What's Up with MM&A RR

Recently the MM&ARR has been in the news.

First there were news releases that the railroad was shutting down(IIRC) due to lack of traffic and maintenance of way issues.

Then in October the State of Maine stepped in and bought (took over the assests?) the MM&ARR.

Story linked here: http://www.mmarail.com/mma_news.php

FTL:

State Reaches Deal to Purchase Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway
Dated: Tuesday, October 19, 2010
State Reaches Deal to Purchase Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway

And then this story about Shipper Problems on one of the lines major shippers[ from the magazine

RT&S [Railway Track and Structures] dated Nov.18,2010:.

Judge urges dueling railroads to compromise

Status is that State of Maine came up with funds to keep line open into Aroostok County with MM&A still the operator.

That’s not really right, at least after the very near term. The State has purchased the lines MM&A wanted to ‘abandon’*, and is actively seeking a rail company (NOT MM&A) to operate it - apparently Eastern Maine Railway has already offers it’s bid to run the trackage

It was covered in near real-time on this railroad.net thread, and the subsequent dispute between CN & MM&A about service to the Twin River plant is covered in this thread (toward the end - the first part concerns the conclusion of the MM&A Maine trackage purchase.

*Some people in various Railroad.net posts in the above thread, by analyzing MM&A actions during the prolonged negoiations, felt that MM&A basically wanted to have the state buy and upgrade the lines, but MM&A would retain the interchanges points and so MM&A would gain a good chunk of the revenue from the frieght on those lines while shedding the cost involved in maintaining them - apparently that plan failed because the Maine DOT got some good lawyers familiar on railroad contracts to point out the pitfalls of the initial deal.