Railroad history of Portland, Maine
But Maine's largest city also enjoyed 125 years of continuous passenger rail service from 1842 until 1967, and has been served by Amtrak since 2001.
For most of Portland's history, passenger train schedules were designed with intercity travel—to Boston, Montreal, Nova Scotia, and points west—rather than daily commuting.
Writer, critic, and Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad (A&StL) co-founder John Neal wrote of the necessity "to drive Boston out of the business and secure [a] monopoly.
[3]: 58 Passenger service through Union Station emphasized connections to Boston until the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad introduced convenient long-distance train travel in 1913 with State of Maine overnight sleeping car service to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
Ascendancy of the Maritimes was acknowledged when the Gull introduced international sleeping car service between Boston and Halifax through Portland in 1930.
As the links were constructed all the way to Montreal, the Grand Trunk obtained a lease on the A&StL and operated that line until 1923, when bankruptcy forced a takeover by the Canadian National Railway.
In 1981, the Maine Central was acquired by Guilford Rail System, which continues to operate limited freight services eastward to Brunswick.
From early in the 20th century, the B&M, in cooperation with the New Haven Railroad, ran the Bar Harbor Express and the State of Maine, which provided direct service to New York City, bypassing Boston.
After a little over 23 years in operation, during which time the three-unit train set traveled over five million miles, the streamlined Flying Yankee made its final revenue runs on May 7, 1957, and was then retired from service.
The Trainriders Northeast advocacy group was formed in Portland in 1989 with the initial goal of restarting passenger service from Massachusetts into Maine.
Starting in 1990, the State of Maine began active planning for the restoration of passenger rail service between Portland and Boston.
[13] The Amtrak Downeaster service began operating with four daily round trips to North Station in December 2001.
The Maine Eastern Railroad was recently named to operate the railway with seasonal passenger excursions and limited freight traffic interchanging with Guilford in Brunswick.
As of January 2009, a plan was being discussed that would extend the Downeaster service to Brunswick via the Guilford (now Pan Am Railways) alignment by making a reverse move at the Portland Intermodal Transportation Center.
The Downeaster arriving from Boston would platform at the station same way as it does now, change ends, and then travel over a yet-to-be constructed wye which would connect the former MEC Mountain Division to the Guilford main line, and thence to Brunswick.
On January 28, 2010, the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) received approval for a $35 million grant from the federal government to fund track and signal upgrades for the Portland-Brunswick line.
