Somerset And Kennebec Railroad
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Somerset And Kennebec Railroad
The Somerset and Kennebec Railroad was a 19th-century Maine railroad which became part of the Maine Central Railroad. History The railroad was built in stages to serve mills along the Kennebec River upstream of Augusta, Maine, where it connected with the Portland and Kennebec Railroad. These two connecting railroads were built to standard gauge at a time when most Maine railroads were built to Portland gauge. The Somerset and Kennebec reached Waterville in 1853, Fairfield in 1855, and Skowhegan in 1856. Maine Central Railroad leased the two connecting standard gauge railroads in 1870, and converted its previous Portland gauge lines to standard gauge the following year. The downstream end of the Somerset and Kennebec became the northern portion of the Maine Central "lower road" main line, while the upstream portion became Maine Central's Skowhegan Branch. Most of the Skowhegan Branch was abandoned in 1971. Railway mileposts Maine Central mileposts reflect main line distance fro ...
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Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest, respectively. The largest state by total area in New England, Maine is the 12th-smallest by area, the 9th-least populous, the 13th-least densely populated, and the most rural of the 50 U.S. states. It is also the northeasternmost among the contiguous United States, the northernmost state east of the Great Lakes, the only state whose name consists of a single syllable, and the only state to border exactly one other U.S. state. Approximately half the area of Maine lies on each side of the 45th parallel north in latitude. The most populous city in Maine is Portland, while its capital is Augusta. Maine has traditionally been known for its jagged, rocky Atlantic Ocean and bayshore coastlines; smoothly contoured mountains; ...
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Maine Central Railroad
The Maine Central Railroad Company was a U. S. Class I railroad in central and southern Maine. It was chartered in 1856 and began operations in 1862. By 1884, Maine Central was the longest railroad in New England. Maine Central had expanded to when the United States Railroad Administration assumed control in 1917. The main line extended from South Portland, Maine, east to the Canada–United States border with New Brunswick, and a Mountain Division extended west from Portland to St. Johnsbury, Vermont and north into Quebec. The main line was double track from South Portland to Royal Junction, where it split into a "lower road" through Brunswick and Augusta and a "back road" through Lewiston, which converged at Waterville into single track to Bangor and points east. Branch lines served the industrial center of Rumford, a resort hotel on Moosehead Lake and coastal communities from Bath to Eastport. At the end of 1970, it operated of road on of track; that year it re ...
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Kennebec River
The Kennebec River (Abenaki: ''Kinəpékʷihtəkʷ'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 30, 2011 river within the U.S. state of Maine. It rises in Moosehead Lake in west-central Maine. The East and West Outlets join at Indian Pond and the river flows southward. Harris Station Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the state, was constructed near that confluence. The river is joined at The Forks by its tributary the Dead River, also called the West Branch. It continues south past the cities of Madison, Skowhegan, Waterville, and the state capital Augusta. At Richmond, it flows into Merrymeeting Bay, a freshwater tidal bay into which also flow the Androscoggin River and five smaller rivers. The Kennebec runs past the shipbuilding center of Bath, and has its mouth at the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic Ocean. The Southern Kennebec flows below the fall line and does not have rapids. As a co ...
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Augusta, Maine
Augusta is the capital of the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat of Kennebec County. The city's population was 18,899 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth-most populous city in Maine, and third-least populous state capital in the United States after Montpelier, Vermont, and Pierre, South Dakota. Located on the Kennebec River at the head of tide, it is the principal city in the Augusta-Waterville Micropolitan Statistical Area and home to the University of Maine at Augusta. History The area was first explored by the English of the short-lived Popham Colony in September 1607. 21 years later, English settlers from the Plymouth Colony settled in the area in 1628 as part of a trading post on the Kennebec River. The settlement was known by its Native American name ''Cushnoc'' (or Coussinoc or Koussinoc), meaning "head of the tide." Fur trading was at first profitable, but because of Native uprisings and declining revenues, Plymouth Colony sold the Kennebec Pate ...
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Standard Gauge
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the most widely used track gauge around the world, with approximately 55% of the lines in the world using it. All high-speed rail lines use standard gauge except those in Russia, Finland, and Uzbekistan. The distance between the inside edges of the rails is defined to be 1435 mm except in the United States and on some heritage British lines, where it is defined in U.S. customary/ Imperial units as exactly "four feet eight and one half inches" which is equivalent to 1435.1mm. History As railways developed and expanded, one of the key issues was the track gauge (the distance, or width, between the inner sides of the rails) to be used. Different railways used different gauges, and where rails of different gauge met ...
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Portland Gauge
, a broad gauge, is the track gauge used in India, Pakistan, western Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile, and on BART in San Francisco, United States. In North America, it is called Indian Gauge, Provincial, Portland, or Texas gauge. In Argentina, it is known as "trocha ancha" (Spanish for ''broad gauge''). In the Indian subcontinent it is simply known as "broad gauge". Elsewhere it is known as Indian gauge. It is the widest gauge in regular passenger use anywhere in the world. Asia India In India, the initial freight railway lines were built using standard gauge. In the 1850s, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway adopted the gauge of for the first passenger railway in India between Bori Bunder and Thane.Indian Railways: Some Fascinating Facts“Train Atlas” ''Train Atlas'', Indian Railways, 2003 This was then adopted as the standard for the nationwide network. Indian Railways today predominantly operates on broad gauge. Most of the metre gauge and narrow gauge railways h ...
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Waterville, Maine
Waterville is a city in Kennebec County, Maine, United States, on the west bank of the Kennebec River. The city is home to Colby College and Thomas College. As of the 2020 census the population was 15,828. Along with Augusta, Waterville is one of the principal cities of the Augusta-Waterville, ME Micropolitan Statistical Area. History The area now known as Waterville was once inhabited by the Canibas tribe of the Abenaki people. Called "Taconnet" after Chief Taconnet, the main village was located on the east bank of the Kennebec River at its confluence with the Sebasticook River at what is now Winslow. Known as "Ticonic" by English settlers, it was burned in 1692 during King William's War, after which the Canibas tribe abandoned the area. Fort Halifax was built by General John Winslow in 1754, and the last skirmish with indigenous peoples occurred on May 18, 1757. The township would be organized as Kingfield Plantation, then incorporated as Winslow in 1771. When resi ...
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Fairfield, Maine
Fairfield is a town in Somerset County, Maine, United States. The population was 6,484 at the 2020 census. The town includes Fairfield Center, Fairfield village and Hinckley, and borders the city of Waterville to the south. It is home to the Good Will-Hinckley School, Lawrence High School and Kennebec Valley Community College. History The area was territory of the Canibas tribe of Abenaki Indians residing at Taconnet village, once located downriver at the confluence of the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers in what is today Winslow. In 1692 during King William's War, the village was burned, so the Canibas tribe abandoned the area. The French and Indian Wars finally ended in 1763, leaving the region open for English colonization. Fairfield Plantation, named for its fair aspect, was first settled in 1774. Benedict Arnold and his troops rested and re-provisioned here in 1775 during their march up the Kennebec River to the Battle of Quebec. Following the Revolutionary War, F ...
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Skowhegan, Maine
Skowhegan () is the county seat of Somerset County, Maine. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 8,620. Every August, Skowhegan hosts the annual Skowhegan State Fair, the oldest continuously-held state fair in the United States. Skowhegan was originally inhabited by the indigenous Abenaki people who named the area Skowhegan, meaning "watching place or fish" and were mostly dispersed by the end of the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War. History Original inhabitants For thousands of years prior to European settlement, this region of Maine was the territory of the Kinipekw (later known as Kennebec) Norridgewock tribe of Abenaki. The Norridgewock village was located on the land now known as Madison. The Abenaki relied on agriculture (corn, beans, and squash) for a large part of their diet, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild foods. The Skowhegan Falls (which have since been replaced by the Weston Dam) descended 28 feet over a half-mile on the Kennebec Riv ...
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Vassalboro, Maine
Vassalboro (originally Vassalborough) is a town in Kennebec County, Maine, United States. The population was 4,520 at the 2020 census. Vassalboro includes the villages of Riverside, Getchell's Corner, North Vassalboro, and East Vassalboro, home to the town library and sports field. Vassalboro is included in the Augusta, Maine, micropolitan New England City and Town Area. History Vassalboro was first settled by colonists in 1760 and incorporated in 1771. It was named for one of the settlement's proprietors, William Vassall, who was born in 1715 on his family's Jamaican sugar plantation. Slavery had formed an "integral part" of the Vassalls' fortune since 1648, when William's great-grandfather moved to Barbados and launched the family into the sugar business. As a boy, Vassall moved first to Philadelphia, then Boston. He earned a BA (1733) and an MA (1743) from Harvard. A Loyalist during the Revolution, he fled to England, where he died in 1800, having spent many years arguing for ...
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Winslow, Maine
Winslow is a town and census-designated place in Kennebec County, Maine, United States, along the Kennebec River across from Waterville. The population was 7,948 at the 2020 census. History Winslow was originally an Indian settlement named Taconock. During King William's War, Major Benjamin Church led his third expedition east from Boston in 1692. During this expedition he and 450 troops raided the native villages at both Penobscot (Castine, Maine) and present-day Winslow. Winslow was then settled by colonists from Plymouth Colony. The area was covered by the land patent given by the English Crown to Pilgrim governor William Bradford and his associates. The earliest settlers had such Old Colony and Pilgrim names as Winslow, Bradford, Warren, and Otis. Descendants of those early settlers can still be found in the town. In 1754, Fort Halifax was built by order of the Massachusetts General Court on the peninsula at the confluence of the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers. A se ...
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