A man who helped block Maine railroad tracks to protest the transport of crude oil through the state after a deadly 2013 train crash across the Canadian border was convicted of criminal trespass for the incident, according to court documents. Douglas Bowen, 68, and Jessie Dowling, 33, refused to budge at a protest in downtown Auburn in August 2013 after police asked them to stop blocking the tracks, state prosecutors said. Bowen was found guilty and fined $100 after a state court trial, but a separate jury was unable to agree on Dowling’s verdict. A mistrial was declared in her case, and state prosecutors said on Wednesday they had not yet decided whether to pursue the charges further. The pair were part of a demonstration seeking to prevent another accident like the one that took place in July 2013 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a train carrying crude oil smashed into the small town and killed 47 people. "We realized the conditions are identical in many small Maine cities along rail lines, and we decided that something needed to be done to stop it," Bowen said in a phone interview on Wednesday. Police video introduced at the trial showed a small group of protesters wearing T-shirts that read: "Oil trains derail life," sitting on railroad tracks owned by the Massachusetts-based rail company Pan Am Railways. Maine had been among the largest oil-exporting states in the country before the Lac-Megantic crash, transshipping millions of barrels of crude by rail from North America's interior fields mainly to the Irving oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. Since the blast, volume has plummeted and just 15,545 barrels were shipped through Maine in the first half of 2014. Maine regulators said in July they had no plans to halt oil-by-rail shipments through the state despite protests by environmental groups, but Pan Am, the only rail company to ship crude in 2014, said demand had dried up. Protesters said they were happy but not ready to declare victory. "The problem is definitely not solved," said Read Brugger, a spokesman for 350 Maine, a group protesting the shipments. "There's no guarantee that oil trains won't come back through Maine. We don’t feel safe yet." (Reuters)