Maine Central Railroad

Maine Central Railroad Company

Maine Central RS2 554 at Bangor, Maine. (1970)
Overview
Headquarters	Portland, Maine
Reporting mark	MEC
Locale	Maine New Brunswick New Hampshire Vermont Quebec
Dates of operation	1862–1981
Successor	Guilford Transportation Industries
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Previous gauge	originally 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm) gauge on some lines
Length	1,121 miles (1,804 kilometers)[1]

The Maine Central Railroad (reporting mark MEC) was a U. S. class 1 railroad^[2] in central and southern Maine. It was chartered in 1856 and began operations in 1862. By 1884, Maine Central was the longest railroad in New England. Maine Central had expanded to 1,358 miles (2,185 km) when the United States Railroad Administration assumed control in 1917. The main line extended from South Portland, Maine, east to the Canada–United States border with New Brunswick, and a Mountain Division extended west from Portland to St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and north into Quebec. The main line was double track from South Portland to Royal Junction, where it split into a "lower road" through Brunswick and Augusta and a "back road" through Lewiston, which converged at Waterville into single track to Bangor and points east. Branch lines served the industrial center of Rumford, a resort hotel on Moosehead Lake and coastal communities from Bath to Eastport.^[3]

At the end of 1970, it operated 921 miles (1,482 km) of road on 1,183 miles (1,904 km) of track; that year, it reported 950 million ton-miles of revenue freight. The Maine Central remained independent until 1981,^[4] when it was purchased by Guilford Transportation Industries and became part of what is now CSX Corporation.^{[citation needed]}