New but fleeting business came to Pan Am in May 2012 in the form of unit trains of North Dakota crude oil bound for the Irving refinery at Saint John, NB. BNSF interchanged the oil trains with CSX at Chicago who in turn interchanged with Pan Am at Rotterdam Jct who took the payload all the way to Mattawamkeag ME where Irving's Eastern Maine / New Brunswick Southern Railways took over for the final lap to the Irving refinery. Irving also had Bakken shale crude oil rail deliveries via CP/Montreal, Maine, & Atlantic, and Canadian National.

Here is a westbound train of empty new crude oil tank cars (plus a few general freight cars) climbing out of the Nashua River valley at Patterson Rd, Shirley MA on 2/22/13.

Irving elected to stop receiving CBR via Maine shortly after MM&A's catastrophic Lac Megantic derailment of July 2013 (Pan Am had also experienced a minor low speed derailment of loaded crude oil on the decrepit Mattawamkeag line on March 7, 2013) leaving CN as its only rail delivery. But even that didn't last long as Irving elected to receive crude oil via ship/barge based on economics, I believe.

BTW, that BNSF SD70MAC #8922 is also sidelined to storage these days. And the owner of this track removed the B&M wayside signals installing both cab signals and ACSES PTC meaning only select B&E or NS locomotives can lead freights here.

Photographed by John Barlow, February 22, 2013.
Added to the photo archive by John Barlow, May 31, 2024.
Railroad: Pan Am Railways.

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