Bluegrass Airlines, October 2007

Lockheed L10A Electra over Bar Harbor, Maine

Boston Maine & Central Vermont Airways

By Allan Lowson

Boston Maine & Central Vermont Airways

The Boston and Maine Railroad became interested in the possibility of starting an airline during the aviation boom of the late 1920s, deciding that to participate in aviation made more sense than trying to compete with it. On July 20, 1931 Boston-Maine Airways, Inc., was organized by the Boston and Maine and the Maine Central Railroads, who became involved because the proposed route to northern Maine and beyond entered on its territory. Service started on August 1, 1931, and the entire operation was carried out under contract by Pan American Airways.

At the same time, the Central Vermont Railroad had founded Central Vermont Airways and the contract to operate both operations was taken over by the newly founded National Airways in 1933. Amelia Earhart was one of the founders of National Airways.

National Airways coordinated the two railroad-sponsored airlines as one, with the two

railroad names hyphenated, and issuing joint timetables and fares.

In November 1936 Boston-Maine/Central Vermont purchased two new Lockheed 10A Electras. The operating agreement with National Airways was terminated on March 1, 1937, with control passing to the railroad interests.

As the airline grew the name was changed to Northeast Airlines and ultimately Northeast was taken over by Delta.

We have the routes from the 1937 timetables for the Lockheed Electra operations.

The current Pan Am Clipper Connection operation, as a local feeder line, is carried out by a company named Boston Maine Airways which was incorporated in 1999. It is wholly owned by Pan Am Systems (formerly known as Guilford Transportation Industries) which owns the Pan Am brand.

Lockheed Electra L10-A

The following information about the Lockheed Electra is taken from the documentation supplied with the FS Design Berlin FS2004 Electra package, which together with the Boston Maine scheme by Dale de Luca provides the aircraft for these flights.

By the way, the first flight of Trans Canada Airlines by an Electra 10-A from Richmond BC to Seattle was 70 years ago in September 1937, which is as good an excuse for including this picture as I need.

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In the summer of 1932 Robert Gross determined that the reborn Lockheed should start afresh with the very latest type of aircraft. Initially, it was to embody the usual low-drag and single engine design, but other developments dictated major changes.

The introduction by Boeing of their revolutionary model 247 which was the first low-drag twin engine all metal transport, and by Douglas of their DC-1 and later the improved DC-2, which were even faster and had more payload than the Boeing, compelled Lockheed to rethink their new plane and design a twin engine transport that would surpass it's competitors. It was decided that the model 10 should be laid out as a twin engine, all metal, ten passenger plane, with a crew of two and a toilet compartment.

It had an all metal stressed skin fuselage, motor driven retractable landing gear, and retractable flaps, something that the Boeing did not have. It was also faster than the Boeing, and competitive with the DC-2. The first Model 10 Electra was tested by Marshall Headle at Mines Field, Los Angeles on February 23, 1934.

Eventually four main versions of the Electra were produced, the L 10-A with Pratt and Whitney Wasp Junior R-985SB/SB-3 engines, the model B with Wright Whirlwind R-975-E3s, the Model C with Wasp SC-1s, and the Model E with Wasp R 1340 S3H-1 engines.

The Electra was an immediate success. At it's introduction it was one of the fastest airliners available and orders flowed in from all over the world, with sales to 23 airlines in 13 countries.

Boston Maine Routes

These routes, times and mileages for routes 26 and 28 were taken from the OAG for August 1937.

Boston-Bangor-Bar Harbor (Route 26)

Heading	Distance	Down	City Name	ICAO	Up	Heading	Distance
037	0	0850	BOSTON	KBOS	1922		245
048	96 mls	0931	PORTLAND	KPWM	1844	219	149
033	149 mls	0956	AUGUSTA	KAUG	1819	226	99
082	166 mls	1008	WATERVILLE	KWVL	1807	220	79
	212 mls	1026	BANGOR	KBGR	1744	264	33
			Sun & hldys
154	212 mls	1031	BANGOR	KBGR	1729		33
	245 mls	1045	BAR HARBOR	KBHB	1715	335	0

Bangor-Millinocket-Presque Isle-Caribou (Route 27)

Heading	Distance	Down	City Name	ICAO	Up	Heading	Distance
024	0	1040lv	BANGOR	KBGR	1730ar		144 nm
071	51 nm	1116lv	MILLINOCKET	KMLT	1654lv	205	93 nm
002	98 nm	1151lv	HOULTON	KHUL	1619lv	252	46 nm
026	133 nm	1220lv	PRESQUE ISLE	KPQI	1550lv	182	11 nm
	144 nm	1232ar	CARIBOU	KCAR	1538lv	206	0 nm

Boston-Burlington-Montreal (Route 28)

Heading	Distance	Down	City Name	ICAO	Up	Heading	Distance
347	0 mls	0855lv	BOSTON	KBOS	1926		191 mls
005	43 mls	0917lv	MANCHESTER	KMHT	1909	167	148 mls
338	62 mls	0930lv	CONCORD	KCON	1856	185	129 mls
318	153 mls	1008lv	BARRE-MONTPELIER	KMPV	1818	157	38 mls
	191 mls	1022ar	BURLINGTON	KBTV	1753	137	0 mls
338		1027lv	BURLINGTON	KBTV	1744		66 nm
	66 nm	1056ar	MONTREAL	CSS3	1715	157

Montreal was probably one of the International airports, but we will use a smaller field in keeping with the era. Distances in Canada don’t seem to have been measured!

Flight Simulator Files

The Lockheed Electra 10-A is available as L104NWA.zip at avsim.com and the Boston Maine scheme is also at avsim.com as L10_BMA.zip.

Route Map