Eastern Railroad Discussion > BAR at Searsport ME Yard - Mystery Building

OK, the building is a mystery to me, at least. I'm hoping someone else knows what that red, elevated tower is. There seems to be a window on the track side. No access to the cars themselves. Electricity runs over to it. There is a gray pipe exiting the bottom.

Anybody know?

I left the credit line on. Photo is from the BAR Morning Sun book.

Charles

 

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Some kind of inspection platform?

Is this location near the Canadian border at all?

Google Maps shows it's far from the border.

I don't know either.  Picture brings back many memories.  Sure miss what used to be in Maine railroading.  Thanks for the picture though.

I think George Melvin (a Mainer) is on TO. Maybe he knows.

P Wrote:
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> Some kind of inspection platform?
>
> Is this location near the Canadian border at all?

No, it is on the west side of Penobscot Bay just north of Belfast,

The picture in the book is a bit larger but the only thing that's a little clearer is that the black vertical pipes on the right side of the structure appear to be associated with its use.

It looks like there are two 240V power cables going to it (these are draped over another cable), indicating some kind of machinery is in there. The structure is not present in the 1965 photo of the same area.

I wonder if it is some kind of washing platform for cleaning out insulated boxcars used in the potato traffic.

Ray  

Could it be a scale house?

It looks a little old for this application, but I wonder if it is a "TV Camera Shed", Back when I started in the mid 90's most of the major yard "Lead" tracks (the runner all the yard tracks fanned out from) had bungalows like that called "TV Camera's" that would have early (think monsterous 1950's era News room) TV cameras in those little buildings.  The camera pointed  down at the car numbers.  It was a clerk's job to write those cars down as they came into the yard, and place them in the Punch Machine or whatever they did for billing and accounting purposes back then...thus allowing the clerk to avoid becoming a "mudhop yardmaster" out there physically walking the tracks. I was told that in later years, some crafty fellows would set up a VCR to record the roll by, then get them at the end of their shift, allowing more time for card games or other railroad perscribed work, of course!
Those cameras actually became "known locations" on the railroad, and getting an instructions like "Come on in for track 11, but hold up at the East End TV Camera I've got a hump set to duck in the clear first..." was commonplace.  Of course railroaders are known pranksters, and Moonings and other antics were common as a train passed the "Camera Crossing"   A few of the dimmer bulbs in the T&E christmas tree got in trouble for "stepping out" (urinating) off the back walkway of the locomotive as it passed the camera, much to the shock of the normally docile Clerk in his cozy office in the Hump building...
Eventually, the AEI tags and RFID readers became the replacements for the TV Cameras. And one more opporitunity to moon someone at the railroad was taken away...

Yes, am certainly a Mainer but the BAR was not "my railroad!" The tracks past the structure go under the loading chutes for coal loading, to the left out of the photo. Perhaps it had something to do withcoal loading there. Sadly, there is nobody left to ask!
George Melvin

I wonder if the Oakfield Historical Society's retired railroaders might know?

Oakfield Museum

Reminds me of the old joke about a two storey outhouse!

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

Not used for sand for the locos? The B&M had something like that.

Victor A. Baird
​http://www.erstwhilepublications.com