Somerset Rail Road Company

Product Details

$25 to $50

Historical Context

Somerset Railroad was chartered in 1860 to build north along the Kennebec River from the Maine Central Railroad "back road" at Oakland, Maine. The line originally shared the Maine Central Portland gauge of 5 ft 6 in. Construction reached Norridgewock in 1873, Madison in 1875, and North Anson in 1877. The company defaulted in 1879 and was reorganized as the standard gauge Somerset Railway in 1884 before construction continued to Solon in 1889 and Bingham in 1890.

The reorganized company extended the line to Moosehead Lake in 1906 and built a large resort hotel called the Mount Kineo House. The railroad had fifteen plush upholstered coaches, nine baggage cars, and twelve combination smoking-baggage cars with leather seats in the smoking section. Hotel patrons arrived on through Pullman cars from large eastern cities, and reached the hotel by steamboat from the railroad terminal at Kineo Station.

The Maine Central Railroad purchased the Mount Kineo House with the Somerset Railway; and the railway became the Kineo branch of the Maine Central Railroad in 1911.

Aboriginal forests had been converted to lumber and pulpwood before the last passenger train over the branch ran in September, 1933; and the line north of Bingham was dismantled that year. The Mount Kineo House was razed in 1938.

Mount Kineo was not the only destination sought by passengers on the Old Somerset Railroad. Many prominent figures of the time, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry David Thoreau, ventured to Maine's Somerset County in search of wilderness. Lake Moxie Station became the jumping off point for sporting camps and remote destinations north along the current U.S. Route 201 all the way up to The Forks, Lake Parlin, and Upper Enchanted Township.

Bingham became an important loading point for pulpwood floated down the Kennebec River to Wyman Dam until environmental regulations curtailed log driving in the 1970s. The former Madison Paper Industries paper mill at Madison was the last major customer on the branch originating or terminating 3,000 annual carloads in 1973.

A portion of the line from Oakland to Madison remained in operation by Pan Am Railways until service was ended in 2013. Access to the remaining section of line from Madison to Embden is gated off at the former Madison Paper Industries mill. Track from Embden to Bingham has been removed but the roadbed remains in use as a rail trail. On June 24th, 2021, Pan Am Railways had filed with the Surface Transportation Board to formally abandon the remaining section of line from Oakland to Madison and Embden. On November 30th, 2021, The State of Maine announced the acquisition of a 32 mile section of the former rail line from Oakland north to Embden for conversion into a multi-use rail trail.

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