In October 1996, TTX Chairman and CEO Ray Burton rode the Guilford Rail Special from Waterville, Maine to Ayer, Mass in order to discuss traffic, marketing and operating developments with Guilford's senior management. He described his trip in a letter published by the TTX Press and reprinted here for your enjoyment.
REFLECTIONS
by Ray Burton
On a late October day, a few of us from TTX were privileged to join David Fink, the Chairman, President and CEO of Guilford Rail System, and his top officers on a train trip from Waterville, Maine to Ayer, Massachusetts, located on the outskirts of Boston.
There was a nip in the air, the leaves were packing it in for the season. We passed summer cottages now closed. The pleasure boats had long since left the shimmering lakes. We trundled past towns which had to confront changing economic times, like Auburn and Lewiston, past old woolen mills which had once clothed America for a century, on through Portland and the exact spot where my family and I had boarded and disembarked from trains on numerous occasions at the granite fortress called Portland Union Station. It was here that two uncles and two of my grandparents had made final passage to grave sites thirty miles distant. On we went, past the Ferris wheel at Old Orchard Beach, past Kennebunk where dinner at The Colony was always a special treat, on by Dover, New Hampshire and Lawrence and Lowell in the Bay State where the struggle to recoup past eminence continues.
As the Business Car Special rolled along through the pine, birch and maple trees, I had ample opportunity to reminisce upon this section of America and what New England meant to me. One of my first recollections of rail travel occurred prior to World War II aboard the northbound Flying Yankee, the premier Boston and Maine daylight train between Boston and Portland. I had to stand on the seat to see out the window. There were the camp trains I rode form Philadelphia to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. No electrics or diesels up here in those days. It was still steam power on the B&M.
In 1949, my family took a trip by rail up to Aroostook County in northern Maine for some fishing. It was a long two weeks. I caught one fish. Playing catch and riding the train were the highlights of this vacation. We rode the Bangor & Aroostook's Potatoland Special from northern Maine to Boston across the Maine Central and Boston and Maine. I will always remember an ebullient gentleman in the diner forecasting the great outlook for the 1949 football team at William and Mary. "Greatest running backs in the country," he said. Each Sunday that autumn I would look up the results, only to see the W&M lost again. It must have been that the line was no good.
By the late 1950's, passenger travel was declining sharply in favor of the automobile running on improved highways. But in 1959, my father and I took a nostalgic train trip from new York to Montreal, enjoying a daylight ride up Lake Champlain on the Delaware & Hudson's Laurentian. We returned to Boston on the Red Wing, a joint CP-CV-B&M train. As the train rolled through the night, we watched the lights playing off the trees. Somewhere in the early hours, I woke in my roomette to see moonlight dancing on the Connecticut River.
In the early '60s I made two final trips by scheduled passenger train from Boston to Portland. By then locomotive-hauled trains had been displaced by the more economic, self- propelled RDC consist. Arrival at Portland was no longer the grand entrance of yesteryear. The granite station had been demolished and a shopping center occupied the location. Gone was the spacious waiting room, the expectant crowds, and the booth where a lady welcomed you to the State of Maine with a free glass of Poland Spring water. The few passengers aboard disembarked nearby on a hastily contrived wood platform. Progress, I guess.
The magnificent Portland station contributed to the lore of a New England summer, just like an ice cream cone at Howard Johnson's and Red Sox baseball broadcasts sponsored by Narragansett beer. The air was fresh. The lake and the family cottage beckoned. To arrive in Portland was exciting. To depart was sadness. Portland station played host to the Flying Yankee, the State of Maine overnight train, the Gull to Saint John, New Brunswick, and the Pine Tree to Bangor. I'm thankful that I could share the twilight of an era.
As I sat behind the throttle of a GP-40 running the Guilford Special, I could not help but reflect upon these moments extending back over half a century. And I no longer had to stand on the seat to see out of the window.
Thanks for the memories, Guilford, and may the leaves always turn to gold.