Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad

Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad (1871-2007)

Train above City Point ca. 1910
Reporting mark	BML
Locale	Waldo County, Maine
Dates of operation	1871–2007
Successor	Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railway
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Length	33.07 miles (53.22 km)
Headquarters	Belfast, Maine

Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad
33.07 Burnham Junction Sebasticook River 29.44 Winnecook (Unity Pond) 24.95 Unity 21.40 Thorndike 18.47 Knox 14.07 Fobes (siding) 12.27 Brooks 7.15 Waldo 5.16 Sargents (siding) 2.16 City Point 0.00 Belfast

The Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad (reporting mark BML) was a standard-gauge shortline railroad that operated from 1871 to 2007 over a single-track grade from Belfast to Burnham Junction in Maine.

Chartered in 1867, the line was built between August 1868 and December 1870 by the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad Company (B&MLRR), which was majority-owned by the city of Belfast until 1991. For its first 55 years, the road was operated under lease by the Maine Central as its Belfast Branch, which provided daily passenger and freight service to eight stations over the length of Waldo County, Maine. After the MEC cancelled its lease in 1925, the B&MLRR began running trains under its own name. Passenger operations ceased in March 1960, although in 1988, the railroad began operating summer tourist trains to offset a decline in freight traffic. In 1991, the city sold its interest in the money-losing railroad to private owners. In 2007, the railroad ended operations as the B&MLRR.

Today, the line is operated by the non-profit Brooks Preservation Society as the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railway, and runs weekend excursion trains in the spring, summer and early fall between City Point, Waldo, and Brooks.

The first attempt to bring a railroad to Belfast, a Penobscot Bay port city that was Waldo County's shire town, came on March 9, 1836, when the Maine Legislature passed "An Act to establish the Belfast and Quebec Railroad Company", but any prospects for financing the project were quickly killed by a provision in the Maine Constitution that prohibited public loans to build railroads and by the Panic of 1837. A second attempt to raise funds for the Quebec route in 1845 also failed, as did an 1848 proposal for a line from Belfast to Waterville, and an 1853 proposal for a line from Belfast via Newport, Dexter, and Dover, to Greenville on the shores of Moosehead Lake.