2 min read

Oxford became the focal point of local curiosity when a steam generator on a slow journey from Jay to South Portland using state routes had to pause in town and was parked at Call of the Wild RV Center on Main Street.

Employees at Call of the Wild said they had not been alerted that the 220-foot trailer load would be backed onto the property alongside its sales and service building.

They added that another business owner in the Route 26 neighborhood had refused to allow it on its property for the day.

The Maine Department of Transportation stipulated that the 20-foot-wide load and its accompanying vehicles can only travel public roads between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The spectacle attracted a lot of curious locals who pulled into Call of the Wild’s parking lot during Thursday business hours to see what the hubbub was all about.

According to Facebook chatter, a large number of people parked at Oxford Plains Speedway Thursday evening to watch the trailer, attached to a tractor pulling it and another pushing it, hit the road for the next leg of its move, Route 117.

From there it is being taken over sections of Route 202, Route 22 and Route 1 to a location off Broadway in South Portland. The move, which began from Route 4 in Jay the evening of Sept. 29, was expected to take two days.

But after the trip began its duration was recalculated to last one week.

It is the first of nine “super oversize” equipment loads to be taken from the former Pixelle Specialty Solutions paper mill in Jay to the South Portland side of the Fore River in Casco Bay.