They are clearing about 5000 feat east of the last crossing in Winn. I am wondering if the land clearing has more to do with the old pipeline which runs down to Searsport from Loring AFB, more so than the railroad. I know its runs along the ROW in a few places around Mattawamkeag, Winn. Versant Power uses part of the abandoned pipeline to house a distribution line. There is a new solar farm on the Route 2 side of the river being built and I think they still need to build a substation for it. So the land clearing might be related to that.
It just seems like it would have taken more time for CSX to start cutting trees, if they just started talking to landowners in the last few weeks. Also there is another distribution line that follows the EMR main line, its just a hunch but where they are land clearing on that side of the river, that would be a pretty good spot to reroute that line across the river, onto the CSX side, and then to a new substation. But I could be entirely wrong on this. There is also a huge swath of land up by MP-4 in Winn which is being clear cut as well, it runs just about from MP4 to a little past MP5.