having cancelled the evening's softball plans, there was time to search out where the PGF&P met with the B&M Great Falls spur. I had previously located it using Google Maps.

The B&M spur is closely tracked by today's Somersworth Rd (Main St on the Somersworth side). The PGF&P came in on a curving line from the East. They appear to have come together about where today's road and railroad cross. Not sure if that's a coincidence, or what.

Old Indigo Hill Rd was signed as such and paved, but in pretty poor shape and not really a two-lane road. There wasn't a great place to park and I was ready for dinner, but an obvious trail intersected the road right where the assumed rail corridor appears on the map.

Yes, there were signs, but no, I don't remember what they said. -1 for me.

I headed home pondering how one seems to cross train tracks so frequently when driving between Dover, Rollinsford, and Somersworth. No wonder, with the B&M main line and the Salmon Falls - Great Falls spur both in the area. The spur is still used as part of the Northcoast Railroad, but that one will have to be its own adventure.

Not bad for a Wednesday! Boy, do I love summer.