Brattleboro – South Londonderry railway line

Brattleboro VT – South Londonderry VT
Society:	West River Railroad
Route length:	58 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from New London from Dole Junction 0 Brattleboro VT ( Amtrak ) to Windsor West River West River 11 West Dummerston VT 16 Williamsville VT 21st Newfane VT West River (Salmon Hole Bridge) 27 Townshend VT 35 West Townshend VT 37 Wardsboro VT 43 Jamaica VT West River 51 Winhall VT 58 South Londonderry VT

The Brattleboro – South Londonderry railway was a railway line in Vermont ( United States ). It was 58 kilometers long and connected the cities of Brattleboro and South Londonderry . The line has been completely shut down and the tracks have been dismantled.

history

prehistory

The first plans for a railroad in the West River valley go back to the 1840s when a connection between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain was planned. On November 1, 1843, five businessmen were given the concession to build a railroad from Burlington to the west bank of the Connecticut River at Brattleboro and they set up the Champlain and Connecticut River Railroad Company . In November 1847 the company was renamed the Rutland and Burlington Railroad Company . However, the plans were changed at the same time and the end point on the Connecticut River was no longer Brattleboro, but Bellows Falls . This resulted in the Bellows Falls – Burlington railway line , which opened in 1850 .

On November 13, 1851 businessmen from the valley of the West River received a concession for a railroad from Brattleboro through the valley to either Danby, Wallingford, Mt. Holly or Ludlow, where each would have been connected to existing railways. They founded the Wantastiquet Railroad Company , named after the Indian name for the West River. However, the deadlines for completing the route passed without any construction work having taken place.

The West River Railroad was finally established on November 6, 1867 and initially intended to build a railway line from Brattleboro on the Connecticut River to Jamaica . The society was set up in 1870, but funds for the construction could not be raised at first. In order to save costs, it was now decided to implement the route as a narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of three feet (914 mm). In 1876 the plan was expanded and the plan was to build as far as Whitehall on Lake Champlain , for which the concession was issued in November. The route should run from Brattleboro through the valley of the West River and continue from its headwaters through the Green Mountains . The company was therefore founded in Brattleboro and Whitehall Railroad and finally began on November 11, 1878 with the construction of the line, after the cities of Brattleboro and Londonderry had promised funds. During the construction work ran out of money and the company was leased to the New London Northern Railroad (NLN) and the Central Vermont Railroad (CV) in February 1880 . The NLN should finance the construction as far as South Londonderry, the CV should run the operation on the railway. The CV undertook to run two trains a day in each direction and to maintain the route.

Narrow gauge railway

The 36-mile (58 km) section of the valley to South Londonderry was opened on November 3, 1880. The further construction in the direction of Whitehall was not carried out for economic reasons, as a standard-gauge line from the Connecticut River to Whitehall via Rutland was already in operation about 20 kilometers further north. The railway was initially very popular and was nicknamed "the narrow gauge" or later shortened to "the gauge", as it was the only narrow-gauge railway in the area. The substructure and track quality were evidently very poor, so that derailments and undermining occurred constantly. For this reason the railway soon had a second nickname in the vernacular: "36 miles of trouble" (36 miles of trouble). The railway's fleet consisted of the two locomotives “Brattleboro” and “Londonderry”, two combined passenger and luggage wagons, two passenger cars, 15 closed and about as many open freight cars. The locomotive "JL Martin", named after a local supporter of the railway, was acquired in June 1881. On December 1, 1891, the Central Vermont Railway took over the full lease, including the NLN's share.

Change of gauge and end of the track

As early as 1901, the Lyons Granite Company demanded that the railway be changed to standard gauge, as the narrow-gauge railway could no longer cope with the quantities of granite being extracted. In the same year, the CV converted the section from Brattleboro to the quarry in West Dummerston on a three-rail track so that the granite trains could run on standard gauge tracks. In 1903, Brattleboro & Whitehall applied for the lease agreement with CV to be terminated because the company had failed to meet its obligation to maintain the railway and the line and vehicles were decaying more and more. In 1905 a court ruled that the railway company should go bankrupt and be sold, and that the CV should convert the line to standard gauge and renovate it. A new West River Railroad was therefore founded on April 20 that year as a subsidiary of CV and took over the run-down route in May. On July 30, 1905, the railway was switched to standard gauge within just one day and in heavy continuous rain . The standard gauge line officially went into operation on July 31. The embankment was renovated in advance. The quality of the embankment, however, left a lot to be desired, so a month later a piece of the embankment broke away under a train, the train crashed and a machinist was killed.

Operations came to an abrupt end when in November 1927 a flood in the West River valley largely destroyed the route. Despite the inefficiency of the route, the government approved a loan for the reconstruction. The company was released from the CV in 1930 and continued to operate the route independently. The first train left on February 2, 1931. Only one mixed train ran in each direction on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, while a passenger train ran on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Sundays, operations were completely idle. As early as April 27, 1931, the passenger train was also replaced by mixed trains. From September 27, buses operated as a replacement rail service. In the spring of 1933, a businessman from Greenfield, Massachusetts leased the train. He tried to get the passenger traffic going again from September 3rd with gas-powered railcars. This worked for a few months, until the snow came and the railcar stopped working. In 1934 operations were resumed, but the railcar burned out on June 1 of that year in West Dummerston. Freight traffic, too, became increasingly sparse and ceased in the winter of 1934. From the spring of 1935, only consumer goods were driven, which essentially included occasional granite trains from the quarry in West Dummerston.

In 1936, however, came the final end and the closure of the line north of West Dummerston. The tracks were dismantled and part of the route is now used as a cycling and hiking trail. The remaining section was sold to Vermont White Granite Quarries Inc., which operated the quarry, and closed in the fall of 1938 after another flood.

Route description

The route branches off north of Brattleboro station from the Brattleboro – Windsor railway line, which is still in operation today, and initially crosses the West River between the road bridge on US Highway 5 and the bridge on the main line to Windsor. The foundations of the railway bridge are still preserved. It continues along the West River, initially on its eastern bank, in a northerly direction. Today the Spring Tree Road uses the route. The river is crossed again shortly before the first train station in West Dummerston. In West Dummerston there was a connection to a quarry, the largest freight customer of the railway. There were two other river bridges along the route, namely between Newfane and Townshend and in Jamaica. No other engineering structures were required, apart from the short crossings of some streams that flow into the river. Part of the route was used for the expansion of State Road 30, the remaining parts are overgrown or serve as a cycle, hiking or roadway.

Accidents

Due to the poor construction quality, there were often derailments on the line. The first fatal accident occurred in 1884 on the bridge over the West River near West Dummerston. A mixed train derailed and the passenger car and some freight cars fell into the river, killing one passenger and injuring seven. In the same year a train collided with a trolley near Brattleboro and the trolley driver died. In the summer of 1886 the wooden bridge over the West River near Brattleboro collapsed under a train. The train driver and one passenger were killed and five people were seriously injured. The bridge was then replaced by a steel structure. The last fatal accident occurred in 1905 when a train derailed after the embankment, which had recently been renovated, slipped. A machinist of the train died.

Sources and further information

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.

literature

• Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume II. New England Press Inc., Shelburne, VT 1993. ISBN 978-1881535027 .
• Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
• Victor L. Morse: 36 miles of trouble; the story of the West River RR The Book Sellar, Brattleboro, VT 1959.

Web links

• the West River RR at abandonedrailroads.com (English)