Central Maine & Quebec

Company History: This is a regional railroad that appeared, gained the loyalty of many customers, adopted a new paint scheme that became an instant classic, painted a “Heritage” engine and then merged into a connecting Class One railroad, all in less time than it takes to go through one lap of Railroad Of The Day.

In 2014, a subsidiary of Fortress Investment Group (who also owned Florida East Coast and owned RailAmerica before selling it to Genesee & Wyoming) bid for and was awarded by the bankruptcy trustees the rail lines of the Montreal Maine & Atlantic. The new company was called Central Maine & Quebec Railway. The MM&A had slipped into bankruptcy after a runaway oil train derailed and caught fire, killing 47 people and doing 200 million dollars in damage to downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The CMQ ran 481 miles of line from Montreal, Quebec east to Brownville Junction, Maine where the line split. One line headed northeast to Millinocket where it connected with Maine Northern’s network of branches serving the northeastern Maine frontier. The other line turned south to Bangor and the harbor at Searsport. There were also three branches on the Quebec end, one of which slipped over the border to serve Northern Vermont. The CMQ spent millions over the next three years, upgrading track. In the meantime, no oil trains traversed the line. The sale of the line did not include the locomotives (which were returned to lessors or auctioned separately.) CMQ leased a number of diesels to get the operation going. The arrival of 10 former Canadian Pacific SD40F’s led to adoption of the new blue and silver/gray paint scheme in 2016. This paint scheme spread to most of the fleet including a pair to AC4400CW’s leased from CIT. One of the SD40F’s was painted for CM&Q ancestor Bangor & Aroostook.

In December of 2019, Central Maine & Quebec was sold to Canadian Pacific. Operations were officially merged on June 4, 2020. Today's collection of CMQ photos covers 2014 to 2017. We'll have more tomorrow.

Successor/Parent History: The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), formerly also known as CP Rail (reporting mark CP) between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railroad incorporated in 1881. The railroad is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (TSX: CP, NYSE: CP), which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, it owns approximately 23,000 kilometres (14,000 mi) of track all across Canada and into the United States, stretching from Montreal to Vancouver, and as far north as Edmonton. Its rail network also serves major cities in the United States, such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, and New York City.

The railway was originally built between Eastern Canada and British Columbia between 1881 and 1885 (connecting with Ottawa Valley and Georgian Bay area lines built earlier), fulfilling a promise extended to British Columbia when it entered Confederation in 1871. It was Canada's first transcontinental railway, but currently does not reach the Atlantic coast. Primarily a freight railway, the CPR was for decades the only practical means of long-distance passenger transport in most regions of Canada, and was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada. The CP became one of the largest and most powerful companies in Canada, a position it held as late as 1975. Its primary passenger services were eliminated in 1986, after being assumed by Via Rail Canada in 1978. A beaver was chosen as the railway's logo because it is the national symbol of Canada and was seen as representing the hardworking character of the company.

The company acquired two American lines in 2009: the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and the Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad. The trackage of the ICE was at one time part of CP subsidiary Soo Line and predecessor line The Milwaukee Road. The combined DME/ICE system spanned North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa, as well as two short stretches into two other states, which included a line to Kansas City, Missouri, and a line to Chicago, Illinois, and regulatory approval to build a line into the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. It is publicly traded on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CP. Its U.S. headquarters are in Minneapolis.

After close of markets on November 17, 2015, CP announced an offer to purchase all outstanding shares of Norfolk Southern Railway, at a price in excess of the US$26 billion capitalization of the United States-based railway. If completed, this merger of the second and fourth oldest Class I railroads in North America would have formed the largest single railway company on that continent, reaching from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast to the Gulf Coast. The merger effort was abandoned by Canadian Pacific on April 11, 2016, after three offers were rejected by the Norfolk Southern board.

Read more on Wikipedia and on Canadian Pacific official website.

Brief History: Canada is a North American country stretching from the U.S. in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. Major cities include massive Toronto, west coast film centre Vancouver, French-speaking Montréal and Québec City, and capital city Ottawa. Canada's vast swaths of wilderness include lake-filled Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains. It's also home to Niagara Falls, a famous group of massive waterfalls.