Legacy Corporations Status (B&M/MEC/ST/PTM)

>>As memory serves PAR still owns a very small portion of the Mountain Division in order to prevent anyone from recreating a contiguous through line. MEC would very likely be the owner of record for this right of way.

As revealed during the STB issues raised in the past few years over the NHVT attempt to salvage the western end of the Mountain Division, the line from St. J to the New Hampshire line is owned by the MEC.

PBM

markhb wrote:

gokeefe wrote:GIS Records for the Town of Colonie, NY indicate the property at 49 Lincoln Avenue, NY (actually still in Colonie, NY, but per Google Maps shows as "Watervliet, NY") of 33 acres, SBL# 44.10-1-32.2, currently belongs to the "Delaware and Hudson RW CO" with an address of 501 Marquette Ave, Ste 1410, Minneapolis, MN, 55402-1201. As it so happens that address happens to be the "Tax Department" for the "SOO LINE RAILROAD COMPANY" which as we all know is in fact a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Railway. Therefore, despite all impressions to the contrary it does in fact appear to be exactly the case that the CP in fact owns the former site of the D&H Colonie Shops. Q.E.D.

We've both been doing some digital spelunking, it seems. I found the property owned by the D&H as well, however, that's not the repair shop land... it's the actual railroad. The shop land is listed as 950 5th St. (the Colonie GIS map has a neat "click to identify" feature) and is indeed listed as owned by GTI at Iron Horse Park. Nice piece of property, conveniently situated between the abandoned steel works and the back end of the Watervliet Arsenal (which is still operational).

They have 33 acres worth of Right of Way just through Colonie? Amazing.

Also amazing is the Watervliet Arsenal itself. I had no idea whatsoever. One of the few places that has anything to do with heavy gunnery anymore.

Conway Scenic purchased the Conway Branch from Intervale to the Albany/Conway town line in 1974. In 1987 the town of Madison purchased the line within the town from the B&M and later sold it to the state. NHN purchased the line from Rochester to rte 28 in Ossipee, sometime in the 1980's and later purchased Rochester to Rollinsford in 1994. The state purchased the rest of the line (rte 28 in Ossipee to the Madison town line and the small section that goes through Albany, NH) from the B&M in 2001. There is one private owner that owns about 1,000 feet in Madison and is the owner of the Silver Lake Railroad which operates out of the old Madison Station (aka Silver Lake Depot). Just like the mountain Divison, Pan Am/B&M retains the rights to all bridge traffic as agreed to in all purchases.
For more information please click on the link http://www.nh.gov/dot/org/aerorailtrans ... yStudy.pdf

Here are some interesting results for some searches regarding the Maine Central Railroad.

First, the Maine Department of the Secretary of State, Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, has the "Maine Central Railroad Company" registered as a Railroad Corporation with an filing date of October 28, 1862. Interestingly the Clerk/Registered Agent address and P.O. Box correspond to Verrill Dana LLP, a law firm in Portland, ME. I was more than a little surprised to see an in-state registered agent as I expected to see an address in Massachusetts. Also interesting to see no reference to MA in the documents at all.

Second, the Corporations Division for the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has a "Foreign Corporation" registration for the "Maine Central Railroad Company" with, oddly, a date of registration of June 14th, 2006. I had to wonder why after so many years of operation as GRS/PAR they suddenly completed a "Foreign Corporation" registration with MA. There seemed to be at least an outside chance that this was somehow related to the Pan Am Southern partnership with Norfolk Southern.

Here are some other interesting results for continued corporate status of the Maine Central Railroad Company.

First, the Vermont Secretary of State has records for the Maine Central Railroad Company that show an "Active" status with an incorporation date of March 12, 1918. There appears to be an erroneous or "no data" return for last filing date of December 31, 1900.

Second, the New Hampshire Secretary of State also has records for a Maine Central Railroad Company, Inc. currently in "Good Standing" with a creation date of August 11, 2000 (however the files indicate reports having been filed as early as 1992). This appears to be a more routine registration of the Maine based corporation as opposed to the Vermont registration which appears to be an entirely unique or separate corporation (maybe, hard to tell because you can't see the Vermont reports).

The New Hampshire Report also appears to clear up some of the confusion over the name with "Maine Central Railroad Company, Inc." being the "Legal Name" and "Maine Central Railroad Company" being the "Home Name".

Both the Rhode Island Corporation Search and the Connecticut Corporation Search do not turn up any records for Maine Central Railroad Company.

Interestingly the New York State Corporation Search does turn up a record for the Maine Central Railroad Company. The initial date of filing is January 2, 1958 and is showing the current entity status as "Active" for a "Foreign Business Corporation". The only address provided indicates, Maine Central Railroad Company, Portland, Maine with no street address provided.

I did in fact bother to check Quebec and New Brunswick for results. Quebec was negative and New Brunswick or "Service New Brunswick" (an office with amalgamated provincial government functions) charges a $3.00 fee to search their records so I didn't bother with that. Since the MEC used to run to Vanceboro (with through sleepers to Moncton) it seemed there might at least be some kind of a chance that they had previously registered in New Brunswick.

Since this thread includes other corporations in its scope I'll make a brief post regarding the Portland Terminal Company (PTM).

The Maine Department of the Secretary of State, Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, shows the "Portland Terminal Company" as a Maine Business Corporation in "Good Standing" with an initial filing date of February 15, 1887 under the original legal name of "Portland Union Railway Station Company" (changed on July 1, 1911). There are a series of changes to stock and the charter in the 1920's.

As with several of the Guilford/Pan Am railroads the corporation was administratively dissolved or suspended for failing to file annual reports in 1999 prior to being reinstated in 2000. This is a relatively common phenomenon for a lot of corporations that I've been looking it, usually due to administrative transitions in personnel.

I'm quite surprised there are no filings of any kind that can be found for the Maine Central in Quebec, since they did in fact operate in the province (Quebec Junction to Lime Ridge; later cut back to Beecher Falls, VT).

The B&M ran a terminal operation in Charleston, MA, that went down to the docks its reporting marks were MTC, Mystic Terminal Co.

Peter

arcadia terminal wrote:The B&M ran a terminal operation in Charleston, MA, that went down to the docks its reporting marks were MTC, Mystic Terminal Co.

Peter

State scooped up that track when they abandoned it. It's officially designated OOS. I-93 Leverett Connector ramp presents clearance issues that would require lowering the trackbed a few feet. They want to do it and it's not hard to do, but only if there's the on-dock traffic to merit reactivation. Shorter-term they've concentrating energy on getting South Boston on-dock access reinstated via Track 61 and CSX.

Who knows if there's yet another dormant company floating around in some state records for that operation. I'm not sure they retained the trackage rights a la the East Boston Branch when they dumped it. Most likely any new activity there would be PAS, but if they abandoned trackage rights entirely CSX could potentially bid.

b&m 1566 wrote:I'm quite surprised there are no filings of any kind that can be found for the Maine Central in Quebec, since they did in fact operate in the province (Quebec Junction to Lime Ridge; later cut back to Beecher Falls, VT).

Just in case I went back and checked the Québec Corporation Search for various forms of "Portland & Ogdensburg" to include the two terms separately.

One possibility is that the search is only providing information about active corporations, but then again that doesn't make much sense to me as it would seem likely that GTI would have maintained their legacy property in Québec.

Reading a little more carefully into the history (wiki) I realized I was searching for the wrong thing. I should have been looking for the Hereford Railway or the Dominion Lime Company. Neither of these results turned up anything in Québec either.

Interestingly searches for the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad and another Maine Central lesee, the Somerset Railroad didn't turn up any results in the Maine Corporations search.

This means that at some point the Maine Central Railroad boughtout the companies of their remaining ownership and shut them down.

gokeefe wrote: There appears to be an erroneous or "no data" return for last filing date of December 31, 1900.

Maybe that's from 2000 but they never fixed their Y2K bug.