Boston, Concord, & Montreal Railroad

I've made some progress on the model railroad, but before I get into that, I promised in my last post that I would explain my fictional railroad, so I thought I'd take the time to do that today.  I consider it a semi-fictional railroad.  Let me explain what I mean by that.  In the mid-19th century, when small railroads were starting to consolidate into larger ones, the Boston, Concord, & Montreal railroad was formed out of several of the small railroads in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.  When it was formed, tracks existed between Boston and Concord (New Hampshire), and the plan was to continue building north.  The railroad built north through New Hampshire's lakes region and into the foothills of the White Mountains to a small town called Woodsville, on the Connecticut River and the border with Vermont.  They also built a branch out of Woodsville into the White Mountains which connected with the Portland and Ogdensburg, another big railroad of the day.  P&O was eventually consolidated into Maine Central, and BC&M was consolidated into Boston & Maine, and plans to continue the line to Montreal were abandoned.  Canadian Pacific built tracks south to Woodsville, so the line eventually reached Montreal, and they were used as B&M's main route to Montreal.

Boston & Maine later came under the control of the New Haven Railroad, which wanted to control the larger railroads in New England, consolidate them into one company, and electrify the important routes.  They experimented with third rail electrification near Hartford; however, it led to many accidents and the state of Connecticut banned the use of third rail electrification within its borders.  This forced the New Haven to look into overhead catenary, which at the time was only used on streetcar and interurban lines, and only with low voltage DC power.  New Haven did extensive research and developed a high voltage AC system and strung wires along part of their main line out of New York.  The tests were successful, and wires were extended to New Haven and along several branch lines.  New Haven was also responsible for stringing catenary through Boston & Maine's Hoosac Tunnel.  However, New Haven came under new management, and the plans to electrify all the busy routes in New England were dropped.

All of that being said, I am still modeling the present day.  I wanted to give some background information, which will tie in here.  My version of the BC&M is a "what-if" situation: What if the BC&M was never bought out, and survives today as a Class 2?  This led me to a few conclusions.  First is that the railroad completed their line to Montreal.  I don't know what route they were planning on building, and I don't know that the railroad itself had any plans either, so I will use the existing former CP route between Woodsville and Montreal as BC&M's main line.  The second conclusion is that for a while in the early 20th century the BC&M was under the control of New Haven.  Since I like the idea of electrification, I used this as an excuse to have catenary on my railroad.  Since the Boston to Concord corridor is fairly heavily populated, and at the time had a lot of rail traffic,then in my world the route between the two cities was electrified by New Haven, and that the wires survive today and the BC&M still uses them.  However, I don't plan on modeling today's amount of rail traffic on the line.  Today, the line barely exists between Concord and Plymouth, NH, and between Plymouth and Woodsville the tracks are gone.  There is no direct rail connection between Boston and Montreal anymore.  However, since in my world it is all run by one railroad, none of the abandonments happened, and the route is still the main line between the two cities, and therefore has much more traffic on it today.  Finally, since the area today is ripe for a commuter rail service, I will model a fictional commuter service to Montreal, which of course will also use the catenary.

However, most of that does not have to do with this model railroad, except that I am modeling a branch of the BC&M.  The branch will not be electrified, I will use diesels to run the trains.  When (if) I ever get the chance to build a basement empire, I will model a much larger BC&M and have electrification on the layout.

When we put together the maps section in our resources page, I will include a map of the BC&M for reference.  In the meantime, this scan of on old Boston and Maine timetable will give you an idea of the route I am talking about.  It is the one on the top of the page, the Canadian Pacific route to Montreal. Canadian Pacific tracks began at Woodsville.

Finally, here are a couple of paint schemes I designed for the railroad.  I used a GP38-2 and a SD40-2 to design the paint scheme, but I am not sure yet what I will use for motive power.