36 miles of trouble, the story of the west river railroad

It ran for 56 years. . .

The last train of the West River Railroad went down the line from Londonderry to Brattleboro in 1936. Today the railroad’s most visible remains are the big stone bridge piers where the trestles crossed the West River. Those towers, and a few of the old depots, are about all that’s left of the West River Valley’s 50-year experiment in railroading-an experiment that

has, for the communities involved, taken on some of the character of myth. Putting the Valley on the map was the railroad’s purpose, as it was conceived in the 1870s. It was built between 1878 and 1880, as a 36-mile narrow-gauge line that ran along the West River between Brattleboro and Londonderry. The line was, officially, the Brattleboro and Whitehall Railroad; its promoters hoped it would one day connect from Londonderry west to the New York Central in Whitehall, New York. (Convenient if you wanted to travel by train from, say, Williamsville to, say, San Francisco.)

The railroad carried freight and passengers up and down its route, running as many as six trains a day. The passenger train made the Brattleboro-Londonderry run in a little over two hours. That, at least, was what the published schedule said. In fact, the West River Railroad, from its outset, was famous for delay, derailment, and disaster.

The West River Railroad went out of business in 1936. It never did connect up to Whitehall; you never could go by train from Williamsville to San Francisco. But the West River Railroad furnished its valley with many memories, good ones, and the other kind.

-Castle Freeman, Jr.