1931 Maine Central Railroad Schedule

Here's a scan of a Maine Central Railroad schedule from 1931. The Maine Central Wikipedia entry details the "retraction" of the railroad after World War I.

Following World War I, Maine Central began retracting. It sold or abandoned lines such as the narrow gauge logging systems, as well as its ferries and steamships. In the 1930s it began to change its locomotives from steam powered to diesel powered.

Faced with increased competition from cars, trucks and buses, Maine Central operated its last passenger train on September 5, 1960, and continued to reduce its freight business to reflect changing traffic.

The Maine Central doesn't yet appear on this 1860 map of New England railroads, but shows up on the 1899 version.

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Shepard Homestead Excavation in Kittery

The homestead of one of my earliest Maine ancestors, John Shepard of Kittery, was excavated in spring 2002 as a joint project of the History Department of Salem State College and the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum. A map drawn in the 17th century helped in the excavation.

William Godsoe had drafted a map of this specific area in 1689. The map shows Shepard’s house, barn, an outbuilding and the orchard, as well as the home of his neighbor, Paul Williams.

The pictorial and archaeological evidence of the Shepard outbuildings is extremely important, for it gives a chance to closely study not just a seventeenth-century home, but the entire farm complex. While much work has been done on seventeenth-century farm out buildings in Virginia and Maryland, the Shepard site is the first site in Maine where outbuildings have been found.

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Maine ZIP Codes

This Google map mashup shows the boundaries of most of Maine's ZIP codes. Codes run from 03901 (Berwick) to 04992 (West Farmington).

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