White River Railroad (Vermont)

Bethel VT – Rochester VT, as of 2010
Route length:	31½ km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Tracks:	1
Legend from Windsor 0 Bethel VT to Burlington White River, 3rd branch 6½ Lillesville VT 8th Gaysville VT White River 13 Cobb Bridge VT (also Riverside) White River Tweed River Bayonne Lumber Co. ( Forest Railway , 1910-1929) 17½ Stockbridge VT White River 19½ Tupper VT 22½ Hubbard's VT 24 Boutwells VT 25½ Emerson's VT Eastern Talc Co. (mine train) 29 Lower Rochester VT (formerly Talcville) White River (west branch) White River 31½ Rochester VT

The White River Railroad (WRR) is a former railway company in Vermont ( United States ). It existed as an independent company from 1896 to 1934.

history

Prehistory and construction

The upper reaches of the White River had not been developed by the Central Vermont Railway, which opened in 1848 , as it leaves the river valley in Bethel and leads over a pass towards Montpelier . In order to connect the places above Bethel to the railway network, it was initially intended to build an electrically powered railway. On June 30, 1896, the White River Valley Electric Railroad received a concession to build and operate an overland tram in the valley of the upper White River. The company was formally incorporated on December 27, 1898. Construction of the line began in June 1899. Soon, however, the plan was switched to conventional steam operation and in 1900 the company was re-established as the White River Valley Railroad . The donors had made it a condition that the line should be in operation on December 30, 1900. The line was therefore completed in a hurry and on the required day the approximately 31-kilometer route from Bethel to Rochester was opened as a steam train. After financial difficulties arose, the railway company was sold to the newly founded White River Railroad on November 21, 1902 .

Problems due to poor construction

The line was built according to standards for trams with appropriately light track material, too light for steam trains. In addition, during the construction of the line in the winter of 1900, the tracks were partly laid on snow, which naturally melted and thus worsened the track position. From March 6, 1902, operations were suspended for weeks after a flood washed away a bridge. A year later, the Stony Brook Bridge near Gaysville was also destroyed by flooding. The route continued to operate, but passengers and goods had to cross the river by boat. The new bridge was only finished in October. In 1904, traffic was interrupted for three months after parts of the railway line were eroded. During a route inspection in April 1904, the supervisory authority stopped passenger traffic and limited the line speed for freight trains to eight miles per hour (about 13 km / h), and on individual sections of the route even to two miles per hour (3 km / h). After some repairs, passenger trains were allowed to run again from June 13th. However, the Vermont supervisory authority ordered the line to be temporarily closed in September 1906 due to the poor track situation and ailing bridges. The line could only be reopened on January 1, 1907, after the tracks had been replaced and the bridges repaired. Nevertheless, on February 28, 1910, a segment of the bridge at Gaysville collapsed after drift ice on the river had shifted the bridge. The locomotive of a passenger train slowly moving over the bridge fell two meters, injuring the stoker.

Further development

In August 1911, the railway company acquired a gasoline-powered two-axle passenger railcar with ten seats, which complemented the regular steam trains.

After a violent flood in November 1927 flooded large parts of southern Vermont, rail traffic was initially suspended. Large parts of the route were washed away. Freight traffic was only resumed on part of the route in September 1928, and operations over the entire route and passenger traffic began on January 1, 1929. After the Great Depression, however, the transport numbers fell sharply and on April 30, 1933, operations finally ceased . The timetable from September 1933 shows the information "Service temporarily suspended." (Operation temporarily suspended.) Operation was not resumed and the line was officially shut down and dismantled in 1934. The railway company was dissolved in the same year.

business

Passenger traffic on the route was always sparse. The timetable of November 24, 1912 provided for two trains in each direction, which only ran on working days and took 65 to 70 minutes for the route. From 1929 onwards, only mixed trains were used.

The main transport goods were agricultural products, wood, talc, granite and marble as well as consumer goods and mail for the valley dwellers. Timber loading took place in Stockbridge and Rochester. In Stockbridge, a forest railway of the Bayonne Lumber Co. branched off from the railway line , which led several kilometers west into a side valley to behind Pittsfield and was operated from 1910 to 1929. Talc was extracted from a mine east of Rochester. The mining company had built its own sidings from Lower Rochester to their factory. From there, an 800-foot (approx. 250 meters) long, standard-gauge funicular railway ran up the valley wall, from where a mine train with a gauge of three feet (914 mm) ran about six kilometers over four switchbacks to the mines. The railway opened in late autumn 1913 and shut down at the end of 1927.

Route description

The line begins in Bethel, where the WRR had its own station right next to the station on the Windsor – Burlington line . The original station was abandoned in 1912 and the line was moved closer to the main line, where a new platform was built. Since the tracks of the WRR were lower than those of the main line, passengers could only get to their connecting train via a pedestrian tunnel and stairs. Luggage and general cargo was reloaded using a hand-operated freight elevator.

The route leaves the station in a northerly direction, but leads in a narrow 180 ° curve into the river valley. The route crosses the third branch of the White River. Today, on the former railway line to Gaysville, there is Peavine Boulevard , named after the railway that was popularly called Peavine . The route follows its eponymous river along its entire length, which it crosses several times. Blackmer Boulevard is now on the railway line from Cobb Bridge to Stockbridge . From Stockbridge to shortly before Lower Rochester, the route now carries state road 100. The sparsely populated river valley was developed through numerous regular demand stops. However, it was possible to get on and off at any point along the route. Occupied stations were only in Gaysville and Stockbridge .

literature

• Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume II. New England Press Inc., 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 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
2. ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued February 1934. White River Railroad. Page 108.
3. ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued November 1913. White River Railroad. Page 172.