A nonprofit railroad company moved one specialized rail car by truck from Hermon to Hancock on Wednesday and plans to move another on Thursday.
A ballast car, used to deposit gravel along rail lines, was trucked on Wednesday from Northern Maine Junction in Hermon to Washington Junction in the town of Hancock, just outside Ellsworth. A snow plow rail car was loaded by crane on Wednesday onto a flatbed trailer and will be driven Thursday morning to the Hancock rail yard where Downeast Scenic Railroad is based.
The two old rail cars are being given to the nonprofit railroad by CSX, which last year acquired Pan Am Railways, including all of Pan Am’s assets in Maine. The ballast car, which is smaller than the snow plow car, will be used for its designed purpose by Downeast Scenic Railroad, but the snow plow car will be set up at Washington Junction as a display after it is refurbished.
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Tom Testa, president of Downeast Scenic Railroad, said that transporting the 42-ton snow plow car from Hermon to Hancock should be fairly straightforward. The rail car is considered an oversize load, even though the wheel chassis on the car have been removed and are being transported on a separate truck.
The moving company, Casco Bay Transportation of Saco, has been issued an oversized load moving permit by the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and will have a state police escort while it is en route from Hermon to Hancock.
With the wheel chassis removed, the car on the flatbed will rise roughly 15 feet off the ground, or about 18 inches taller than an average tractor trailer truck, but the height is not expected to be an issue, Testa said.
The moving company plans to drive the rail car from the Hermon south on Coldbrook Road to Route 202 and then on Interstate 395 across the river to Holden, he said. From there, the moving company will drive south on Route 1A to Ellsworth and then will turn east on East Main Street for the final leg to Washington Junction.
The ballast and plow cars will not be the first large pieces of railroad equipment moved by truck on Route 1A to Hancock in recent memory. In 2016, New England Steam, a related nonprofit organization, moved defunct steam locomotive Maine Central No. 470 from Waterville to Washington Junction, where it continues to restore the locomotive with the goal of operating it again.
Testa said that if the rail cars were further away from Downeast Scenic Railroad’s yard at Washington County, it might not have decided to take on the logistical and financial challenge of accepting them. CSX may be donating the cars, which it otherwise would scrap, but the nonprofit railroad estimates that it will spend $62,000 to move and refurbish the cars.
“They are big, but they are never going to be any closer to us,” Testa said.
