The train tracks that cross Lincoln County have been mostly quiet for the past eight years, punctuated by occasional freight traffic and short-lived attempts to revive passenger service. A pilot passenger program in the 2023 tourist season looked promising, but mechanical issues, the closure of a primary freight customer, and deliberation at the regional level have placed Damariscotta-based operator Midcoast Railservice in an uncertain position.
The line has long been eyed by the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority as a return to passenger connections for Amtrak’s Downeaster trains, which run from Boston to Brunswick. State and regional authorities have said they still intend to bring passenger service back to the Midcoast, but the questions remain who and how.
Some decision will have to be made ahead of this summer tourist season, according to George Betke, of Damariscotta, co-founder of freight line Midcoast Railservice and its passenger arm, Coastliner Excursions.
His company, owned by Betke’s New York-based Finger Lakes Railway, leased the Maine Department of Transportation-owned 57 miles of track running from Rockland to Brunswick in August 2022. It offered a test run of passenger trains from May through October of last year with stops in Bath, Wiscasset, and Newcastle.
The tracks originally carried passengers alongside freight from 1871 until 1959, when passenger service was discontinued due to low demand, according to “Between Two Rivers: Newcastle, Maine” by Arlene Cole.
The Maine Department of Transportation purchased the line in 1987 and restored the track. Seasonal passenger service through the Maine Eastern Railroad ran from 2003 to 2015, when the DOT ended that railroad’s operating lease. Several attempts to return passenger offerings have stopped and started since under a handful of operating leases by different companies.
This time around, Midcoast Railservice’s initial goal was to divert both passenger and freight traffic from Route 1, according to Betke.
Public feedback on the market study in 2023 was “really terrific,” he said, as was his company’s outlook on its self-propelled rail cars, which used less fuel and were simpler to operate than traditional diesel locomotives.
After the company’s last run during Pumpkinfest in October, however, engineers found that only one of the two engines was functioning. The faulty part was a custom once when the vehicles were rebuilt over 25 years ago, according to Betke, and challenging to fix.
Plan B presented to the DOT and the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority was resuming service with coaches from the service’s parent company in New York to keep up momentum and service in the interim.
Betke said the other agencies decided to look further ahead instead, hoping to have something in place before tourist traffic begins in April or May.
Then came Plan C for Midcoast Railservice: a proposal submitted last week to replace the engines with another type of car, which it has no word on yet.
Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, said Dec. 29 that there is “nothing to report” on plans for service to Rockland at this point. Her organization and the DOT are in discussion with both Amtrak and Midcoast Railservice “to explore options and next steps,” she said.
Federal funding awarded in December gave $27 million for tie replacement on existing Downeaster tracks, and the rail authority received half a million dollars in a grant to for planning and updating the Amtrak line’s service development plan, according to Quinn.
The DOT separately designated $3 million in its most recent work plan for a two-year pilot study of passenger rail service to Rockland.
The grants do not extend to Midcoast Railservice, Betke said. The company is trying to adapt to another challenge that arose in September: the loss of its largest freight client, Thomaston-based Dragon Cement, which plans to close by the end of the year.
Dragon provided 90% of the service’s freight traffic and enough revenue to sustain the company on its own.
“That’s completely destroyed our economic assumptions for the freight business,” Betke said. “I’m forthrightly telling people now that our mission is to convert what used to be a freight-hauling, light density railroad that occasionally ran passenger excursions … into a scheduled passenger railroad that incidentally holds some of the freight for the remaining customers on the line.”
The service currently retains three customers: American Steel and Aluminum, O’Hara Lobster Bait in Rockland and Dicalite in Thomaston. It needs at least 2,000 freight carloads a year for the business to sustain itself, according to Betke.
Future target customers include petroleum products, like propane, and road salt, though no contracts are signed yet.
“We have been going around knocking on people’s doors, and without exception they are astonished to be called on by a railroad seeking their business,” Betke said. “People have been conditioned to think in trucks and single automobiles.”
Though things are going well and his company is determined, there is “nowhere near” enough freight yet to replace Dragon, Betke said. As the common carrier, the service would handle any freight traffic that remained on the line even if the pivot to expanded passenger sales through Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority is successful.
“I very much want this to work,” Betke said. “I think we are in a position to go something good for our state. I think what we’ve done so far demonstrates that people will respond to it.”
