Montreal - Portland passenger service, past and future

[CN9634]

Hes baccccccccccck...

http://mainebusiness.mainetoday.com/que ... l?id=15767

There is an opportunity in New England to open and operate a successful tourist/rail transportation service. This opportunity exists because at present there is no train service between Portland and Montreal. Amtrak has been contacted and it was discovered that they are not going to provide that service now or in the near future. Through speaking with the state of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and different private businesses in the tourism industry there has been expressed a great amount of support and interest in such a venture. And therefore it has been decided to go forward with the project. The company will penetrate the tourism industry in the business of providing safe and enjoyable rail transportation between Portland, Maine, Montreal Canada helping to increase tourism and employment in Maine. The company also recognizes the opportunities for offering superior value, outstanding quality, and highly personalized and professional service tailored to the needs of the passengers. New England Railroad, will serve its area of business working to provide the highest quality of service along with the natural scenic beauty of New England by rail. This service will create a great relationship with our neighbors in Canada and increase business for many businesses and groups affiliated with the tourist industry. We will be using new Double-Deck Glass Domed Railcars and serving gourmet food prepared and cooked aboard the train.

[Otto Vondrak]

Here's an actual email I got from Donal Adams:

Sorry for the delay in replying to your questions. We have been extremely busy with the investors and have not had a chance to focus on other things. To begin with we don't have any of our own trains operating at this particular time, but we do represent other Rail Tours. We are trying to complete our funding with the investors so that in the Fall of 2010 we will be able to offer our own trips between Portland, ME and Montreal, CN. Then the second year we will be operating trains between Portland, Me and Quebec City, CN. If you continue to watch our web site we give periodic updates as to our progress. Hope this is helpful. Thank you for your interest in New England Railroad.

[djlong]

You would think there would be announcements from others involved in this project, if it were real.

I mean, wouldn't the State of Maine put out a press release? Or some of the governmental agencies in Quebec? Or whomever owns the line to say they reached an Operating Agreement? Or the company who will sell or lease rolling stock?

[And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head]

[MEC407]

This is the same stuff he's been saying for years. All he does is change the dates. Last time around, he was talking about high-speed passenger rail on the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR, and said he had investors lined up to make it happen. {rolls eyes}

Now that the B&ML is operating again, I guess he has gone back to dreaming about the Mountain Division and/or the SLR.

I suppose his next "venture" will be the ex-BAR lines that MMA wants to abandon.

I have no problem with people who like to dream and who have active imaginations, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Pretending to be something you're not, and representing yourself as an actual business entity when no such entity exists, is deceptive and unethical.

[p42thedowneaster]

Yikes...I don't think there is much of a market for continuous Portland-Montreal rail travel. An occasional excursion over the MMA or SLR would be more than sufficient. It would be neat to see the CSRR "notch train" make a trip back to Canada via StL&A. It would be great to ride that train at ~45mph instead of the usual 15mph!

[gokeefe]

Yikes...I don't think there is much of a market for continuous Portland-Montreal rail travel. An occasional excursion over the MMA or SLR would be more than sufficient.

The Empire Builder service is an excellent parallel example of exactly why Portland-Montreal service has some potential. In both cases travel by train is significantly easier to accomplish than travel by car. In the case of the Portland-Montreal rail corridor this may very be the fastest means of ground transportation available between these two end points. Keep in mind there is no convenient connection via Interstate highway between Maine and Quebec. There isn't any competing bus service either.

For this reason there is at least a fair chance that Portland-Montreal service might actually have a chance of working. I'm not going to say that it will be as sucessful as the Downeaster but I think it is unreasonable to say that there is no market at all for this travel. At least at first blush there is an obvious seasonal extension possible to Old Orchard Beach, which is heavily frequented by French Canadians because it is one of the closest sand beaches on the Ocean to Quebec.

[MEC407]

I've always wanted to visit Montreal, but I've never done it because I've heard that it's quite a long drive, on a lot of twisty, narrow roads. However, looking at a map reveals that it's really not that far away. In fact, I think most Mainers probably don't realize that it's geographically closer than New York City. The problem lies in the fact that even though NYC is farther away, it's actually easier and faster to drive to. A quick check of Bing Maps reveals that the shortest, fastest auto route between Portland and Montreal is 258 miles and takes 5.5 hours. By contrast, the shortest/fastest auto route between Portland and NYC is 318 miles, but only takes 5 hours. (And for yet another comparison, the shortest/fastest auto route between Boston and Montreal is 310 miles, and takes a bit less than 5 hours.)

Now, I don't know what kind of distance we'd be talking about for a Portland-Montreal service on the SLR, but if the running time was 5.5 hours or less, I'd jump on it in an instant. I'd also jump on a train that got me from Portland to NYC in 5.5 hours or less, but that's another topic for another time.

[gokeefe]

Here's a really basic question we should all have an answer to. What is the railroad mileage from Portland to Montreal? Let's assume Pan Am Railways from Portland Transportation Center to Yarmouth Junction and then SLR from there towards Montreal, probably CN routing into Montreal and vicinity.

[MEC407]

According to this site, it's approximately 137 miles from Yarmouth Junction, Maine, to Island Pond, Vermont, and then another 110 miles from Island Pond, Vermont, to Sainte-Rosalie, Quebec. That brings the Yarmouth to Sainte-Rosalie total mileage to 247. I would assume that the CN track from Sainte-Rosalie to Montreal is probably another 35 miles or so, based on the most direct highway route between those two cities, which is about 38 miles. That would bring the Yarmouth to Montreal total mileage to 282, give or take five miles.

Assuming an average speed of 45 MPH (which is about what the Downeaster's average speed is), we'd be looking at a running time of a bit more than 6 hours between Yarmouth Junction and Montreal.

[gokeefe]

I was doing the same back of the envelope calculation myself when I thought to ask the question regarding mileage. Of course we would have to add some more mileage for Yarmouth to Portland, which increases the trip time even more. However, I think we also both made the mistake of assuming the track in Canada wouldn't allow for higher speed operation than 59mph (Class III). Unfortunately I would suspect that only the 38 miles of CN track would be anything more than Canadian Class IV or better equivalent.

Looks to me as if it would take Class IV operations to really make this service work. That might not be as hard as it sounds. The big difference in many cases between Class III and Class IV is a signal system. I'm pretty sure SLR runs signals on their track and that they are not running 'dark'. They might operate at Class III levels only because they don't see a point in running their trains any faster.

[MEC407]

Actually I was assuming that the line would be upgraded to 79 MPH standards, although that wasn't what I used for my calculation of running time -- I used the Downeaster's average speed of 45 MPH, which takes into account the stops and starts and the various speed restrictions due to things like curves and running through yards or dense downtowns. As I'm sure you know, the DE's route has a lot of 65-70 MPH running, and a few spots of 79 MPH as well, but once you factor in the stops and the speed restrictions, the average speed between BON and POR ends up being approximately 45-47 MPH. So I used that as the basis for my calculation of Yarmouth to Montreal.

[Cosmo]

Well, concidering recent trends/events,
ANY new passenger service these days would almost certainly be required to have Class IV signaling, that is, PTC+GPS technology...
...in the US, at least.

[TomNelligan]

With all due respect to you Mainers, given that Portland-Montreal passenger service expired more than forty years ago, was never a busy intercity route unlike Portland-Boston, and was marginal at the end (summer weekends only for the Old Orchard Beach crowd), I don't see how the market demand is there to support the cost of upgrading the StL&A to reasonable passenger train speeds. Boston-Montreal is a far bigger travel market because of the size of the city and in terms of ground transport supports only a few bus trips a day. Most people drive (like me; it's five hours at reasonable speed) or fly. Aside from the cost of upgrading the former Grand Trunk, you need to acquire or locate equipment that will have an associated cost, and based on Amtrak practices elsewhere you have to add at least an hour to your theoretical running times to account for the customs stop. I just don't see how the potential ridership would justify the startup costs, much less support the ongoing operating expenses.

[MEC407]

Those are very good points, and I tend to agree. I love train travel, and I'd love to visit Montreal by train via Portland... but if the running time was 7 hours, it's probably something that I would do maybe once or twice in a lifetime. And if it's going to cost the state a $#!tload of money, I'd have a hard time supporting it, given that we can barely fund the [very successful and very useful] train that we've got right now.

[MEC407]

Just a side note: do any of my fellow Mainers remember a few years ago when gubernatorial candidate Barbara Merrill talked about running a "casino train" between Montreal and Portland? The concept was that lots of people would get on this train to play the slot machines, and the revenue from the slots would help fund the operation of the train (and subsidize the passengers who were actually using it for legitimate travel). It was kind of a crazy idea, and I am NOT a fan of casinos or gambling as a way for the government to pay its bills... but in retrospect, and given how popular Bangor's Hollywood Slots has become, I wonder if Ms. Merrill may have actually been on the right track.