Website for a company that hopes to return passenger service to most of northern New England and eastern Canada, using Colorado Railcar self-propelled vehicles. The site also has numerous old photos of New England depots and a couple of pages of 1950s passenger and freight trains in color.

http://www.newenglandrailroad.com/index.html

Wow – This appears to fall somewhere in the Never-Never Land between a railfan fantasy run amok and a scam. I am using the term “scamâ€

Wow – This appears to fall somewhere in the Never-Never Land somewhere between a railfan fantasy run amok and a scam. I am using the term “scam” advisedly as there may not be any criminal intent to defraud as opposed to an incredibly naïve business plan, if indeed there actually is a business plan.

My granddaughter Meghan spent some time this afternoon researching this and what she came up with doesn’t help.

She did find a name for principle and a single news article, from July 2nd in the Portland Phoenix. She could not find any reference to this project that was not generated by the principle - not even railfan hyperbole. There were two supportive statements from politicians in the news article however these were quotes from the principle claiming the politician’s interest, not the politicians. The article also implied a very unrealistic start-up date of January 2005.

The telephone number she found does not appear to be listed in the major directories and does not have any form of answering device, rather strange for a going concern that needs mega-millions in capital

Several things seem wrong on first reading.

1. The home page seems to be a copy of Colorado Railcar’s advertising material and includes equipment that simply is not part of what seems to be the proposal.

2. Portland – Bangor – Calais and Portland – Montreal services at a decent frequency, say two round trips per day, would require (back of the envelope math here) two sets of cars for each route plus spares to cover maintenance down time. While he does specify what the trains will consist of a reasonable guess would be a minimum of three cars per set, meaning at least twelve cars for daily service plus the spares so lets say fifteen cars. The price is approximately three million dollars ($3,000,000.00) per car. If the entire fleet is purchased new (as opposed to using some existing cars as trailers), along with spare parts and a maintenance facility of some sort, this is a capital outlay well over fifty million dollars ($50,000,000.00). If Colorado had an order for fifteen cars, I believe that it would have received some coverage in the trade press. As good as the people at Colorado Railcar may be I doubt that they will produce this many cars on spec.

3. That fifty million does not even consider infrastructure costs.

4. They do not seem to have acquired the rights to actually run on the lines in question and it strikes me as highly unlikely that they can without significant demonstrated capital and political support.

5. There is no mention of capitalization anywhere. There is a request for donations. Yes, I said donations. You may mail them a cheque or use your credit card over the Internet to give them money. There is no securities prospectus of any kind and no stock offering. No equity. No debt. It’s a donation.

6. Part of the web site is devoted to selling model trains. Is this the capital plan?

7. Now if someone does decide to give this company money, to whom does it go? There is no name or resume of a responsible human being anywhere on the web site. Based on the employment opportunities page none of the key players have been hired.

8. The railroad technical information page appears to be plagiarized from somewhere else.

9. The site is also soliciting donations for the Maine Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society to pay the filing fees for 501(c)(3) status. Same address for all of this. While the NRHS chapter listing is down and she could not confirm the chapter there, she could find no reference to a Maine chapter that was not generated by the principle and asking for support.

Can anybody shed more light on this? Unfortunately it appears to just an over-reaching pipe dream.

GME

I would guess that entire webpage was put together by a teenager who simply has a grandiose dream..I doubt it has any basis in reality at all..
(accepting donations might be a tad unethical..and possibly illegal?)

apparently he is also associated with the "Maine Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society" which might not technically exist yet either!
I found this post on another forum, with a phone number!

"We are a few individuals who have started the Maine Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and are looking for new members. If you would help us by letting people know we would be grateful. They can call 207-737-5750 or Email: newenglandrailroad@msn.com to get an application. Thank you"

and on another forum:

"The Maine Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society is looking for new members to share in the activities and events through out the year. Become active in helping to preserve our Nations oldest mode of public transportation and railroad stations. Join now exciting opportunity. Email: newenglandrailroad@msn.com and request and application. Also check out our Web site at: http://newenglandrailroad.com "

both of those posts were made within the last 4 months.

we also have Mr. Maine's address!

Maine Chapter National Railway Historical Society
17 Church Street
Richmond, ME 04357

anyone live up that way and know what is going on??

Scot

Well, my atlas program shows that address as being a block down the hill from the currently-unused wooden MEC Richmond, Me. depot......... for what little that's worth.........

There has been quite a bit of discussion on this today over on the NERails board at Yahoo and on the New England Railfan board at Railroad.net and I dare say that the lovely Meghan and I may have fanned the flames a little bit. I think that this was a well intentioned idea which was simply never thought out at the level which a project of that scope needed to be. Now, if I could just run a business by taking donations...

GME