Retired MEC station agent helps usher Amtrak to Brunswick

From the Portland Press Herald:

The Portland Press Herald wrote:It was a somber day, Sept. 5, 1960, when Nelson Soule stamped the last passenger ticket at Freeport Station and boarded the Maine Central Railroad's last passenger train to Brunswick.
. . .
Soule worked another 20 years on Maine railroads, retiring in 1980, but he never lost that ticket.

"I wanted to remember that day," Soule recalled. "It was the end of an era."

Freeport's last station agent helped to usher in a new era of train travel in Maine on Thursday, when he joined dozens of other dignitaries on the inaugural run of the Amtrak Downeaster's expanded passenger service north of Portland, to Freeport and Brunswick.

Read more at: http://www.pressherald.com/news/retired ... 11-02.html

Just wondering if there hadn't been such prolonged and active resistance to The Downeaster project during the Fink 1.0 era how many more MEC old hands might have gotten to see not only Portland but Brunswick service reestablished, not that that would ever have been a concern...

jaymac wrote:Just wondering if there hadn't been such prolonged and active resistance to The Downeaster project during the Fink 1.0 era how many more MEC old hands might have gotten to see not only Portland but Brunswick service reestablished, not that that would ever have been a concern...

Glad I found the official railroad.net "Nelson Soule Thread".

In answer to jaymac's question, probably quite a few "old hands" would have been present. As it stands Nelson Soule became the torch bearer for all them.

Funny to think this but Mr. Soule's old workplace is well preserved at the Boothbay Railway Village. Many years ago the Freeport station was moved there and has been there ever since. Unless this station had a successor (which seems unlikely) Mr. Soule's desk and the very ticket rack from which he punched his own ticket is likely on display at the village.