Riders Making a Go of Downeaster's New Maine Stops

(SOURCE: Portland Press Herald - By Tom Bell tbell@mainetoday.com)

FREEPORT - Hannah Tyce, 18, of Augusta needed a big favor from her mother: pick up her boyfriend, who happened to be without a car in Boston. The solution?

Amtrak's Downeaster, which could deliver the boyfriend to the new train station in Freeport.

"Without this train, this wasn't going to happen," said the mother, Jane Maguire-Tyce, who on Wednesday drove to Freeport to retrieve the boyfriend.

Also aboard the train, a middle-aged couple from Saugus, Mass., who came to Freeport to spend the day shopping, a 25-year-old New Hampshire woman with two young children visiting her parents in Brunswick, and a 67-year-old woman from Naples, Fla., visiting her children and grandchildren in Waterville.

When Amtrak extended the Downeaster to Freeport and Brunswick last month, nobody could predict how the public would use the service. It's been more than 50 years since these two towns have had passenger train service.

Now, after nearly two months of service, it's becoming a bit clearer how the train is going to be used, at least during this time of............ READ WHOLE ARTICLE