George Chambers
The Pan Am Railways began in 1981 as the Guilford Transportation Industries and consists of the former Boston and Maine, Maine Central, Portland Terminal Co. and the Springfield Terminal Railway. The railroad runs from Mattawamkeag, Maine to Rotterdam Jct. New York. The name was changed to Pan Am Railways in 2006 when owner Tim Mellon bought the “Pan Am” trademark name from the defunct airline. The railway HQ is in North Billerica, MA.
While on a vacation trip on May 19, 2015, my wife Sally and I toured the locomotive and car shop of the Pan Am Railways. Sally’s brother Dick is on the board of directors for the railway and set up the tour for us.
Our tours guides were John Pellcchia, General Manager of Locomotives and Luke McCaul, General Manager of the Pan Am Railways. The locomotive and car shops are in the very old brick buildings and roundhouse from the former Maine Central RR built about one hundred years ago in Waterville, Maine. All the major locomotive and car repairs are done in these buildings. John and Luke showed us various locomotives in the shop for maintenance and repairs. They described what each locomotive needed, all of the heavy duty shop machinery used to do the work, and when the work would be completed. We watched one locomotive getting a new cylinder for its diesel engine. The railway does not have a lot of new diesel locomotives like the UP or BNSF and even has a few old GP-9’s still running as yard switchers.
Besides working on their own locomotives, the railway also does repairs for the Mass. Commuter RR that runs out of Boston. In the car shop during our tour was one of the business cars owned by the railway. It is an old heavy weight built in the 1920’s, rebuilt in 1950, and updated since then. The other business car was sitting outside and is newer, built in 1950. Across from the loco/car shop is the paint shop containing a transfer table to move locos and cars around. We also checked out the roundhouse that had several locomotives in for maintenance. One of the locos stored in the roundhouse is an F-9 used to pull the two business cars. Sitting outside at the east end of the yard is an old Maine Central 2-8-0 that may be restored.
For additional information on the Pan Am Railways, see the article in Wikipedia, which includes a history and a list of all the locomotives, and the corporate web site at www.panamrailways.com. There are openings for locomotive engineers as of the writing date of this article.
Pan Am Railways blue boxcar in Waterville, Maine yard.
Pan Am Railways business car.
Pan Am Railways locomotive cylinder replacement inside the roundhouse.
Pan Am Railways locomotive pit inside the roundhouse.
Pan Am Railways turntable with a really old switcher.
Pan Am Railways wheel grinder inside the shop area.
most of the buildings have been torn down on the north end of the yard the rip track all the way to the round house i believe its sad to see as my dad worked there when it was still Maine central rr