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Guilford Rail System

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Guilford Rail System (GRS) is a Class 2 railroad covering northern New England from Calais, Maine to Albany, New York. The primary subsidiaries of GRS are the Maine Central Railroad (MEC), the Boston and Maine Railroad (BM), and Springfield Terminal Railway (ST). It is a subsidiary of Guilford Transportation Industries (GTI). GRS has recently rebranded itself as Pan Am Railways. Guilford bought the name, colors and logo of the Pan Am airline in 1998.

GRS developed as a child of railroad deregulation in the United States. The passage of the Staggers Rail Act allowed GRS to execute a business plan unlike those of earlier railroads in New England. It revolved around the idea of buying up as many local railroads as possible, to create "full horizontal integration" over New England and the northern Mid-Atlantic states, gaining efficiencies of scale.

GRS started by purchasing the MEC in 1981 from U.S. Filter Corporation. This was followed by its 1983 purchase of the BM and in 1984, GRS purchased the Delaware and Hudson Railroad (D&H). Its network sprawled from the border between Maine and New Brunswick to Boston, and west to Albany, north to Montreal, and south (via trackage rights) to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.

Following the purchases of MEC, BM and D&H, GRS began several major changes to the operations of these railroads and their workforces. One of the first changes took place with new management, followed by consolidation of locomotive repair work at the MEC shops at Waterville, Maine, resulting in repainting of locomotives from the predecessor companies into GRS corporate colors.

In the mid-1980s, GRS began to eliminate marginal low-density routes, particularly in Maine. Fully one-third of MEC trackage was eliminated, including the "Mountain Division" from Portland, Maine to St. Johnsbury, Vermont; the "Rockland Branch" from Brunswick, Maine to Rockland, Maine; the "Calais Branch" from Bangor, Maine to Calais, Maine; and the "Lower Road" from Augusta, Maine to Brunswick, Maine.

When the "Calais Branch" was cut, service was kept on a now-orphaned section of trackage running between Calais and a pulp mill in nearby Woodland, Maine; these tracks ran for several miles through New Brunswick, Canada and their only remaining connection to the North American rail network was with Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Following the Calais Branch abandonment, CPR agreed to haul GRS traffic from the interchange at Calais to an interchange with GRS at Mattawamkeag, Maine. To avoid costly labor union agreements, which would make the Calais-Woodland service uneconomic, GRS leased the operation of this route to its tiny Springfield Terminal subsidiary, which had much more advantageous labor agreements.

Springfield Terminal Railway was a 6-mile short line connection from Springfield, Vermont to Charleston, New Hampshire that was owned by the Boston and Maine Railroad. It had once been an interurban and following typical interurban and short-line practice, it had a union agreement that allowed fewer crew members per train and operation without cabooses. By the time Guilford took over, the operation had been cut back to a stub of a few hundred yards serving one customer and operating infrequently. The tracks have since been removed and the route is now a rails to trails bike/walking path.

More branch lines were subsequently leased to Springfield Terminal Railway and eventually all of the Boston and Maine Railroad and Maine Central Railroad were operated by Springfield Terminal. This saved GRS money but angered labor. In 1986, GRS endured a lengthy and extremely bitter strike by its workforce, which required the intervention of President Ronald Reagan's administration. In 1988 GRS declared the D&H "bankrupt" and sold it in 1991 to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In the years that followed, GRS forced many management and salary changes, resulting in other strikes over wages and work rules.

A great many rail customers stopped using rail at the time of the strike, especially companies more dependent on reliable consistent service. Many current customers allege that Guilford service is very poor. It should be noted that the rail industry in general does not have a very good reputation for service, but Guilford's reputation appears to be worse. In addition, customers have alleged that Guilford has retaliated against them after they have complained. The company has maintained that they have a good working relationship with their customers and there are no major problems.

The paper industry provides the largest source of business, both inbound chemicals, clay and pulp (although Guilford has lost a lot of that business to truck) and outbound paper. Rail has a slightly more than 50% market share for outbound paper shipments from Maine, most of which must use Guilford (truck and boat carry the balance). By comparison, rail has a better than 80% market share from mills in Wisconsin (primarily served by the Wisconsin Central Railroad). This is not necessarily Guilford's fault, as historical problems with the New Haven railroad have kept this market largely unavailable to Guilford.

In recent years, Guilford rail traffic has trended up somewhat, following national rail industry trends. Guilford posted $150M in sales during 2005.

Routes

The main line runs from Mattawamkeag, Maine to Mechanicville, New York via the lines of the following former companies:

External links

 

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