Pan Am Southern quietly wrapped up operations on Thursday. Shown is one of the final trains, EDBF, making a late-afternoon departure from the former Boston & Maine yard at East Deerfield, Mass., for to Bellows Falls, Vt. Effective today (Sept. 1, 2023), Pan Am Southern lines in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York — jointly owned by CSX and Norfolk Southern — will be operated by new Genesee & Wyoming subsidiary Berkshire & Eastern. Guilford Rail System, owner and operator of B&M and Maine Central since the early 1980s, changed its official name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Three years later, Pan Am entered into an agreement with Norfolk Southern, under which the two railroads shared ownership of the western end of the Pan Am system – designated Pan Am Southern. CSX’s purchase of Pan Am in 2022 left PAR east of Ayer, Mass., as a subsidiary, with operations under the CSX name. The sales agreement also resulted in the ownership of Pan Am Southern being split between CSX and NS, with operations to be handled by the new Berkshire & Eastern. After more than a year of negotiations with labor, the transfer to B&E has occurred. CSX has sold and leased PAR locomotives to the new B&E – mostly GE B40-8s and C40-8s, plus some EMD GP40s and SD40-2s. — Scott A. Hartley
A sad photograph of historical importance.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün