Guilford changed to Pan Am Railways after the management purchased the Pan Am name and trademark. They went about running their own airline for a very short period of time and were shut down by the FAA due to poor maintenance and safety issues. Apparently, they were running the airline like they did their railroad. Locomotives caught fire, ran out of fuel, train cars got lost, service got worse and worse, and so on. It seems the management running the railroad, who once worked for the PC were doing the same job to Guilford and later PAR that they did in the past to the former Pennsy, NYC, and NH.
When American Filter Corp. go ahold on the Maine Central, in the 1980s this was the company that was run by Fink and partners. They took the profitable and well-run Maine Central and did to the MEC what they later did the B&M and D&H. They closed branch lines in favor of through running, degraded those branches they were obligated to run to disgusting conditions and went as far as discouraging online and branch line industry as they focused on moving freight and poorly at that. They raised the rates as they let the infrastructure rot and when they were brought to court for letting the Maine Central Lower Road go to crap, they embargoed the line and then fought tooth and nail when industries up there wanted service. When maintenance was so far gone on the lines and with business gone, they'd petition for abandonment and then lift the tracks.
During their tenure, they took the once pristine B&M mainline to Mechanicville and turned that into a near wasteland. The speed went from 40 mph freight to less than 10 mph in some places. When Norfolk Southern wanted to extend its operations north, they teamed up with Pan Am and infused about $28 million or more to bring the tracks up to at least 25 mph. This new joint operation, Pan Am Southern was operated with PAR and NS trains and PAR crews with maintenance done by PAR. This allowed NS to run-through directly from their D&H line through to Ayer MA with trackage rights elsewhere. From what I read, NS grew tired of putting more and more money into the system because PAR didn't keep up with the maintenance. The last time I saw the tracks near the Hoosac Tunnel, they were again in deplorable condition. The Conn-River line fared no better as they let that go down so far that Amtrak quit operating on that line and moved their operation to the former Central Vermont via a backup move at Palmer MA.
Early on, they killed the MEC Mountain Division and Berlin branch, and in the process would not sell or allow any other operator on those lines. When NH and VT wanted to purchase the Mountain Division, they wouldn't sell a small portion of it to prevent operators from taking over. Eventually, they did sell but by then the lines rotted away with the MEC line in limbo and the Berlin branch now a trail.
In their early days, they busted the unions and even went as far as to change their charter and operating company to Springfield Terminal, making the B&M and MEC, and initially the D&H into subsidiaries of the ST. The ST was a 0.5-mile stub of a former interurban located in Springfield, VT., a whole-owned subsidiary, operated by the B&M. The ST had looser work rules and paid less than the B&M and other Class 1s typical of a short line (These were once Class 1 railroads!), therefore they cut the crews and did other nasty things. Due to poor maintenance in Lawrence, freight cars fell off the tracks a la just like the Penn Central. A brakeman was killed due to unsafe work conditions there, and that sparked the strike in 1987.
Pan Am Railways was nothing more than a fresh coat of paint on an otherwise poorly run system and was supposed to show a better side of the otherwise poorly run company. Dave Fink Jr. was in charge with a slightly better attitude than his father who was head of the operation before. Fink and Fink Jr. did not put anything into the system and had the attitude that being able to run anything over 25 mph was a bonus. Even up to the day PAR was sold, locomotives ran out of fuel enroute, caught fire, or died due to mechanical issues.
Today, PAS is still a joint CSX operation that is operated by the Genessee and Wyoming's Berkshire and Eastern using PAR locomotives and some crew members that moved over to the short line on their behalf with NS running the other part under agreement. There are plans by CSX, from what I read on Railroad.net to sell this operation off eventually and hopefully GWI buys it up and rehabilitates the line.
In the end, this wasn't a case of a bigger railroad buying up a Class II operation. PAR went up for sale since the management wanted out after they sucked what they could out of the railroads by selling off real estate. The feeling among not only long-time employees and railfans alike is the railroads were nothing more than a big tax write off and a land grab. While CSX may be a big fish running the trains now, the company is actually investing in the system and actually running trains again. Their first task was to rebuild the Worcester Mainline between Worcester and Ayer. This line, a main freight line, was down to 10 mph with much unsafe track including a stretch across a reservoir.
I agree, Mass. Bay Rail Enthusiasts lost a lot of local lines to travel on. I'm not sure if the P&W offers any excursions any longer and the old Winnipesaukee line was sadly embargoed and is now a state snowmobile trail in the winter with speeders (or once were) running on the rails in the summer. I took a trip on the P&W with the NMRA back in 1985. It was quite an experience.
