Customer Reviews

Maine Narrow Gauge Railroads (ME) (Images of Rail)

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This is primarily a picture book - filled with great old pictures of Maine's famous 2-foot-gauge railroads (there were also a couple of 3-foot-gauge railroads in Maine; these are not mentioned).
Each railroad gets a chapter of photos with a short introductory text with a basic outline of its life and death. I wish someone with skills at grammar and editing had given the text and captions a quick once-over. But the pictures are the "Maine" feature of the book, and I was happy to see a few I'd never seen before. People who own all the "Big" (expensive) books about the Maine narrow gauge railroads may not find much new here, but it's a great introduction and overview for the general reader.
I was interested in the pictures showing the equipment that still exists (and even runs) today - some of the pieces are over 100 years old, and their survival is almost miraculous!

We recently had travelled from Maine, USA to Wales, UK having a marvelous, picuresque journey on the Rheilfford and Pfestiniog railway out of Porthmadog. In many ways the Wales countryside resembles that of Maine in terms of topograghy. In showing some co-workers a couple of photos we had taken of this magnificent little Welsh 2 footer which began business in the 1830's and still runs a successful tourist line, one of them asked if the Maine Narrow guages weren't also built on two foot guage. I believed they must have been 3 foot like the Western US narrow guage roads, such as the Durango and Silverton, but this question made me curious. I found the intriguing answer to that question in this little book. Not only were the Maine Roads built to the 2 foot guage, but they were actually modelled after the sucessful Rheilfford railway. Since we live in Maine, we are interested in Maine history as well as Railroading, and found through this book that it truly is a small world after all.

I recommend this pictorial book to any Railfan or Maine History buff, or any combination thereof.