Two Unity railroad coaches up for sale

UNITY – A Web site that markets railway cars lists two Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad coaches for sale.

The railroad cars are listed as “new” items on the Rail Merchants International Web site, and the marketing company owner said Wednesday he has an agreement with Belfast & Moosehead.

“I’ve been hired to sell some equipment,” David Thebodo of Rail Merchants, said during a phone interview from Arizona.

Attempts to reach Robert Lamontagne, president of the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad Preservation Society, at his South China home Wednesday night were unsuccessful. The nonprofit organization acquired the railroad in 2006.

Unconfirmed reports about the entire railway being for sale could not be substantiated Wednesday.

The historic Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad is a 33-mile line that runs excursions from Unity to Burnham. The line was originally built in 1867, has changed a tremendous amount over the last 140 years, but is “one of the oldest continuously-operating railroads in the United States,” the nonprofit’s Web site states.

The railroad’s preservation society was created in 2006 to preserve continued operations of the historic line, with a focus on restoration and preservation of the “classic rail cars, equipment, the rail corridor and history of railroading in Waldo County and Maine.”

In addition to scenic passenger excursions, the railroad also operates Santa Express trains annually between November and December.

When the railway was sold in 2003 to Railstar Corp. of New York, which two years later defaulted on the purchase agreement, Larry Sterrs, chairman of the Unity Foundation, said his goal was to keep former owner Bert G. Clifford’s dream alive. Clifford, a Unity businessman and philanthropist, acquired the railroad in the mid-1990s, and died in August 2001.

“Mr. Clifford loved the railroad and also knew how important it was to the communities it serves,” Sterrs said in an Atlantic Northeast Rails & Ports e-bulletin dated June 30, 2003. “Since he passed, we have made every effort to find a buyer interested in operating the railroad instead of just selling the equipment and real estate.

“Mr. Clifford loved the railroad and spent a lot of time and a fair amount of his money to keep it going,” Sterrs said.

The preservation society’s other goal is to educate people about Maine’s railroad history, and a museum was established at the Unity Depot, with mostly Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad items, as a starting point. The depot is located at 212 Depot St. in Unity.