“Bangor is quite a railroad center…” boasted a reporter for the Bangor Daily Commercial on June 24, 1910, before troubles began.
The summer timetables for the Maine Central and the Bangor & Aroostook listed 71 passenger trains passing through town every weekday — 36 incoming and 35 outgoing. In addition, there were “innumerable freights.” The sum total of passenger and freight trains arriving and leaving “is considerably in excess of 100.”
With its modern train station and the availability of first-class equipment including new Pullman cars and heavy “Pacific type” locomotives, the Queen City of the East could feel confident that its reputation as a transportation center was assured for a while.
Like any leap into modernity, however, the railroads came with a price tag. Clouds of coal smoke, loud whistles and dangerous sparks poisoned the environment and threatened neighborhoods with destruction. Labor strife and deadly accidents raised further questions about trains even back in the age of the robber barons.
The trials and tribulations of the Bangor & Aroostook, the upstart line that had powered much development in northern and eastern Maine over the previous two decades, were a good example.
Unpleasant remnants of the strike that briefly interrupted train service in 1913 dragged on into 1914 in what became one of the longest labor actions in Maine history, according to historian Charles A. Scontras. The Bangor newspapers, however, described these events as efforts by “enemies” of the B&A to harm the company, as if the strike was over.
Evidence that vandalism and other activities were taking their toll appeared in the Bangor Daily News in large print on Feb. 27, 1914, when the railroad released a statement defending itself from criticism having to do with problems the company was having meeting its schedules and hiring competent enginemen to replace the strikers. (Accusations about these failures appeared in a petition to the Maine Public Utilities Commission in January 1915, signed by several businessmen from Houlton, Caribou and Brownville and several former B&A engineers.)
These “malicious rumors” being spread by “hostile” people combined with the terrible winter of 1914 were causing a major part of the company’s problems, the statement said.
As many as nine snowplow trains had to be run on all but three days since Christmas to keep the tracks clear. Freight service was reduced, sometimes by as much as 50 percent, meaning tons of potatoes were left at trackside.
But the weather was only the beginning of the B&A’s problems.
“For the last thirty days the Company’s engines and cars have been injuriously tampered with by evil disposed persons, who have tried to disable the locomotives and cars and therefore wreck trains,” according to a news release from the company.
Nuts and bolts had been loosened, causing them to drop off after a few miles, disabling locomotives. Foreign substances such as broken glass, sand and steel filings were having the same effect when mixed in the grease used to lubricate parts on the locomotives. An analysis by a University of Maine laboratory had proved the suspicions of railroad employees that the company was the victim of sabotage.
These “evil” people who were trying to bring the downfall of the railroad were even trying to spread typhoid fever to the enginemen — the strikebreakers — by poisoning their water bottles with typhoid germs. A “dozen or fifteen such cases” had resulted in three deaths by that time, the company claimed in its statement.
Inspections by the Interstate Commerce Commission and the State Board of Railroad Commissioners had concluded that the company was keeping its locomotives in “first-class condition” despite the vandalism, said the news release.
The fact that the last fall the railroad broke freight records with a smaller group of engineers and firemen than it had employed before the strike showed that its “new enginemen are fully as efficient, if not more so, than those who went on strike in January, 1913.”
Bangor’s two daily newspapers covered these events in scattershot fashion, leaving out many explanatory details.
When an Italian immigrant named Joe Wito was arrested for tampering with a locomotive at Northern Maine Junction, the third such case in three months, the headline in the BDN on March 30 declared “WICKEDNESS CROPS OUT IN BUNCHES: Another Enemy of the B&A …”
When Henry Adams, an engineer with nine years of experience on the B&A, died of typhoid, the Commercial on April 3 stated without further explanation that he had refused to join the strikers and was taken ill while on the run between Millinocket and Oakfield.
The hysteria escalated on April 25 when the B&A management announced a “Dastardly Scheme,” — a plot to dynamite B&A rail bridges. Armed guards had been posted, and a reward of $2,000 was offered for information leading to the conviction of the saboteurs.
On May 15, the Bangor Daily News said 15 deputy sheriffs had been sworn in to guard bridges in Penobscot County. The railroad would pay the bill.
A BDN editorial titled “Keep Things Moving” noted on May 20, “The threat of trouble, the vague hint that something is hanging over the present system remains a very potent impediment to the business activity of eastern Maine.” The details would remain “vague” as long as the newspapers continued their sketchy coverage of affairs.
Charles A. Scontras’ “Time-Line of Maine Labor History” tells us that the strike did not end until 1915, “when strike benefits ceased.” It resulted “in complete victory for the railroad.”
While the B&A labor strife apparently did not cause any notable train wrecks, there were plenty of deaths and injuries attributable to trains a century ago. In the year ending June 30, 1915, there were 612 injuries and 43 deaths related to railroad activity in Maine, according to a Maine Public Utilities Commission report.
The B&A experienced 153 injuries and four deaths that year. There had been nothing similar to the tragic Grindstone wreck of 1911 when nine died and many more were injured. But two wrecks in 1914 are worth mentioning for the lessons they teach. The cause of most wrecks on the B&A was, in fact, human carelessness, not vandalism.
On Nov. 30, a collision between a northbound passenger train and a southbound freight train at Crystal station injured about 23 passengers and six train employees. Only one person, an engineer, who was thrown through the window of his locomotive, required hospitalization.
Immediately after the wreck, the Commercial declared that “A cursory glance at the book of rules makes it clear to anyone that the freight train had no right to occupy the main track at the time the passenger train was due. The railroad company’s timetable shows that “the passenger train … was due to pass Crystal [without stopping] at 6:04 p.m., consequently the freight train should have been in on the siding not later than 5:54, whereas it was still on the line when the collision took place at 6:12.”
Maine Public Utilities Commission investigators blamed the wreck on “carelessness.” One engineer had seen the lights of the other train coming several miles off, but did nothing. When approaching the station, the engineer in the other train had not bothered to stick his head out the window to see the other train sitting in the track. The B&A fired five employees.
Early in 1915, a similar, but less serious accident occurred when a slow-moving southbound freight ran into a northbound passenger train that was standing on the main line at West Sebois. People were shaken, but nobody was injured, said the Bangor Daily News on Jan. 7.
The paper continued, “The usual alarming rumors spread through Bangor, and those unacquainted with the facts at first thought the wreck had really amounted to something.” Thus Bangoreans steeled themselves to the inevitable dangers of new forms of high-speed transportation in a world where speed was rapidly becoming more important than human life.
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. His latest book, Hidden History of Bangor: From Lumbering Days to the Progressive Era, is available where books are sold. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com