The Surface Transportation Board is denying the application of the trustee of the bankruptcy estate of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Company (BAR), who had sought a Board finding that the public convenience and necessity (PC&N) require or permit the termination of the rights of the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) and its subsidiary Waterloo Railway Company (Waterloo) to operate over a segment of track currently owned by the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, Ltd. (MMA), BAR's successor.

The CN/Waterloo operating rights over MMA were created in a transaction entered into by CN and BAR on March 15, 2001. In the March 2001 Transaction, CN gave BAR's financially ailing parent company $5 million in return for:

(a) CN's receipt of trackage rights to serve the plant of Fraser Papers, Inc. (Fraser), at Madawaska, ME, over the line at issue, a 23-mile segment then owned by BAR and a subsidiary, the Van Buren Bridge Company (VBBC) (the Madawaska line);

(b) Waterloo's receipt of a locally recorded easement to conduct operations over the same line; and

(c) a haulage agreement (part of the so-called