Bennington and Rutland Railway

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The Bennington and Rutland Railway was a railway company in Vermont ( United States ). It existed as an independent railway company including its direct predecessor from 1845 to 1901. The company was based in Bennington .

history

The company was founded on November 5, 1845, initially as the Western Railroad of Vermont and intended to connect the town of Bennington, located in the southwest of the state, to the railroad network. The route should connect in Rutland to the planned and opened in 1849 route of the Champlain and Connecticut River Railroad , the later Rutland Railroad.

Construction only began in October 1850. It was soon decided not to build the line directly to Bennington, but towards Troy in New York . This route affected the city of Bennington only in the north, so that a short branch line to the city of Bennington was to be added later. In New York, therefore, the Troy and Bennington Railrad was founded, which should build the short section from the Troy and Boston Railroad , which is currently under construction, to the state border with Vermont. The Western Railroad opened the route to the border with New York in sections until July 1852 and the branch from North Bennington to Bennington (9 km) finally in 1854. The continuation from the border to Troy & Boston went into operation in August 1852 and was through from the start operated the Troy & Boston, which had leased the Troy and Bennington Railroad.

The rail operations ran in deficit, because due to the structure of the rail network at the time, the route had no through traffic, but only local traffic. On January 1, 1857, the Western filed for bankruptcy and finally the Troy & Boston leased the Western Railroad on January 16 of the same year and ran the business until May 8, 1857. The lease ran for ten years until January 16, 1867 and was not extended thereafter. Since 1865 the railway company operated as the Bennington and Rutland Railway .

The Bennington & Rutland merged on January 1, 1870 with the Lebanon Springs Railroad to the Harlem Extension Railroad . The Lebanon Springs had built the southern continuation of the route beyond Bennington to Chatham (New York) . The New York, Boston and Montréal Railroad leased the company from December 18, 1872, but passed the lease on December 1, 1873 to the Central Vermont Railroad . This lease was terminated in 1877 and the merger was terminated on September 10th of that year. Bennington & Rutland, which was newly founded in August 1877, took over its own routes again.

On May 1, 1900, the Rutland Railroad finally leased the railway and finally bought it on July 30, 1901. The lines still exist today and have been operated by the Vermont Railway since 1964 .

attachment

literature

  • George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads 2nd Ed. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, WI 2000, ISBN 0-89024-356-5
  • Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume II. New England Press Inc., 1993. ISBN 1-881535-02-9
  • Jim Shaughnessy: The Rutland Railroad. Howell-North Books, 1964.

Web links

(all in English)