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Brief History Guilford Rail System is the railroad arm of Guilford Transportation Industries, a holding company formed in 1981 to acquire the Maine Central Railroad Company. A year later, GTI acquired the Boston & Maine Railroad Corporation, and shortly after that, they purchased the Delaware & Hudson Railway Company. The three railroads formed an integrated system that stretched from northern New England to the mid-Atlantic area, and parts of Canada. The D&H was eventually sold off in the late '80s, leaving just the MEC and B&M, which is the Guilford Rail System of today. Guilford locomotives carry one of three reporting marks: MEC, BM, or ST. ST stands for Springfield Terminal, which is an obscure subsidiary of the B&M. The "original" Springfield Terminal was actually the Springfield Terminal Electric Railway Company, a small, electrified shortline based in Springfield, Vermont. Due to ST's labor rules that were viewed as "favorable" by Guilford management, it was decided that all Guilford employees would actually be ST employees, and therefore would not be subject to the more "union-friendly" labor rules of the MEC and the B&M. Today's Guilford Rail System begins at Mattawamkeag, Maine (milepost 0) and ends at Rotterdam Junction, New York (milepost 467), with numerous branchlines in between. Guilford got its name from the hometown of its founder, Timothy Mellon. He grew up in Guilford, Connecticut. |