Bucksport Branch

The Bucksport Branch is a railroad line in Maine that was operated by the Maine Central Railroad. It is now part of the Pan Am Railways system.

The Bucksport Branch junctions with the mainline at Bangor and continues south down the Penobscot River valley, passing through Brewer and terminating at Bucksport.

This 19 mi (31 km) branch was chartered in 1873 as the Bucksport and Bangor Railroad after its grade had been surveyed in the autumn of 1872. Construction of the line began in the spring of 1873 with trains beginning to run regularly over its whole length on December 21, 1874. The company was reorganized as the Eastern Maine Shoreline Railway in 1882, and leased as the Maine Central Bucksport branch in 1883.^[1] The last passenger train from Bangor to Bucksport ran on 27 January 1932.^[2] In the latter decades of Maine Central operation, two freight trains per day were typically pulled by a cab-to-cab pair of Maine Central's EMD SW7s and SW9s until the locomotives were assigned elsewhere in the Guilford system.^[3]

Route mileposts

• Milepost 0: Bangor.

• Milepost 1.2: Brewer Junction with the former Calais Branch.^[4]

• Milepost 9.4: South Orrington chemical plant originating or terminating 2,000 annual carloads in 1973.^[5]

• Milepost 19.3: Bucksport large paper mill and Penobscot Bay seaport originating or terminating 18,000 annual carloads in 1973.^[5]

References

1. ^ Peters, Bradley L. (1976). Maine Central Railroad Company. Maine Central Railroad. 
2. ^ Johnson, Ron (1985). The Best of Maine Railroads. Portland Litho. p. 111. 
3. ^ The 470 Railroad Club (1981). Meet the Maine Central. KJ Printing. 
4. ^ Maine Central Railroad (1917). Hand-Book of Officers, Agents, Stations and Sidings. Edwin B. Robertson. 
5. ^ ^{a b} United States Department of Transportation (1974). Rail Service in the Midwest and Northeast Region. United States Government Printing Office.