WHAT CONNECTIVITY LOOKS LIKE.

The Boston and Maine Railroad Historical Society recently released their 2021 calendar, which includes this look at transition era railroading early in the American High, namely, on 15 August 1949.  Kindly be advised that I am posting this photograph with the Society's permission, and I suggest that if you like it, ask for their permission before you share it.

The train dominating the center is the Pine Tree for Boston, which will leave at 10.10 am (eastern standard time, that would be 11.10 am on eastern daylight saving time) offering a shopper-friendly schedule nonstop to Boston with a 12.10 pm standard arrival, still plenty of time to head over to Filene's or maybe even to catch the first pitch at a Braves or Red Sox game.  To the right, closer to the station, is the East Wind for New York, Pennsylvania Station, and connecting with service to Philadelphia and points south.  Highball will be at 10.15, with conditional stops to receive passengers for Worcester or beyond, at the Maine beach towns, as well as Dover and Exeter.  Because of the curious railway geography of Boston, the trains destined south of the Hub went from Boston and Maine to the New Haven at Worcester, there to join the Shore Line (today's Acela line) at Providence or New London, or possibly they'd go cross country via Willimantic to Hartford and New Haven.  Coach passengers from  the Lake Winnepesaukee resorts or Concord could change to the East Wind at Lowell. The two diesels on the East Wind might be to enable a quick swap of power at Worcester (the train for New York arriving at 1.25 eastern standard, the train from New York due at 1.30; and New Haven owned the engine facilities in Worcester.)  Closest to the camera is unnamed train Ten, due out at 10.20 eastern standard, making its first positive stop at Old Orchard Beach, thus letting the East Wind get further ahead.  Ten will arrive at North Station a full hour after the Pine Tree.

Boston and Maine Railroad photograph by George Hill.
Color enhancement by Imbued With Hues.
Posted with the permission of the Boston and Maine Railroad Historical Society.

The real connectivity, though, is what transpired on the east side of the station before the top of the hour.  Un-named train 214 from Rumford by way of Livermore Falls and Lewiston arrived at 9.45 followed by un-named train 52 from Rockland running ahead of the Pine Tree from Brunswick, and making a Freeport stop, then due Portland at 9.50, with summer season through coaches to Boston.  The Pine Tree, off Bangor at 6.10, arrives Portland at 9.55.  That allows fifteen minutes for the station switcher to pick the Boston cars off 52, and tack them, and the restaurant-lounge car, onto the Pine Tree.  That work ought all be done by now, as the station clock appears to be coming up on ten past the hour (appears to be eleven, the clock tower on daylight time while the timecard is still on standard time, the railroads persisted in confusing people in this way right up to the Uniform Time Act of 1966) and it's getting on time to go.  Or perhaps the station clock is on Lombardi time, set a few minutes ahead of actual time, something that the Chicago and North Western clock facing east on Washington Street still does.

The first signs of decline are showing.  The Pine Tree carries a drawing-room parlor car out of Bangor, but the restaurant lounge apparently didn't sell enough coffee and sunny side ups to earn its keep, and in the early 1950s Maine Central sold its two restaurant-lounge cars to Chicago and Eastern Illinois, still keeping up appearances in the through service for Florida or New Orleans.  On Sundays, the Pine Tree did not run, and Ten became a through, coach-only train from Bangor; in the summer of 1948 the restaurant-lounge car originated in Bangor except Sundays, and the Bangor to Boston parlor ran on Ten on Sundays. Those idiosyncratic, very-different-on-Sunday schedules of Boston and Maine and Maine Central survive to this day on Amtrak's Downeaster services.  The East Wind is also diminished: at various times in its history it ran through from Bangor or Rockland, or was scheduled in such a way that through cars could be added from those connecting trains.  In the summer of '49, the cross-platform transfer at Portland has to do.

That's still a LOT of connectivity.  What, though, about the frequency?  Overnight, the Penobscot with an oh-dark-fifty departure carried the sleepers from Van Buren in Aroostook County, Calais at the northern end of the Maine Coast, and Bangor to Boston; the Gull with sleepers from Halifax and Saint John picked up the pluggers at 5.25 (almost a decent departure time under daylight saving time) except Monday (there's that Sunday thing, this time in Canada), and coach-only 134 got away at 7.20, making only Biddeford and Dover, but with a few summer season stops at the beaches.  No cafe-lounge on that train, though.  After the Pine Tree fleet has sailed, there's a midafternoon train making multiple stops, primarily for parcels, before the Kennebec flotilla gets in around four p.m. (five by daylight saving time and half past the hour in Newfoundland): a train numbered Twelve originates in Vanceboro, almost to New Brunswick, transferring passengers to a different train numbered Twelve, this is the Kennebec in the timetable.  (And why not: find as many instances of a Train Five in a Milwaukee Road employee timetable as you can!)  In the summer, there's a parlor car from Calais (almost five hours to go the 130 miles to Bangor before the fast running starts); a through coach from Van Buren handed off by the Bangor and Aroostook; a connecting train hitting all the paper mill towns on the Lewiston route plus a train out of Rumford via Mechanic Falls; the Rockland connection includes through coaches and another parlor car, and the restaurant-lounge car gets tacked on with the Rockland cars with fifteen minutes allowed for station work.  Then comes the Flying Yankee, no longer the Budd articulated streamliner as twilight falls, after which the daily State of Maine for New York and the triweekly Bar Harbor and selected Sunday or holidays Down Easter swap sleepers and bring the carriage trade back to the big cities.  The timetable also showed through sleepers from Farmington, Maine, or Plymouth or Concord in New Hampshire.

I should be grateful, I suppose, that a Boston to Brunswick round trip is still possible in a day; although when I contemplate Amtrak marshalling a Lake Shore or Empire Builder with sleepers on both ends of the consist so as to make splitting or combining the trains at Albany or Spokane, I contemplate what Portland Terminal used to accomplish in Maine, or the way New York Central or Great Northern or Chicago and North Western used to switch consists up, and I cringe.