The Lewiston and Auburn Railroad Company is a railroad holding company located in

Androscoggin County, Maine Androscoggin County ( French: ''Comté d'Androscoggin'') is a county in the U.S. state of Maine. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 111,139. Its county seat is Auburn and its largest city is Lewiston. Androscoggin County compr ...

. It is jointly owned by the cities of Lewiston and Auburn. It was founded in 1872 to link these two cities with the nearby

Grand Trunk Railroad The Grand Trunk Railway (; french: Grand Tronc) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The rail ...

main line running from Portland to

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...

(and on to

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

) in order to provide a competing transportation service to the

Maine Central Railroad The Maine Central Railroad Company was a U. S. Class I railroad in central and southern Maine. It was chartered in 1856 and began operations in 1862. By 1884, Maine Central was the longest railroad in New England. Maine Central had expanded to ...

which had previously held a monopoly in the area. During the late 20th century the rail line owned by the Lewiston & Auburn Railroad Co. was cut back from Lewiston and currently only runs from Lewiston Junction to an industrial park in Auburn. The L&A rail line has been operated under contract by the

St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad The St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad , known as St-Laurent et Atlantique Quebec in Canada, is a short-line railway operating between Portland, Maine, on the Atlantic Ocean, and Montreal, Quebec, on the St. Lawrence River. It crosses the C ...

since that company purchased the former Canadian National Railway (ex-Grand Trunk Railway) line from Portland to Montreal in 1989.What is the Lewiston and Auburn Railroad Co.?

Lewiston Sun Journal The ''Sun Journal'' is a newspaper published in Lewiston, Maine, United States, which covers central and western Maine. In addition to its main office in Lewiston, the paper maintains satellite news and sales bureaus in the Maine towns of Farming ...

, August 10, 2010

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