Deep in the woods of Maine

Are these the locos that were so deep in the woods it wasn't worth hauling them out ??  A pity.

Thanks for sharing your story, pics, and video.........Great find........

Great video, very interesting, thank you.

These 

               two locos were converted from coal to oil, one was 90 ton the other was 95 ton , they were dismantled and crated in Bangor in 1924 , brought up the Penobscot river , and through moosehead lake ,up through  chamberland lake ,45 miles of tressel were built ,which are still there today , the locos were used to replace the steam powered cable trolley on the half mile stretch of land between Eagle lake and chamberlain lake , the allagash river flows north into Canada .In 1865 there were 150 sawmills on the penobscot river in Bangor , the lumber was all ready depleted, so they moved operations to the allagash but had to back flow the logs to stop the lumber from going into canada .All the pulp cars were built on site , and are still there , as is the cable trolley . the trains were used for about 5 years , then abandoned , when the steam boat W.H.marsh was put into service .IT was considered too costly and labor intense to remove them . There are many abandoned camps , locke's dams , and equipment all along the waterway.The last river drive was in the early 1970s ,from then forward it all done by truck and  road. I have personally been there i have canoed the water way twice . there is much history in maine's north woods , also a vast amount of black flies to bite you. techman    

Very interesting, thanks for posting. I enjoy the history behind things like this. Just imagine what the workers went through back then to get all this stuff up there and then what they went through to harvest the timber and get it to the saw mills. Probably a pretty rough life back then.  

These are the kind of stories I like.

Interesting video. Thanks for posting and yes that guy was a little annoying.

I was in Maine this past September, and was in Michigan UP a previous Sep., well warned ,about black flies....encountered none...found plenty in Canadian Rockies in a summer before that...l guess these are seasonal and timing is of the essence? I have heard about these locos before, but not that were ruins, etc ...this all sounds like interesting history but hard to get to.

black flies in Maine last until the warm weather dries out the woods. sometime during mid to late June, depending on rainfall.

interesting information about the engines, thanks for posting.

The 2-8-0 is former New York Central class G-43a #5780.

The 4-6-0 is former Indian Harbor Belt class F-53 #15.

http://steamlocomotive.com/lis...try=USA&state=ME

The 4-6-0 was owned by the Emporium Forestry Co. / Grasse River RR. for some time. My understanding is that these are both located on an Island and were Linn tractored in over the ice. They had a shed over them until it was accidentally burned in a fire control excersise. This is why the 4-6-0 has no cab. It was wooden.

There is a group slowly stabilizing them and has put in a good amount of work on them. The article misleadingly seems to claim that all of these things are just magically just as they were left which is not exactly true. 

Accidental fire control.. having been chased around Yellowstone, and another national Forest area on two occasions, by "controlled" fires that got out of hand, l think the thought and training involved is below the threshold, as indicated here.

Shame there isn't a NYC Hudson among the relics.