Brunswick’s Maine Street Station, in Brunswick, Maine is a somewhat random location to travel over 18,000km to visit. Brunswick isn’t a major rail hub or even a large city. The station’s single platform is attached to a 2009 constructed quintessentially north-eastern light grey real estate development and looks onto a supermarket parking lot across the tracks. Brunswick is served by only by a few daily Downeaster commuter trains to Boston. So why have I just travelled for more than 26 hours to reach this remote corner of the American rail network? Well, Brunswick is the end of the line - the northernmost point on the east coast that can be reached by passenger train. I have a plan to follow the coast some 3,100km south to Dadeland South, a metro station in Miami which marks the southern extremity of the network. On the way I'll ride five trains through fifteen states and the District of Colombia, visit some of North America’s largest cities, pass historic locations that have shaped the US to this day and meet people from all across the world sharing the ride. The logistics of arriving Brunswick, Maine, involved three flights - a fourteen hour marathon to Los Angeles, a five hour trek across the US to New York and then two hours crammed onto a Regional Jet. Coupled with the 14 hour time change, I decided I'd earned a day or two relaxing before setting off on my adventure south. If you’d asked me prior to this trip what a coastal town in Maine looked like I would have described Camden, where I spent a day recovering. I was lucky enough to arrive right at the start of the autumn foliage when the forested hills rolling down to the harbour still glowed shades of orange and red. Clam chowder is served on the pier, small candy and craft shops line the main street. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Billy Joel’s Downeaster Alexia tied up to one of the town's docks.
