GARDINER, Maine — The return of passenger train service to central Maine may have been fleeting, the Central Maine Daily Sentinel reported.
The Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad has not renewed its lease with the state Department of Transportation to continue operating a passenger train on tracks alongside the Kennebec River from Hallowell to Richmond.
Belfast & Moosehead President Bob Lamontagne, in a letter to municipal officials, said the rail service didn’t draw enough passengers to allow the train to continue next summer. So the company will not exercise its option to extend its lease on the state-owned train tracks for the 2003 season.
“This is due primarily to inadequate passenger numbers, which is a result of many contributing factors,” Lamontagne said in the letter. “We continue to feel as we did in the beginning that this area has great potential, however, it is not financially feasible for the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad to continue with this project.”
Some local officials, however, aren’t ready to give up on the train just yet.
“I think the decision not to renew service is premature,” Gardiner Economic and Community Development Director Chris Paszyc said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s not dead. There has been too much time and money invested in this just to have it go away after one season.”
Paszyc and Richmond Town Manager John A. “Jay” Robbins Jr. said the new rail service, and marketing for it, began too late last summer. With more time to prepare the service and increase interest in it, they believe the train could be more successful in drawing passengers.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for them,” Robbins said. “The people I’ve talked to enjoyed the rides. But I don’t think they had the numbers they needed. It may just be a matter of cash-flow for the railroad. It’s a plan, with a little more time, that could have succeeded for them.”
A message on the railroad company’s automated answering service states the company has ceased operations on all its rail lines for the rest of this year.
The rail company, founded in 1867, has most of its lines around the Unity, Burnham Junction and Belfast areas.
Ronald Roy, director of passenger transportation for the state Department of Transportation, expressed dismay at the demise of the rail service in central Maine but said it is not an indication passenger service will not succeed in the state.
He noted the service, because it did not connect to any other active rail lines, was somewhat stranded. He said passenger train service has been established in Portland by the Downeaster. And once plans currently in the making to extend passenger service to Brunswick and Rockland become reality, Roy said passenger service to Augusta will “start to make sense.”
Roy said no other rail companies have expressed interest yet in running trains on the Richmond to Hallowell line, but said a request for proposals for rail operators will be going out soon.
“I would anticipate there is going to be more interest in excursion services,” Roy said.
If another train operator does take over the line, it already will have some passenger platforms to work from.
Each of the municipalities where the train made stops — Hallowell, Gardiner and Richmond — each paid between $5,000 and $7,000 to build passenger platforms for people to get on and off the train. The DOT reimbursed the towns for about two-thirds of that cost.
Local officials said the platforms were an investment in an effort to draw visitors to their downtown shops and restaurants.
“I thought it was a good opportunity,” Robbins said. “I, personally, don’t have any regrets about investing a couple thousand dollars” of town funds to build a platform.