What if no Guilford?

[gokeefe]

I think the Maine Central would have merged with the Bangor & Aroostook. In this scenario there is a significant chance that Canadian Pacific would have abandoned the Moosehead Sub in favor of routing all traffic via St. Johnsbury for reasons of efficiency and convenience.

The Rockland Branch *might* have stayed under Maine Central ownership but it seems unlikely. The Lower Road between Brunswick and Augusta also *might* have stayed under Maine Central ownership but that too seems unlikely.

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[Engineer Spike]

Even with the deindustrialization of New England, B&M might have been able to make it. A friend grew up in Manchester, and he used to talk about riding around with crews back then. He mentioned how busy things were. I do think that many of these businesses would have gone away no matter what. There are other factors to consider.

One of these factors is that, as mentioned, Guilford jettisoned much of the service dependent traffic. Some of this was intentional, while other parts of it were not. During the strike, the service was basically limited to the major shippers. There were only so many scabs and managers to go around. Much of the smaller businesses got poor service. This forced many to move to trucks. Some came back, but others got a bd taste in their mouths. Without the strikes, it's hard to sy how much traffic could have been retained. Who also knows how much further Alan Dustin could have gone towards speeding up schedules to Maine. Maybe I90 and I95 trucking transit times could have been matched, especially with increased intermodal.

One thing that we can speculate all day about is mergers. Mellon bought my employer, the D&H for 500K. That's because their debt was deep and climbing. Who knows if the later 1980s would have brought more interest and investment form the black stalloin. If they didn't do anything, I think that we would have gone bankrupt. One would then wonder who would have stepped up? Would CPR have stepped into the game sooner? Did Walter Rich?DO have enough financing by that time to take over? Another scenario is the merger of BAR, MEC, B&M, and D&H, just as Buck Dumaine had connived the idea of.

[S1f3432]

Back at the time the N&W initially received approval to purchase Conrail, GTI worked out agreements
through a combination of track purchases and trackage rights to expand westward to Chicago and
St. Louis among other places in an attempt to provide the competition in a way Dereco was intended
to do. Analysts at the time doubted GTI had the financial wherewithal to pull it off and ultimately
opposition from CSX and other railroads derailed the sale to N&W which also ended GTI's grandiose
expansion plans west at least temporarily. GTI was further set back when the State of New York stepped in and stopped the Springfield Terminal-ification of the D&H effectively ending westward
expansion plans. GTI had closed MEC's Waterville shops, moving the work to East Deerfield and
Oneonta. Unable to have it's way with the D&H, GTI moved the work back to Waterville and cast
the D&H adrift. The rest of the GTI empire has been in a long slow slide downhill ever since,
occasionally buoyed by infusions of government cash for maintenance or improvements.

[GTIKING]

Fun question if the Mellons didn't want to railroad. We wouldn't have seen them plant Timmy in New England and they wouldn't have created Norfolk Southern.
Maine Central would have done just fine until 2012 when Maines mills died. The Mellons bought the MEC the dirty way, through other companies they owned to kick off ' the plan'. The RR was sound at the time of Purchase in 1981 and only served as a jumping on point to work west to L.A.

The B&M is a different story. Dustin fought like hell to pull the RR out of debt and held kff the courts from carving the RR up but realistically couldn't achieve freedom. As soon as the B&M showed any profit they had to pay their debts ASAP. Trying to pay off bonds, back taxes, overdue mortgages, rebuild a locomotive fleet, and fix a rotten mainline was too much. Had Mellon not come in you would have seen Conrail step in. Something the B&M refused 3 separate times. Fast forward today Rigby west would most likely be CSX depending how the Conrail split went.