Bolstered Rail Service Could be Around Bend

(SOURCE:  By Maggie Cassidy, Valley News Staff Writer)

White River Junction — Rail enthusiasts and regional planners turned out to a hearing Wednesday night to advocate for more frequent stops along two passenger rail routes to connect Boston with Montreal and southern Connecticut, while several attendees with Claremont ties urged for that city to be included in the loop.

Transportation officials from Vermont and Massachusetts were at the Hotel Coolidge hosting the first public meeting on a Northern New England Intercity Rail Initiative study, which will examine the feasibility of improved intercity rail service along the two lines, which both connect in Springfield, Mass.

“Frequency is the key,” Carl Fowler, president of Rail Travel Adventures and a member of the Vermont Rail Council, said in an interview following the two-hour hearing. “That’s what they’ve got to address.”

On top of advocating for greater frequency, many of the nearly 40 people in attendance urged officials and consultants to consider regional connectivity as they advance the study and develop a firm list of goals. In addition to being able to easily move along the two corridors, attendees said, they also want the train schedules to work in a way that allows them to pick up connecting trains that travel further south or head west.

Others, though, were feeling left out of the mix altogether.

Although the initiative is designed to improve passenger service to Quebec and four New England states — Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire — there are currently no New Hampshire stations included as potential stops. The omission of Claremont, in particular, led to questions from several people in the crowd, including N.H. Rep. Ray Gagnon, D-Claremont, who asked why Claremont officials weren’t being consulted about the potential need for a stop there.

“We’re out of the loop,” he said.

New Hampshire Rail Authority member Jonathan Edwards, of Hanover, said it would be “a mistake to not give Claremont the fullest consideration possible,” noting that Springfield, Vt., and Windsor would also be served by that station. A representative from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation also advocated for the Claremont stop.

The two nearest stops north and south of White River Junction included on the list are Montpelier and Brattleboro, Vt.

Ron O’Blenis, senior rail project manager with HDR Engineering who led the presentation, responded that the list of potential participating stations was the result of a “preliminary screening” of stations that would bring in a high volume of passengers without having to stop the train too frequently that it slows down service.

He said a stop in Claremont is not off the table and will be researched further as the study progresses.

“Lots of times it’s local groups and initiatives to make it happen that can dictate that,” he said in an interview afterward.

Some questioned why the Boston to White River Junction leg had to go through Springfield, Mass., which one person compared to keeping the two s ides of a triangle and “cutting out the hypotenuse.” Sixty miles of track between Concord and White River Junction was removed years ago, and New Hampshire put the brakes on a proposal in 2003 that would have possibly had it reinstated.

 

The study is being funded by federal funds matched by Vermont and Massachusetts. It builds upon projects already completed or in the works thanks to funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, including upgrades to 220 miles of New England Central Railroad completed last spring.

Similar upgrades are underway in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Several attendees noted afterward that they had expected to see a more substantive study and are looking forward to September, when another round of hearings will take place and, as Fowler said, “hopefully there will be more meat on the proposal.”

Christopher Parker, executive director with the Vermont Rail Action Network, an advocacy group for rail services in Vermont, said it seemed like people were ready for more substantive discussions beyond an easy consensus that greater frequency is better and, instead, take a hard look at train schedules and other details.

Still, he said, he was glad that things were moving forward.

“For us, this is super,” he said. “This is what we want to see happen.”

Written comments about this phase of the study will be accepted through the end of February, O’Blenis said. More information is available at http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Planning/Main/CurrentStudies/NorthernNewEnglandRailStudy.aspx or by calling Scott Bascom, planning coordinator at the Vermont Agency of Transportation, at 802-828-5748.

A follow-up meeting will be held at 7 p.m. tonight in Springfield, Mass., at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission office at 60 Congress St.

What Does Buyer See in Small, Bankrupt Maine Railway?

(SOURCE:  Portland Press Herald - Tom Bell)

Why would Fortress Investment Group, a global firm with $58 billion in assets, want a small, bankrupt railroad in a remote region where traditional rail customers have been in decline for years?

Box cars owned by the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway sit idle in Brownville. The small bankrupt railway was sold at auction to a global firm that may like it, experts say, for its beeline between Montreal and Saint John, Canada.

Tom Bell/2013 Press Herald file

The answer, say transportation experts, is Fortress probably sees potential in the railroad’s unique geographic position on the North American continent.

Fortress last week won an auction to buy the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway with its bid of $14.25 million. Although the company has said it plans to continue operating the railroad, it is not speaking publicly about its business plan. The deal has yet to close.

One of MM&A’s biggest challenges has been that its customers are spread far apart. It has only one customer, for example, on the 117-mile stretch of rail between Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and Brownville Junction: Moose River Lumber, outside Jackman. That’s a lot of rail to maintain without much revenue.

Also, some of the railroad’s previous customers have gone out of business, and some of its existing customers are struggling. One of its biggest customers in Maine, Great Northern Paper in East Millinocket, announced two days after the auction that it would halt paper production for up to four months amid high production costs and lower market prices for its paper.

The railroad may travel though some of the most remote areas in the United States, the experts say, but its roughly 500 miles of tracks provide the shortest route between two large Canadian cities, Montreal and Saint John, New Brunswick.

That route could once again be profitable if the Quebec government would allow the return of crude oil shipments on the line, said Chalmers “Chop” Hardenbergh, editor of Atlantic Northeast Rails & Ports, a trade magazine.

Officials in Lac-Megantic and the province have been reluctant to do so since a train carrying 72 cars of oil derailed in Lac-Megantic on July 6 and killed 47 people.

Fortress owns the Florida East Coast Railroad, a well-respected, high-volume railroad that has won numerous safety awards, Hardenbergh said. If any railroad could persuade the Canadians to allow the resumption of oil shipments, it would be Fortress, he said.

The nearly straight-line run between Montreal and Saint John is valuable for not only its potential as a rolling oil pipeline but also for transporting other cargo, Hardenbergh said.

One issue that has frustrated the operators of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway has been the unwillingness of the federal Food and Drug Administration to allow sealed containers filled with food products to cross the U.S. border, he said.

Tropical Shipping, a Caribbean shipping company that uses the port of Saint John as its Canadian port, for a short period about eight years ago used the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic to ship its cargo to Montreal and points west.

Fortress’ Florida railroad does a lot of business with Tropical and perhaps the two companies would have more clout working together to address the border problems, Hardenbergh said.

At Brownville Junction, the railroad splits into two directions, with one line extending northward to Millinocket and another southward to Searsport.

Searsport, which has a deep-water port, also gives the railroad value, said David Cole, a former commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation who now consults on trade and logistical issues.

From Searsport, he said, the rail line extends through the middle of a region of 26 million acres of forest land in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

“The MM&A is like a skeleton within the northern forest and funnels it right down to Searsport,” said Cole, who works for the Action Committee of 50, a nonprofit group made up of leading business and civic leaders from the Bangor region. “This railroad is very strategic relative to our forest base, not just for Maine but the region.”

Fortress has chosen a veteran railroad operator, John Giles, to lead the new railroad initiative in Maine. Giles’ 40-years-plus career includes executive jobs with CSX Corp, Great Lakes Transportation and RailAmerica, one of North America’s largest operators of short-line and regional freight railroads.

Fortress bought RailAmerica in 2007 and sold it four years later. However, Fortress continues to operate on one of the RailAmerica lines, the Florida East Coast Railway, a regional freight railroad that runs along the east coast of Florida between Jacksonville and Miami.

The Florida railroad plans next year to launch a passenger service, the nation’s first privately run inter-city service in 43 years and the only one that would not be dependent on government subsidies.
Passenger trains operated between Montreal and Saint John from the late 1800s to 1994. Fortress won’t be reviving passenger service along the MM&A lines in Maine because the rails would have to be replaced, at an enormous expense, to accommodate the high speeds required for passenger trains to compete with air travel, said Don Marson, who retired last year as general manager of the Maine Eastern Railroad, which operates freight trains and summer excursion trains between Brunswick and Rockland.

The MM&A railroad’s 500-mile-long corridor also has value for other uses, such as a corridor for a pipeline, fiber optic cables or a highway, said George Betke of Damariscotta, who has an ownership stake in three short-line railroads outside New England.

“They don’t view it as just a railroad,” he said.

MM&A to Become the Central Maine & Quebec Railway

(SOURCE:  By Whit Richardson, BDN Staff)

HERMON, Maine — Once the sale of the bankrupt Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway is complete, that name will be filed away in the history books.

Railroad Acquisition Holdings, the affiliate of New York-based investment firm Fortress Investment Group that is in the process of buying Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway out of bankruptcy, will change the railroad company’s name to the Central Maine and Quebec Railway.

John Giles, a consultant working with Fortress on the purchase of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, confirmed the new name in an email to the Bangor Daily News. He said the name was chosen because it “has a nice ring to it” and is an accurate description of the communities it serves.

Chalmers Hardenbergh, an astute railroad industry observer as editor of Atlantic Northeast Rails & Ports, said Fortress chose a descriptive name — something he said would not be as simple as one might think — though one that lacks the expansiveness compared to a name such as Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.

“It’s interesting because a lot of Maine names have already been chosen,” Hardenbergh said. “How do you say Maine when you already have Maine Northern Railway, Eastern Maine Railway, Maine Eastern Railway, Maine Central Railroad, Boston and Maine. So almost by default you have to say central Maine or southern Maine, but of course they don’t operate in southern Maine.”

The new name is similar to that of Maine Central Railroad, which has been around for 100 years and remains the formal name of the railroad operated as part of Pan Am Railways’ network, Hardenbergh said.

“There’s a little bit of an echo there of history,” he said.

Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bangor on Aug. 7, a month after one of its trains rolled driverless down a hill before derailing in the middle of the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and causing an explosion that killed 47 people.

It’s not uncommon for a new owner of a railroad to change the company’s name, especially if it was bought out of bankruptcy, according to Hardenbergh. Before operating as the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, it was the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, which filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and was purchased the next year by Rail World Inc.

Fortress, which was the winning bidder in an auction last month for Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway’s assets, hopes to close on the sale of the railroad by the end of March.

MM&A Railroad Executive Puzzled by Police Raid

(SOURCE:  By Eric Russell - Maine Press Herald - erussell@pressherald.com )  

Ed Burkhardt, chairman of the board of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, says he doesn't know why police raided the company's Quebec offices on Thursday, insisting that the company has been cooperating with police and federal authorites.

"If they asked for what they wanted, we would have given it to them," he said in a telephone interview Friday.

Quebec's provincial police raided a Canadian office of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway in connection with its investigation into the July 6 train derailment that killed nearly 50 people.

There was no indication that the investigation has crossed the border into Maine, where Montreal, Maine & Atlantic is headquartered, or into Illinois, where its parent company, Rail World Inc., is located.

Burkhardt said he is unaware of any law enforcement agencies in the United States that may be involved in the Canadian investigation.

State and federal officials in Maine said they have not been contacted by Canadian authorities in connection with the criminal investigation by Quebec police.

Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland said his agency has not been involved to date.

U.S. Attorney for Maine Thomas E. Delahanty II said his office has not been contacted by Canadian officials.

Provincial police released few details about the raid at the railroad's offices in Farnham, Quebec, about 40 miles east of Montreal, but police Inspector Michael Forget told reporters that officials were there to gather evidence.

"Our investigators were on scene ... to find different evidence that I can't comment on," he said. "This raid was done with the help of different partners. We'll be there until we have gathered all of the evidence that we need."

It's not clear what was seized. Photos taken during the raid show police carrying away unlabeled cardboard boxes.

No arrests have been made, and Forget did not say whether any additional searches would be conducted. He said employees of MM&A were cooperative.

The criminal investigation began shortly after the derailment and is separate from an investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which is looking into whether safety procedures were followed.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train hauling 73 cars of crude oil was unmanned when it barreled into the small town of Lac-Megantic at more than 60 miles per hour, decimating several buildings and claiming at least 47 lives.

Cleanup is still going on and likely will continue for weeks. Colette Roy-Laroche, the mayor of Lac-Megantic, said Thursday that the railroad company has not paid the more than $4 million in cleanup costs. Roy-Laroche told Canadian media outlets that the town is considering legal action against Montreal, Maine & Atlantic.

The railroad company is also expected to face numerous lawsuits filed by survivors of those killed by the derailment. The first lawsuit was filed on Monday in Cook County, Ill., where Montreal, Maine & Atlantic's parent company is based.

The complainants have argued that the railway and its CEO, Ed Burkhardt, neglected safety rules in order to cut costs.

Burkhardt has laid blame on train engineer Tom Harding, alleging he "did something wrong" on the night of the crash.

Because the derailment occurred on rail lines owned by the Maine-based company, U.S. Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree have called on federal officials to conduct a thorough inspection of the tracks. Federal Railroad Adminstration officials have been in Maine for the past week doing just that.

Pingree is married to S. Donald Sussman, majority share owner of the Portland Press Herald.

Michaud and Pingree have met with both the Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, but neither agency has authority to bring criminal charges.