The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, Maine's Railroad

The Bangor and Aroostook was never a large railroad, consisting of less than a 1,000 miles for its entire life, and during its final days it operated a little over 800 miles after being acquired by Iron Road Railways (before this the railroad operated a little under 500 miles). The BAR was also late to the game being chartered in February of 1891 to build from Brownsville, Maine north to Caribou. Interestingly, the reason for the railroad’s creation was the very business that the BAR survived on throughout its existence, potatoes and timber.

Being that Maine was still extremely isolated by the late 19th century (so much so that for years the northern areas of the state did not have adequate highways and other important infrastructure), the Bangor and Aroostook earned healthy profits for years on potatoes and timber. One of its largest customers, Great Northern Paper, would supply the railroad with business for decades and would be the driving force behind the railroad gaining its one and only port connection along Penobscot Bay in the early 1900s (Searsport and Cape Jellison).

Throughout the years this setup would change little, hauling timber, coal (early on for the paper mill operations), and potatoes to either port or connections with southern railroads (such as the Maine Central), which would earn the railroad substantial profits. Along with this the BAR operated a small fleet of passenger trains between Bangor and northern points (aside from this the rest of the railroad’s passenger operations were with mixed freights or local runs), the most famous two being the Aroostook Flyer and Potatoland Special.

While it dabbled with streamlining in later years, being that the Bangor and Aroostook operated such a small system and served rather unpopulated areas when compared to other, larger railroads it did not spend heavily on the concept, or passenger operations altogether for that matter, instead deciding to focus on its core freight business. By the early 1960s the railroad had dropped passenger operations entirely.

The little railroad found in the northern, virtually unknown and unheard of areas of Maine, surprisingly would find itself in a pop star role beginning in 1950 that really never disappeared. That year the Bangor and Aroostook decided to build a fleet of 500 insulated refrigerator cars (known as refers, the railroad needed these cars to keep their potato shipments at a constant 40 degrees Fahrenheit while en route to market) and painted them in a striking and eye-catching Americana scheme of red, white, and blue with STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS proudly adorning the cars’ flanks. The cars’ celebrity status came from them touring the country when leased out to railroads and companies for use when the BAR did not need them.

As the 1960s progressed things slowly went downhill for the railroad. During this time with highways and interstates ever-expanding, the trucking business began to slowly eat into the BAR’s lucrative potato business. Essentially the railroad’s entire “left arm” of earnings would lose this business virtually altogether by the end of the 1960s when the Penn Central’s service was becoming so bad that an entire season’s crop rotted in transit when it became lost in the PC’s Selkirk Yard in New York. What resulted was not only lost profits for the BAR but also the farms themselves as many went out of business soon after the service collapse and those that remained chose never to ship by rail again.

This loss of business would begin the path to the BAR’s eventual end in 2003. While it continued to serve paper mills it struggled to make ends meet and would be purchased by the Amoskeag Corporation, the same year of the PC disaster, 1969. In the early 1990s the railroad’s ownership changed again when its final owner, Iron Road Railways, purchased it.

BAR Diesel Locomotive Roster

BAR Steam Locomotive Roster

Never truly recovering from its potato loss the Bangor and Aroostook continued to struggle under Iron Road Railways and when the paper mills it served could no longer support the railroad financially its owner elected to file it for bankruptcy in the early 2000s, selling off its property to Rail World, Inc. in 2003 thus ending an interesting history of Maine railroading that had carried on for over 110 years.

While a bit on the pricey side consider the book, Bangor and Aroostook Railroad in Color, that covers the BAR's general history, with many vivid color photos ranging from the 1950s to the railroad's final days in the early 2000s (Morning Sun Books publishes some of the finest railroad books on the market with superb historical photographs). If you're interested in perhaps purchasing this book please visit The Railroad Diamond by clicking the tab in the menu to your left marked "TRD Store".