JACKMAN, Maine — Driving down Main Street in the early afternoon last week, Steve Begin and his fellow woods crew narrowly missed their chance at a quick ride home. In the center of town, their path was blocked by a wall of freight more than a mile long, moving sluggishly.
“It can be a huge pain in the ass,” Begin said over the blaring crossing alarm. He guessed he might wait for more than half an hour.
It was a shorter and faster train than usual. It passed in fewer than 10 minutes. But at times trains can stretch for miles, and many move slower than 5 miles per hour.
Every day, eastbound and westbound trains meet in Jackman, forcing locals to wait for both trains, each typically more than a mile long, to cross. With bad timing, it can take up to 30 minutes to get from one side of town to the other. The long wait times are due to aging rail infrastructure and changes in the international shipping industry. And it’s more than an annoyance — it means daily waits for residents and the threat of interruptions for emergency vehicles.
“We should have been home a while ago,” Begin’s coworker, Chris Allen, said. “It’s always at the time you want to get home or got somewhere to be.”
Jackman sits in Maine’s western mountains on the edge of Somerset County. Its population of around 750 people is belied by its busy main thoroughfare lined with logging trucks and dirt-crusted pickups.
Main Street serves as U.S. Route 201, connecting Quebec with southern Maine and the rest of the Northeast. It is also the terminus of Maine State Route 6, the most direct path between the densely populated parts of Quebec and New Brunswick. More than 3,000 cars and trucks pass through the railroad crossing every day.
The spot is similarly important to the rail industry. The rail line bisecting the town is owned and operated by Canadian Pacific Kansas City, which moves freight across Canada and the midwestern United States. The single track crosses Main Street by the long-mothballed Jackman station on its way between Montreal and the port of Saint John, New Brunswick.
Trains passing through town sometimes exceed 200 railcars, stretching for more than two miles in length. That’s longer than 90% of North American freight trains operated by companies like CPKC. Fire Chief Bill Jarvis said some carry almost three miles of freight.
“People who work on this side try to go home to lunch, sometimes they can’t,” Jarvis said. He added that locals budget extra time into their schedules in case they encounter the train, which arrives at a slightly different time each day, usually between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Jackman’s only two gas stations are both on the north side of the tracks, so those stuck with limited fuel just south of the crossing have to wait for the trains to pass and traffic to clear up. The nearest gas station south of the crossing is about 25 miles away in West Forks.
The line was built in the late 1800s, and despite updates over the years, it winds through much of the forest on just one track. That means each day, the eastbound and westbound trains must meet in Jackman to pass each other.
As one train approaches, it pulls onto a parallel track, or “siding,” and waits for the other train to arrive. Bounded by the station on the west and a bridge over a narrow stream on the east, Jackman’s main siding is shorter than many of the trains that pass through. That means crews must sometimes split trains apart to maneuver them past each other in pieces, slowing the process further and sometimes forcing rail cars back through the road crossing.
The international border exacerbates delays. About 200 feet east of the crossing sits a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station and a hulking metal apparatus. The device scans passing trains for contraband from Canada, typically without incident. But for the scanner to work, the eastbound trains coming from Quebec can pass at only five miles per hour. Customs also sometimes requires the train to stop in the road for additional scanning.
Some locals, including Jarvis and Allen, say moving the scanner would save the town a lot of headache. But pushing it farther east may require construction deep in the woods, and moving it west would place the scanner farther from the border.
Wait times may get worse next year due to U.S. trade policies and new investments in Canadian shipping.
With the Trump administration slapping tariffs on many Canadian goods this year, Canada’s governments and shipping companies like CPKC are betting on transatlantic trade. The company recently announced support for a series of expansions of the fast-growing Port of Saint John in New Brunswick. A railroad official said the company expects to push more containers through Jackman as a result of that expansion next year. Since much of the freight passing through Jackman is destined to return to Canada, no tariffs are charged.
Railroads cross Maine’s border with Canada at seven points, but Jackman’s border crossing is the only one to see a clear increase in shipping year-over-year. According to the most recent data from the Department of Transportation, rail shipping by weight and by value at that crossing increased by nearly 70% between September 2025 and September 2024.
It’s more than a headache for Jackman residents and those who pass through. With the town split in half for part of the day and ambulances on one side of the track, trains could delay responses during an emergency. Customs operators are meant to listen for emergency calls on the radio, and can speed up or delay trains accordingly, but sometimes town officials have to place a phone call to CPKC directly when there’s an emergency. Jarvis and Town Manager Richard Petrie say that process doesn’t take long and that so far, it’s only been a nuisance.
“I’m not aware of a critical life-threatening delay issue, but it can be frustrating at times,” Petrie said. “You always hold your breath a little bit.”
Speeding up the train’s passage across Main Street would require major investment, Jarvis said.
“Maybe if they extend the siding and then they put the scanner building down there, there’ll be less issues going on here,” he said. Jarvis added that he’s heard “talk” about both ideas, but nothing official.
For its part, CPKC has touted improvements already made along the line. It has invested $90 million to upgrade the rails in the area since it acquired the route in 2020, but said border security caused slowdowns in Jackman.
“These rules keep our communities safe and protect cross-border trade,” said CPKC spokesperson Terry Cunha.
Customs and Border Patrol did not respond to questions about the possibility of moving the scanner.
For now, many in town seemed to accept that the long trains were just part of life up north. Stuck in traffic as the eastbound train crossed last week, retirees Cindy and Alain Lacasse surrendered to the wait.
“It’s not a bad thing,” he said. “It’s just one of those things.”
“This is life,” she said. “It’s not that much fun.”
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.