Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad

Hoosac Tunnel MA – Wilmington VT, status 2010
Route length:	40 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Tracks:	1
Legend from Troy to Greenfield 0 Hoosac Tunnel MA ( wedge station ) Section flooded through the lower Bear Swamp reservoir Logan's MA Heywood's MA 11½ Monroe Bridge MA Massachusetts / Vermont 14½ Sherman VT Deerfield River 17½ Readsboro VT (new and old applicants until 1913) (Route relocation 1922) Deerfield River Section flooded through the Harriman reservoir 24 Whitingham VT 27½ Hagers VT (hairpin) 30½ Jacksonville VT 35½ Mountain Mills VT Deerfield River (Deerfield River Railroad) 35½ Mountain Mills VT (hairpin) Deerfield River Railroad ( Forest Railway ) Deerfield River (western branch) Deerfield River (northern branch) (End of route relocation) 40 Wilmington VT

The Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad (HTW, HT&W) is a former railroad company in Massachusetts and Vermont ( United States ). It existed as an independent company from 1886 to 1971. It operated the Hoosac Tunnel - Wilmington line .

history

First the Deerfield Valley Railroad was founded in Vermont in 1884 . The following year they built a three-foot (914 mm) gauge railroad from the Hoosac Tunnel in northern Massachusetts about 10 miles through the Deerfield River valley to Readsboro, Vermont, which opened on July 4, 1885. On December 28, 1886, the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad was founded and acquired the stretch of the route in Massachusetts. She leased the rest of the section from the Deerfield Valley Railroad. The route was extended by the Deerfield River Railroad on November 4, 1891 by another 23 kilometers to Wilmington . In Readsboro a first arose railhead . The three companies only merged on January 1, 1892. From 1908 to 1914 about 50 kilometers of forest railways were built from Mountain Mills station just outside Wilmington into the valley of the western Deerfield River, which also had a 914 millimeter gauge.

In 1911 the Deerfield River was dammed and the railway transported personnel and construction materials to the new Somerset dam. The inadequacy of the narrow-gauge operation was recognized and it was therefore announced in July 1912 that the railway would be converted to standard gauge. This renovation was completed on August 2, 1913. At the same time, a new through station was built in Readsboro on a tight curve. This eliminated the time-consuming reloading of the transported goods at the Hoosac Tunnel station and the relocation of the train in Readsboro. The forest railways, which remained narrow-gauge and where the locomotives and freight cars of the narrow-gauge railway could continue to be used, were not affected. In 1924, the New England Power Company , which had acquired the railway company in 1920, built another dam, the Harriman Dam . This construction forced the railway company to raise its route in the northern section in 1922, as the valley was flooded by the reservoir that was being created. Two switchbacks had to be made between Whitingham and Mountain Mills in order to overcome the difference in altitude, which again increased the travel time.

In November 1927, a flood caused by the New England Hurricane 1927 destroyed parts of the railway line, including the Yoke Bridge over the Deerfield River just before Wilmington. Passenger traffic on the route was replaced by a rail replacement service with buses and never resumed. The line was poorly repaired and only reopened in 1929. On March 18, 1936, the bridge was destroyed again by a flood. The railway company was sold to a private investor, the HE Salzberg Company . The towns and local businesses tried to rebuild the entire route, but the Interstate Commerce Commission approved on December 3, 1937 the closure of the Readsboro – Wilmington section. The remainder of the line from Hoosac Tunnel to Readsboro was sold to the Pinsly Railroad Company in 1938 and reopened in the same year.

In 1949 the railway company stopped steam operations and started using diesel locomotives on the route. When another dam was to be built for the Bear Swamp Reservoir in 1971 , the railway line should have been relocated again. The railway company decided to forego it for cost reasons and closed the line on October 13, 1971. It was flooded by the reservoir above the Hoosac Tunnel station.

vehicles

In the 1909/10 business year, the narrow-gauge railway had six steam locomotives, five passenger cars, two baggage cars and 115 freight cars.

passenger traffic

The timetable of June 23, 1913, the last official timetable before the gauge change, provided for two daily mixed pairs of trains that took between 73 and 90 minutes for the Hoosac Tunnel – Wilmington route. In the Hoosac Tunnel there was a partial connection to Boston and Albany.

According to the timetable of September 25, 1933, there was no longer any passenger traffic on the route at that time, instead there were two rail replacement buses running on weekdays that took about 100 minutes to travel from the Hoosac Tunnel to Wilmington, i.e. significantly longer than the train took .

The timetable from August 1964 only contains the section to Readsboro for freight traffic, including a connection to the Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

Sources and further reading

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
2. ↑ Mike D'Amico: History Of The HT&W. In: Gino's Railpage. Retrieved July 8, 2020 . 
3. ^ Poor's Manual of Railroads, 44th Annual Number. Poor's Railroad Manual Co., 1911, 42.
4. ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued November 1913. Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad. Page 665.
5. ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued February 1934. Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad. Page 1109.
6. ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued November 1964. Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad. Page 57.

literature

• Bernard R. Carman: Hoot Toot and Whistle. The Story of the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad. Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, VT 1963.
• 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 978-1881535027

Web links

• Gino DiCarlo: Hoosac Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad. Gino's Railpage (English, private page about the train with lots of pictures etc.).