Bellows Falls – Burlington railway line

Bellows Falls VT – Burlington VT
Route length:	192 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Society:	GMRC , VTR
Legend from South Ashburnham 0 Bellows Falls VT ( Amtrak ) Brattleboro – Windsor route Branch from Brattleboro Bellows Falls Canal 3 Riverside VT (formerly Steamtown train station) Interstate 91 7th Midway VT Williams River 8th Rockingham VT Williams River 11½ Brockaway Mills VT Williams River (2 ×) 14½ Bartonsville VT Williams River (3 ×) 21st Chester VT ( Green Mountain Flyer ) 29 Gassetts VT 35½ Cavendish VT Black River 38 Proctorville VT Black River ? Smithville VT 43½ Ludlow VT 52½ Healdville VT 54½ Summit VT 58½ Mount Holly VT 63 East Wallingford VT Otter Creek 68½ Cuttingsville VT 74 East Clarendon VT (formerly Clarendon) 79 North Clarendon VT Cold River from Hoosick Junction 83½ Rutland VT ( Amtrak ) former route to Whitehall Tenney Brook 86 Center Rutland VT to Whitehall Rutland tram Otter Creek 91½ Humphreys VT 93½ Proctor VT (formerly Sutherland Falls) Connection to the Hollister – Albertson line Otter Creek 99 Pittsford VT Otter Creek by Florentine Quarry 100½ Florence VT (formerly Pittsford Quarry, Fowler) Otter Creek 109½ Brandon VT Otter Creek 119 Leicester VT (formerly Whiting, Leicester Junction) to Ticonderoga Otter Creek 126½ Salisbury VT Otter Creek ? Piper Crossing VT planned connection to the quarry Otter Creek 137½ Middlebury VT Connection of marble factory 141 Beldens VT (formerly Beldens Falls) Marble quarry connection (5.8 km, 1870–1883) New Haven River 144 Brooksville VT to Bristol 149½ New Haven VT (formerly New Haven Junction) 157½ Vergennes VT to Vergennes harbor 161 Ferrisburg VT 166 North Ferrisburg VT 168 Thompson's Point VT 173 Charlotte VT ( Champlain Valley Flyer ) 181 Shelburne VT ( Champlain Valley Flyer ) LaPlatte River ? Magic Hat Brewery VT 183½ South Burlington VT (formerly Queen City Park) 191½ Burlington freight yard from Cambridge Junction 192 Burlington VT Union Station to Rouses Point and Windsor

The railway Bellows Falls Burlington is a railway line in Vermont ( United States ).

It is 192 kilometers long and connects the cities of Bellows Falls , Rutland and Burlington . The route is part of the Vermont Rail System . The section from Bellows Falls to Rutland is operated by the Green Mountain Railroad , the section from Rutland to Burlington by the Vermont Railway . Irregular passenger traffic includes the Green Mountain Flyer , which runs between Bellows Falls and Chester, and the Champlain Valley Flyer, which runs between Burlington and Charlotte. Both trains are only used for tourist traffic and only run a few days a year. In addition, the Ethan Allen , an Amtrak express train from Rutland to New York City, runs just under three kilometers between Rutland and Center Rutland.

history

Two concessions for railways from Burlington to the west bank of the Connecticut River were issued on November 1, 1843 by the state of Vermont. The Vermont Central Railroad concession included one route over Northfield and the other over Rutland. For the route via Rutland, Brattleboro was initially chosen as the southern end point and the Champlain and Connecticut River Railroad Company was set up to build and operate this route . A competition between the two railway companies broke out and both wanted to be the first to reach Burlington. The Champlain & Connecticut River soon relocated the southern end point to Bellows Falls, as the route to this point was easier and shorter and therefore cheaper to implement and money was scarce anyway.

In May 1847, construction began from both ends, and in June of that year also on the central section. On November 6, 1847, the railway company was founded in Rutland and Burlington Railroad Company after the original company had to go bankrupt. Since many river bridges had to be built, the start of operations was delayed. In June 1849 the first section from Bellows Falls to Chester went into provisional operation, and the official opening of the entire route was not celebrated until December 18 of that year. Regular operations started on Christmas Eve. Rutland & Burlington narrowly won the race to Burlington, as the Windsor – Burlington railway line on Vermont Central opened on December 31st.

Due to the competitive situation, the transport figures were poor, as the two routes had to share the traffic volume. In addition, Vermont Central built a route north towards Canada and across Lake Champlain to Rouses Point, which made the Rutland route less important. Again the railway company had to go bankrupt and the Rutland Railroad took over the route in 1867.

In November 1927 , a flood destroyed large parts of the route. The train was only able to run again at the end of the month. The end of passenger traffic came abruptly on June 26, 1953, when the Rutland staff went on strike. In order to save the company financially, passenger traffic was not resumed after the end of the strike. Further strikes led to the temporary cessation of all traffic from September 25, 1961. On September 18, 1962, the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the closure of the route. However, the state acquired the entire route and leased it to new rail providers. The section between Bellows Falls and Rutland was operated from April 2, 1965 by the Green Mountain Railroad (GMRC), the remaining section from January 6, 1964 by the Vermont Railway , which later bought the GMRC.

Steamtown, USA was also founded in Bellows Falls in 1964 . About three kilometers north of Bellows Falls, at the former Riverside station, the Railway Museum was built and steam trains now drove from Bellows Falls to the Green Mountains during the summer season. The museum was moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1984 . Tourist train traffic was continued by the GMRC under the name Green Mountain Flyer, which was already running as a passenger train on the route at the time of the Rutland Railroad. The state of Vermont, which still owns the route, briefly operated regular passenger services between Burlington and Rutland in the summer of 1999.

The Vermont Railway founded the Otter Creek Railroad Company in 2003 , which is to build a five-kilometer connecting railway to a marble quarry near Middlebury . The new line is to be built from spring 2013 and opened in autumn 2014. Peter Shumlin , the governor of Vermont , announced in January 2013 that Amtrak trains would run on the Rutland to Burlington railway from 2017, allowing regular passenger traffic to return to the northern section of the railway.

Route description

Burlington Union Station, 2006.

The route begins at Bellows Falls junction station as an extension of the Cheshire Railroad coming from Massachusetts. The route leads uphill along the Williams River into the Green Mountains. The pass is reached at Summit station, from where the route descends into the valley of Otter Creek . Along this river, the route continues through Rutland to Vergennes . Here it leaves the valley and runs parallel to the east coast of Lake Champlain north to Burlington.

Despite crossing the mountain range, the train manages without a tunnel. The only engineering structures are the countless river bridges along the way, as well as some dams that were built to cross standing river bays.

A quarry railway branched off from the former Belden station, which was owned by the quarry company as Belden's Branch Railroad . It was opened on February 10, 1870 and led over 5.8 kilometers in a south-easterly direction. The quarry was located southeast of the Painter Hills settlement in northeast Middlebury city. The line was closed again in 1883 after the quarry company went bankrupt. The route left Beldens in a northbound direction, but immediately afterwards turned off in a steep curve to the southwest and ran parallel to today's US Highway 7 and Happy Valley Road to the quarry. Part of the railway line south of Painter Road is still preserved today.

Accidents

On March 14, 1920, a freight train in the direction of Bellows Falls ran over a stop signal and just before Bellows Falls collided head-on with the Green Mountain Flyer traveling in the direction of Burlington. Both trains drove relatively slowly, which meant that only the driver of the passenger train died.

An incident that made headlines across the country took place on October 20, 1973. A perpetrator who was never caught broke into the locomotive shed in Rutland and started locomotive 602. He jumped off and left the moving locomotive to its fate. She drove driverless north on the line, crossing over 100 level crossings, passing through the city of Burlington and onto the route to White River Junction of the Central Vermont Railway, and was only after a hundred miles in Milton from a police officer jumped on the slow-moving locomotive stopped. Nobody got hurt.

Sources and further information

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
2. ↑ Article in the Addison Independent , accessed May 13, 2011.
3. ↑ Information from the Vermont Rail Action Network ( memento of the original from April 9, 2011 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 12, 2011. 
4. ↑ Trains Magazine, January 30, 2013
5. ^ Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont. 1993, p. 270.
6. ^ Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont. 1993, p. 293f.

literature

• Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume I / II. New England Press Inc., Shelburne, VT 1993. ISBN 1-881535-01-0 .
• Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
• Jim Shaughnessy: The Rutland Road. (2nd edition) Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 1997, ISBN 0-8156-0469-6 .

Web links

• Site of the current operating company (Vermont Railway System)