Excerpt from article, Bottling Up New England by Burton J. Hendrick (1912)
Only a single railroad power in New England now promised to interfere with Mellen’s plans [Charles S. Mellon of the New Haven Railroad]. This was an “alien” in the real sense of the word - the Grand Trunk Railroad. Its president was a particularly capable and aggressive American, Charles M. Hays. A man of large frame and large brain, born in Illinois and educated on several Western railroads, Mr. Hays had precisely that energy, that keenness, that intimate knowledge of American railroad men and methods, that made him particularly useful to his English employers in this crisis. In President Hays, therefore, Mellon found a worthy adversary. At the present time the Grand Trunk is extending its main line to the Pacific coast in Canada; when it is finished it will compete vigorously with the Canadian Pacific for the enormous grain business of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia. As nearly all this grain is exported to Europe, access to a great Atlantic port is an absolute necessity. The inevitable eastern port of Canada is not Montreal, for this is frozen up five or six months in the year, but Boston. By linking up the Vermont Central, which it owns, with the Boston and Maine, the Grand Trunk had for many years secured access to this port. As long as the Grand Trunk Railroad kept on friendlv terms with the Boston and Maine this arrangement was as satisfactory as would have been an independent line of its own from Montreal to Boston.
When Mellen got the Boston and Maine, however, the situation changed in a twinkling. The Vermont Central was practically the only strip of railroad in New England that Mellen did not control. The Grand Trunk was especially obnoxious because it was a “differential” line; that is, owing to the slowness of its service, it was permitted to charge a rate lower than other roads.