Springfield – East Northfield railway line
| Springfield MA-East Northfield MA | |
|---|---|
 Springfield Union Station on Amtrak train to New Haven.
| |
| Route length: | 79.97 km |
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) |
| Dual track : | Springfield – Brightwood, Deerfield – Greenfield, formerly: entire route |
| Society: | Pan Am Southern |
| Shared use: | Amtrak |
The railway Springfield-East Northfield is a railway line in Massachusetts ( United States ). It is 80 kilometers long and connects the cities of Springfield , Holyoke , Northampton , Deerfield and Northfield , among others . The standard gauge line belongs to the Pan Am Southern , which only operates goods traffic on it. Since December 29, 2014, Amtrak has been operating the Vermonter long-distance train and the Valley Flyer regional trains , which previously had been idle for 48 years.
history
On March 1, 1842, the Northampton and Springfield Railroad Corporation received the concession to build a railway line between their eponymous cities. The company was formally set up on January 10, 1844, and construction began in the same year. The first section from Springfield to Cabotville, now a borough of Chicopee , went into operation on February 28, 1845. Meanwhile, on January 25, 1845, a Greenfield and Northampton Railroad Company received the concession for the northern extension of the planned route to Greenfield. The two companies merged on July 8, 1845 to form the Connecticut River Railroad Company , which now took over management and continued the construction work. Northampton was reached on December 13, 1845, South Deerfield on August 17, 1846 and Greenfield finally on November 23, 1846. The company now extended the route further north to connect to the main Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad under construction in East Northfield Manufacture. The extension opened on New Years Day, 1849.
A few years later, the entire line was double-tracked, as it had become an important through route from New England to Canada. On January 1, 1893, the Boston and Maine Railroad leased the route and ran from then on. They bought the Connecticut River Railroad on January 1, 1919. In the fall of 1966, the express train service on the route was set, the Washingtonian still ran from Montreal to Washington DC and the Montreal in the opposite direction. At the end of 1966, passenger traffic initially ceased entirely. After the Amtrak took over long-distance passenger traffic, which was in the autumn of 1972 Montreal reintroduced on the route from Washington to Montreal.
In 1983 Guilford Transportation , which has been operating under the name Pan Am Railways since 2006 , took over Boston & Maine and thus the management of the route. Amtrak had to hire the Montreal operator in 1987 after Guilford Transportation refused to carry out necessary track repairs in Vermont. With the restart of the train two years later, however, it no longer ran via Northampton and Greenfield, but further east via Amherst, so that passenger traffic on the Springfield – East Northfield railway was temporarily terminated. The right of use that Amtrak had for the route was then revoked. The second track was dismantled on a large part of the line by the end of the 20th century. In 2009, Pan Am Railways and the Norfolk Southern Railway jointly founded the Pan Am Southern subsidiary , which took over the route and has operated freight traffic on it ever since.
A renewed right to use Amtrak came about in 2014, because, at the instigation of the state of Massachusetts, the cities of Holyoke and Northampton were to get a train connection again. As of December 29, 2014, Amtrak changed the route of the Vermonter express train , which runs once a day and now runs the entire length of the Springfield – East Northfield railway. Intermediate stops were initially only made in Northampton and Greenfield, and since August 27, 2015 also in Holyoke.
Since August 30, 2019, two regional train pairs have been running daily between Springfield and Greenfield, one of which on weekends and both on weekdays through Hartford to New Haven . This train service is called Valley Flyer and is in trial operation until autumn 2021.
Route description
The line begins in Springfield Union Station and branches off the Worcester – Albany railway west of the station . It runs along its entire length parallel to the Connecticut River and the multiple crossing Interstate 91 in a northerly direction. The double-track section of the line ends in the urban area of Springfield near the former Brightwood stop. In the Cabotville district of the city of Chicopee, a branch line to Chicopee Falls branched off at Chicopee Junction station , but it is closed. Immediately after the train station, the line crosses the Chicopee River, which flows into Connecticut here. The route continues north through the Willimansett neighborhood, crossing the Connecticut River and reaching Holyoke. Several, for the most part, disused port and industrial connections join the route here. The Westfield – Holyoke railway has its own train station west of the city center, and the connecting track from there to the East Northfield line, which joins north of the city, has been closed.
Further along the western bank of the river, the route now leads through sparsely populated area that belongs to the city of Holyoke. At Mount Tom, a short stretch to Easthampton branched off . The railway line then crosses a tributary of the Connecticut River and shortly afterwards reaches Northampton. From here a disused railway line of the former New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad runs parallel to the line to East Northfield. The Northampton Union Station on Main Street is demolished. The route is now about two kilometers from the Connecticut River and continues north through Hatfield and Deerfield. At the Deerfield Junction intersection , the route branches off to East Deerfield . Shortly afterwards, the railway line crosses the Deerfield River . At Greenfield train station there are track connections to the lines Fitchburg – Greenfield and Greenfield – Troy which flow here . The line now continues northwards, but turns northeast in Bernardston and reaches the Connecticut River again in Northfield, where it joins the New London – Brattleboro railway at the former East Northfield station.
passenger traffic
In 1869, the Connecticut River Railroad from Springfield offered three pairs of trains to Brattleboro, which ran the entire length of the route, and three other pairs of trains to Northampton. The Brattleboro trains were added through coaches to Vermont and Canada, one of the trains ran nominally as an express train, but still stopped at all stations.
In 1893, after being taken over by Boston & Maine, there were four working days and an express train to Vermont and Canada on Sundays. Numerous suburban trains ran the route from Springfield. On weekdays, Boston & Maine offered two trains to East Northfield, two to Greenfield, twelve to Northampton and seven to Holyoke. On Sundays there was one train to East Northfield and four trains to Northampton. Between Springfield and Chicopee Junction, the route also used twelve weekday trains to Chicopee Falls, so on weekdays a total of 39 trains left Springfield Union Station heading north.
After the First World War, the offer was significantly restricted. In 1926 five trains were still running on weekdays in the direction of Vermont and Canada, respectively, and two trains ran on Sundays. In addition, two on weekdays and one train to Greenfield on Sundays, as well as eight Monday to Friday and nine on Saturdays to Northampton.
In 1964, two daily express trains ran the route. The Ambassador from New York to Montreal and back drove the route in the afternoon, the Montrealer in the direction of Montreal and the Washingtonian in the direction of Washington DC drove the route at night. In addition, one pair of trains ran between Springfield and Greenfield on Fridays and two on Sundays. In 1966, passenger traffic initially ended, but it was resumed with the Montrealer and Washingtonian in 1972 by the Amtrak. From 1974 the train was called Montrealer in both directions . It operated over the route until 1987.
The Vermonter has been running the entire route once a day since December 29, 2014 , and two more pairs of trains between Springfield and Greenfield since 2019.
Sources and further reading
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Article in Trains Magazine from December 12, 2014
- ↑ Article in Trains Magazine from August 28, 2015
- ^ Valley Flyer website
- ↑ Amtrak and MassDOT Announce Start of New Valley Flyer Train Service in Western and Northern Massachusetts (Amtrak News)
- ↑ see timetables of the route from the years mentioned.
- literature
- Ronald D. Karr: The Rail Lines of Southern New England. A Handbook of Railroad History. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 1995. ISBN 0-942147-02-2
- Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. (2nd edition) SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010. ISBN 1-874745-12-9
- Web links