Since the era of steam locomotives, trains traveled over tracks that ran from Portland to Montreal, carrying goods and people back and forth between the two cities. The portion of this rail line, called the Berlin Sub Division, was owned by Grand Trunk Railroad and later purchased by the Canadian National Railroad. It ran from India Street in Portland to Berlin, New Hampshire, hence the name.
As trucking became a faster way to get from point A to point B and more manufacturing moved overseas in the 1980s, customers along the Berlin Sub started to dwindle. Only one customer was still operating on the Berlin Sub between Portland and Auburn in 2010. B&M Baked Bean still received one hopper every few weeks, which was a loss for the railroad that eventually got permission from the Federal Railroad Commission to stop deliveries and pickups to B&M, causing the Berlin Sub from Portland to Auburn to no longer be used…