St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railway - September 1989 and April 1998

In 1989, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad was formed to take over operations of the Island Pond, VT to Portland, ME section of the former Grand Trunk Railway. A connection with the Boston & Maine (Guilford Transportation Industries by that time) was maintained at Danville Junction, Maine. Russell F. Munroe, Jr. captured action on the St. Lawrence & Atlantic with ex-Central Vermont and ex-Grand Trunk diesels in September 1989. Later, in April 1998, he revisited the railroad to capture more action. We follow the action from Maine into New Hampshire.

[@tomgebbie6294]

Thank you, BMRRHS, for the excellent content you deliver. I am happy to be a member. This is now my second favorite BMRRHS video, next to Rick Kfoury's excellent video of Berlin NH. It's right their with nhrrman's video of Grand Trunk #393 video. My family vacationed at Lakeside Camping in Island Pond every summer for 10 years when I was growing up in the 1970's. I love New England, and having the trains next to our campsite was a great bonus. I absolutely love the Berlin Mills jade green boxcars and the Maine Central harvest gold boxcars. I love those PSC vans. I love CN sargeant stripes on GP40-2W's and M420's. I love how the American and Canadian crews would swap trains in Island Pond. I am still armchair modeling at this point, but I am scheming a GT NEL concept in the late 70's/early 80's, from Island Pond to Berlin. Possibly proto-freelance, with Maine Central trackage rights for a portion of it. I also love that Geep lashup, and have the models and details to recreate it. Atlas was kind enough to offer the GT unit, and it happens to be the right road number, 4441! These videos are a great resource for wayside scenery and details, as well as consist makeup and patterns. I only wish the folks filming at the time paid a little more attention to the freight cars! If I had the room, money, and ambition, wouldn't it be "grand" to recreate the causeway on Reflection Pond? I could continue my musings, but I need to get some work done now!

[@-MAILMAN]

Danville was a busy interchange as of a couple of years ago. I haven't been there since CSX took over from Pan AM. The S & A is now part of Genesee & Wyoming and is no longer in yellow and black, but rather the orange and black of the G & W. It runs through Paris, ME, my home town, past the old Grand Trunk South Paris Station (now converted into Norway Soft Serve Ice cream) on Main St. in the Town of Paris. Love the high hoods normally running long hood forward on the CV GP's. The GT had a brick round house just a couple of miles east of the B & M Baked Beans, but it got converted into commercial businesses a long time ago.

[@AMPProductionsVideo]

Great video of the trains nearly a decade apart, SLR was fun to railfan in the 90's

[@cmdrflake]

This is quite interesting to me. I had gone to summer camp around Farmington, and this is a bit north of there. It’s pretty remote but the railroad had created what few towns there were. It was beautiful there.

[@CarlSmith-p2c]

The Grand Trunk had a small yard on the north end of the Portland harbor docks, below where the Old Customs House sits. The Maine Central (MEC) interchanged with that yard via a street-running spur which ran along the Portland docks. Unfortunately, Grand Trunk lost direct access to that yard when the drawbridge and trestle at the mouth of Back Bay caught fire in the late-1980s. (The trestle and bridge were located right next to the old B&M Baked Beans plant.). The remnants of the trestle and drawbridge still stood as of May 2023. There was at least one customer on the unaffected approaches to that bridge that required rail service during the late-1980s. Part of the Grand Trunk line into Portland runs alongside I-295 just north of Portland. During the early-1980s, there was discussion of restoring passenger service to Montreal via either the Grand Trunk line or the MEC Mountain Division. Ironically, the current location of the Amtrak station in Portland is on what's left of the Mountain Division line that runs out to Westbrook, ME.

[@kyle.sterritt]

Do they still use that grand trunk line up to the drawbridge

[@CarlSmith-p2c]

@@kyle.sterritt When I was last up in Portland back in May 2023 I was not able to tell if there were still customers before the drawbridge using rail service. There had been customers receiving rail service on either side of the I295 overpass through the 1990s. The I295 overpass is just to the west of the drawbridge. But looking at the satellite imagery from Google Maps, it appears that the rails are still in place but the customers have disappeared. So I doubt that there has been service from the interchange with CSX (formerly MEC, then Guilford) at Yarmouth down to the drawbridge in Portland for many years now.

[@derrickwong5337]

Great history trains!!!!!

[@cliffwilkie4035]

From GP9’s to SD70MAC’s now.

[@ddthompson42]

That first clip was the day OSHA was chartered 😂