BURLINGTON, Vt. — Trains could return to a long-dormant section of the former Maine Central Mountain Subdivision in New Hampshire and Vermont, according to the president of Vermont Rail System. The company operates 56-mile short line New Hampshire Central in the northwest corner of the Granite State.
“There are transload opportunities on the route,” says Selden Houghton, head of the Vermont company that operates seven railroads in its home state, as well as New York and New Hampshire. Until the middle of the 20th century, Maine Central and Boston & Maine crisscrossed the region, serving a large number of paper mills and other forestry product businesses. Those facilities are long gone, as are most of the railroad branches.
Daily freight trains over the rugged 131-mile Mountain Subdivision between South Portland, Me., and St. Johnsbury, Vt., were discontinued in 1983, just two years after Maine Central was purchased by the new Guilford Transportation Industries. Most of the route in Maine has remained out of service for four decades, but the line through New Hampshire was purchased by the state and since 1994 has hosted tourist trains of the very successful Conway Scenic Railroad. The state-owned segment west of Conway Scenic’s territory has been controlled by short lines, but has seen little freight business since the end of MEC’s through trains,
That may change with VRS’s purchase of short line New Hampshire Central in 2024. The company has operating rights on two separate sections of former Maine Central and Boston & Maine lines, including 13 miles of state-owned Mountain Sub from Hazens, N.H., to Gilman, Vt. The 20 miles of trackage between Gilman and St. Johnsbury, Vt., were operated by short line Twin State Railroad until the last major customer, a paper mill in Gilman, stopped using rail early in the 21st Century.
The initial plan is to reopen the Mountain Sub for 8 miles from Whitefield, N.H., to Gilman, Houghton says. The former paper mill site is now an industrial park, and renewed rail access could attract business for New Hampshire Central. One customer has already located on-line at Hazens, east of Whitefield (known to rail historians as the site of the country’s last “ball signal,” which protected the onetime B&M/MEC diamond crossing). Tracks also will be improved from there to the railroad’s only outside interchange connection, with Genesee & Wyoming’s St. Lawrence & Atlantic at Groveton, N.H.
Restoring the 20 miles of inactive MEC track from Gilman to St. Johnsbury is a long-term project, Houghton tells Trains News Wire. That trackage, owned by CSX as part of its 2022 purchase of Pan Am Railways, would connect New Hampshire Central with the Connecticut River line of Vermont Rail’s Washington County Railroad at St. Johnsbury. This would provide additional outlets to customers located on current New Hampshire Central trackage, Houghton says.
VRS has a longstanding relationship with CSX and is working with the larger company to acquire the Vermont segment of the Mountain Sub, Houghton says. Acquiring and restoring the St. Johnsbury interchange will be a costly endeavor, he adds, and Vermont Rail System will need to explore various sources of funding.
Other sections of New Hampshire Central include the former Boston & Maine line south of Whitefield, once an important through route for B&M paper traffic, which is in place only as far as the town of Littleton. No customers currently are there, but there has been interest in the Whitefield area, according to Houghton.
New Hampshire Central’s other line connects to the St. L & A at North Stratford, and currently serves one propane facility.
I second the motion. Also, neglecting to mention track gauge in articles about foreign RRs is not helpful.
Saw an interesting video of an overnight passenger train between Poland and Ukraine, with the cars, with the passengers in them, being jacked up in the middle of the night to switch trucks from our standard gauge to old Soviet gauge (5 feet) or vice-versa.
A map would be helpful for those of us not from around the area. As well many News Wires could do with maps for same reason.