Luxury rail tours coming to Maine Greenville planned stop of North Woods trips

GREENVILLE – A luxury passenger train service using refurbished Victorian-era railroad cars will make its inaugural trip to Maine’s interior June 9, helping to boost the state’s sagging economy.

John “Randy” Parten of Houston, Texas, president of Acadia Railway Trains LP, said Tuesday all is in place to begin rail tours to the northeast United States and eastern Canada this summer.

“What we’re finding is exactly what we thought we would find – there just is a huge interest this year in people taking a domestic vacation,” Parten said during a telephone interview.

Parten said the train has been marketed heavily in New York, where upscale vacationers are looking for a different method of travel. His firm also has published and mailed 250,000 colorful brochures about the train trips throughout the country and has plans in place for television advertisements. He said the company’s call volume already has gone from 15 calls to 2,400 a week.

“Looks like we’re going to have a full train on the first run,” he said. The inaugural trip will be on June 7 from New York to Montreal. The June 9 run will take passengers from Montreal to Greenville and on to Saint John, New Brunswick. Greenville will not be a point of origin for the trips, but a stop for those already on board.

Parten, who has been in the rail business for 16 years and owns the nation’s largest fleet of private rail cars, will operate excursions 14 weeks of the year, from June through September, over the former Canadian Pacific track between Montreal and Saint John. The pace will be leisurely, with the train traveling between 25 and 35 mph, according to Parten.

Most of the excursions planned in Canada and Maine are being packaged with tours involving motor coaches, cruise ships such as Carnival and Regal Cruises, Amtrak and VIA Rail, according to Parten. He called the trains essentially cruise ships on rails, with five-course meals and a service staff of about 22 people.

The retail cost of the tours will start at about $300 a day per person, which includes all services, accommodations and first-class meals. It does not include airfare. A nine-day North Woods tour starting in New York with stops in Boston, Portland, Bar Harbor, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Saint John and then back through Maine to Montreal before ending in New York will be available, as will a three-day trip from Portland to Montreal.

The Acadian Railway Train LP, which will consist of 10 posh streamlined railroad cars from the 1940s and 1950s built by the Budd Co. of Philadelphia and retrofitted for safety, will give up to 226 visitors at a time a quaint taste of parts of Quebec, New Brunswick and Maine, including the North Maine Woods, which Parten calls an “undiscovered jewel.”

The same vintage trains are used during the winter for rail tours in Mexico’s Copper Valley region.

As part of the trip from Montreal to Saint John, passengers from two different excursions would spend two days and nights in the Moosehead Lake region participating in such events as moose safaris, white-water rafting, a ride on the steamboat Katahdin and other leisure activities, according to Parten. Greenville will be the centerpiece of the company’s northern tour, the only stop between Montreal and Saint John.

All the contracts have been signed to use the St. Lawrence and Atlantic railroad lines, as well as the Eastern Maine Railway and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, according to Parten. Although there were derailments in Greenville as recently as two years ago, Parten said repairs to the Bangor and Aroostook tracks have made the route safe for passage.

Renovation work at the 64-room Squaw Mountain Resort in Big Moose Township where many of the passengers will stay during the two trips per week is nearing completion. He said arrangements have been made with several other upscale overnight facilities in the region to provide the extra lodging needed.

What Parten said he really needed is someone to build the “nicest” resort hotel on Moosehead Lake where all his passengers could stay under one roof.

Work also is near completion on the renovation of the former Cabbage Patch Restaurant in Moosehead Junction, which was purchased by Parten. Passengers on the train will eat their breakfasts and dinners at the restaurant, which will be known as the Acadian Railway’s Iron Horse Restaurant.