Grand Trunk Railroad Station, Portland, Maine
By Beryl Frank
The Grand Trunk Railroad Station in Portland, Maine, was a grand old lady with a wonderful clock tower which once kept the time of traveling Mainers and other travelers to the state.
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The clock was made by Edward Howard & Co. of Boston and was installed in the early 1900's.
Grand Trunk Station was completed in 1903 and early pictures show that round windows were in the tower. The exact time when these were replaced is not known, but a few years later clock faces appeared and the clock was keeping time on all four faces.
The Connecticut antiques dealer who bought the clock after the demolition of the station in 1966 was George Collard. He came upon the clock at an antiques show in Orlando and brought it back to Portland. He is its present owner and is lending it to the Main Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, 58 Fore Street, Portland. The hope of building a tower and having the clock running once again is a dream of Mr. Collard and many other people, but this does not seem likely any time soon.
So the Grand Trunk Railroad Tower in Portland, Maine, is today just a memory on a pretty postcard with a red roof, a stone tower and a timepiece from over 100 years ago.
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