Hundreds of people crowded around the newly completed train platform at Brunswick Station Monday for a ceremony that started with the arrival of a train carrying transportation officials ready to give speeches and ended with a ribbon-cutting. A similar ceremony was held earlier that morning down the line in Freeport. The two communities have not had passenger rail service since 1959. The platforms will serve Amtrak’s Downeaster when service is extended to the towns this fall. Watch WCSH news coverage. Photos by Michele Stapleton.
Our daughter is considering applying to Bowdoin. Transportation is a major concern for us. This makes a positive difference as she determines which colleges she will apply to.
Almost any American of a certain age will get a moment’s nostalgia kick to know that the Downeaster has fought its way thru much of the town/state/federal red tape to move ahead to reach Freeport and Brunswick. True, the ground gets soggier and the tape gets tighter at each step. The tracks are there, but Camden is still a long way away.
Probably there is no noticeable decline in the traffic on the Maine Turnpike or U.S. One. I suggest that’s not the point of this coastal adventure in “alternate” transportation. It represents a determination on the part of “the people” in this part of the U.S., and their duly elected representatives in the local communities up to the Congress, to overcome, subdue, suborn almost a century of ignorance and prejudice in regard to machines that didn’t use “gas” or didn’t need new highways to run on.
Many Americans, especially after WW II, made their first trips to Europe and returned awed by public transportation, trains that continued to run on time comfortably. Maybe we need more visible federal or state support to get the Downeaster, our own “Bullet Train” (.22 caliber) to its target, but commonsense and logic will play their part. Oh, once more,”Hear that lonesome whistle blowin”cross the trestle, Whooee . . .”