Railroad Maps

I'm continuing my slow work on mapping the abandoned railroads of New England (and sometimes beyond).  Yesterday, I was able to do a little more fieldchecking of the Lawrence to Manchester line, while up at the doggie meet and greet with Pixie (Madison) in Windham, NH.

Part of this old line is in the form of a rail trail (the Windham rail trail).  It runs between Route 111 (where there is a very nice bridge over the highway) and the old Windham depot area where the line intersected with the Worcester, Nashua and Portland line.

I found a rather interesting old railroad map: Map of the Montreal and Boston Air Line, etc., the kind that promoted the lines and stations of a particular R/R company, which brings to life some of these lines, including the route mentioned above.  Indeed, I only just discovered this site: David Rumsey Map Collection which has thousands of historical maps of all sorts, free and browsable.  Wonderful!  I note that this particular map is from 1887 and is extolling the virtues of the Boston and Lowell Railroad, in particular the route through the White Mountains of the Portland and Ogdensburg R/R, which is the line that the Conway Scenic Railroad uses.

If you look closely at the Windham area, you'll see that the WNP is shown as a thin line (i.e. belonging to a rival company).  I also see that at this time, the Lowell-Framingham line that served Carlisle and is now partly in the form of the Bruce Freeman rail trail, is marked as the Old Colony Railroad, running all the way from Lowell to New Bedford.

Note also their obvious pride in the comment at the bottom of the map (their capitalization):

All Through Trains Start from and Arrive at the Magnificent
BOSTON AND LOWELL RAILROAD STATION, Causeway Street, Boston.

Postscript: there is now a blog dedicated to my railroad activities: http://robinsrailroadblog.blogspot.com/