Eastern Maine 40th year anniversary

This Month was the 40th anniversary of an epic college era railfanning trip, taken by my friend Paul Schulhaus and I. To mark it, Tim Franz and I retraced some of the same route, but combined it with a chase of the Maine Northern passenger special run out of Oakfield. This time, as was the case in 1974 the weather was bright overcast and around 65 degrees.  Interestingly, the further east we went the fewer changes were in evidence, at least regarding the infrastructure

First stop was Northern Maine Jct., then and now (you guess which is "then" vs "now")

 

Next stop was Bangor Yard. Then vs. now:

 

 

On to Old Town.

 

Next stop Lincoln

and the paper mill

 

 

Mattawamkeag station

and the former Forster clothespin factory, home port for the famous MEC "Clothespin hoppers"
It is now a tie shredding plant owned by a Guilford subsidiary

instead of CP power and the Atlantic Limited (sorry no picture) we had to settle for some NB Eastern locomotives laying over

 

 

 

after that we diverted from the nostalgia tour and went in search of the MN excursion train. We caught up to it at Oakfield, where Bill Green was filming a story about it

 

the station is a well maintained railroad museum and well worth a visit. plenty of BAR artifacts

we chased the train through southern Aroostook County to Sherman Station where it reversed directions. There was an SD-40-2 on each end of the consist.

crossing the Mattawamkeag River southbound  in Island Falls:

 Climbing the hill southbound past the Dyer Brook potato houses

northbound the Sherman Station

 

We returned via Brownville Jct and Millinocket, both yards were chock full of idled MMA rolling stock but no activity.  We did stop at Derby for a final "then and now" moment before streaking back to central Maine