New England Southern Railroad
The New England Southern Railroad is a Class III shortline railroad that operates out of Canterbury, New Hampshire, and serves industries in central New Hampshire, in the United States. History. In 1975, the Boston & Maine Railroad Corporation filed to abandon its "White Mountain Branch" stretching between Concord and Lincoln. Recognizing the need of the on-line customers and the potential of the line for a sewer right-of-way, the State of New Hampshire purchased the branch and sought a shortline railroad to carry out operations. The first to assume this responsibility was the Wolfeboro Railroad , which operated the line as their "Central Division" in 1976, but soon thereafter ended operations. The Goodwin Railroad, an extension of Weaver Bros. Construction, was created in 1977 to operate the trackage, and did so until it too ended operations in 1980. Following the demise of the Goodwin contract, the North Stratford Railroad stepped in as an interim operator until the state could find a dependable and permanent long-term operator (now nearly forty years to date!). Peter Dearness, a businessman, educator, and shortline railroader, who had a hand in founding the Massachusetts Central Railroad in 1975, approached the State  of New Hampshire with a bid to operate the trackage with his newly formed New England Southern Railroad. The railroad was incorporated first in Nevada on December 22, 1981. (Dearness had been out of state working with Kenneth Coombs on the Cadillac & Lake City Rwy. (CLK) harvest season's grain operations, between the UP and BN in CO and KS.) --and then in Massachusetts by Ch. 32, Acts of 1981 on April 12, 1982. Dearness had originally imagined this new railroad as a shortline system with operations only in Western Massachusetts, before learning of the NH White Mountain Branch situation , for which he submitted a bid. Dearness' railroad won the contract, and in 1982 the operating contract was awarded to the New England Southern, which began freight operations on September 3, 1982, using State of New Hampshire-owned ALCO S1 1008. The railroad also leased a GE 44-ton switcher, #2, also state-owned. The first freight run consisted of a tanker for Home Gas in Northfield, a boxcar for Blue Seal Feeds (H.K. Webster) in Lakeport, and another boxcar of casting sand for Arwood Manufacturing in Tilton. The railroad made regular trips to Rochester Shoe Tree in Ashland, Quin -T Corp. in E. Tilton, Blue Seal Feeds in Plymouth, Gerrity Lumber in Meredith, and a number of other freight customers centered around Lake Winnipesaukee including the former Laconia Car Co. foundry, Allen-Rogers Mill, NESSIE, a combination of the railroad's early reporting marks, NES, and the nickname of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad , the "Chessie System") provided freight service solely on the White Mountain Branch until 1984, when it entered talks with and Penacook (an exception being the Merrimack Station Coal Plant, which would continue to be served bythe late B&M President Alan Dustin to assume switching rights in  Concord. An agreement was worked out not only for switching rights in the capital but freight rights on the B&M's Northern Mainline between Manchester, NH|Manchester B&M and later Guilford Rail Service|Guilford coal trains). The New England Southern made its inaugural freight run to Manchester on July 14, 1985, using leased Maine Central Railroad Company|Maine Central EMD GP7 581, on loan from Guilford (which had purchased the Maine Central in 1981 and the B&M in 1983). |thumb|left|New England Southern Railroad #503 heads north through Weirs Beach, New Hampshire|Weirs Beach in 1987 with freight bound for Rochester Shoe Tree in Ashland . Alan Thomas photo, Rick Kfoury collection. In 1985 the railroad purchased its first two non-leased locomotives, an EMD GP18 , #503, and an EMD GP7, #302, from the bankrupt Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad . The locomotives were painted in an attractive green and yellow scheme and went to work immediately. 302 was originally slated to work on the B&M trackage near Worcester, Massachusetts|Worcester with access to Gardner, Massachusetts|Gardner , but that deal fell through when the Providence & Worcester Railroad objected. Access to trackage between Manchester and Boscawen had bolstered the railroad's yearly carloads from 250 to nearly 2,750, much  of which was due to Blue Seal Feeds at Bow Junction, and International Salt in Bow, New Hampshire|Bow . In the late 1980s the railroad was also operating a Reload on former B&M branch in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts for Georgia Pacific, and provided rail-plant maintenance and on-site switching at the SD Warren Paper Mill in Skowhegan, Maine . NEGS also performed various maintenance-of-way contracts around New England, in MA, ME, NH and VT. Less fortunate, was a proposed significant aggregate move from Columbia Falls-Centerville, Maine area, west to deep water near Bucksport, over the former Maine Central 's Calais Branch of Maine DOT, which fell through. A 1988 bid on the ex-Grand Trunk line in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, went instead to the St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad . In the summer of 1987, AT&T began laying fiber-optic cable along the Northern Railroad (New Hampshire)|Northern Railroad mainline from Concord to Lebanon, New Hampshire|Lebanon , and the New England Southern was contracted to re-lay ballast along the right-of-way. Dearness had intended to run all the way to Lebanon, but at the time the Northern was not being used for regular freight service beyond Penacook, and  years of poor track maintenance and neglect under B&M ownership meant that the New England Southern ballast trains could only venture a bit further than the Potter Place Railroad Station|Potter Place station in Andover, New Hampshire|Andover . Still, these historic runs proved to be the final time any trains passed through the communities of Boscawen, New Hampshire|Boscawen , Franklin, New Hampshire|Franklin , and Andover; the track was removed by owner Guilford shortly afterwards. Today, the track ends just north of the U.S. Route 4 overpass in Boscawen, near the Merrimack River and the Hannah Duston State Historic Site. The right of way north  of that location has been transformed into the Northern Rail Trail (New Hampshire)|Northern Rail Trail . Throughout the 1990s, the New England Southern continued to profit from multi-day-a-week service on the Manchester to Concord segment. Freight service on the White Mountain Branch had dried up except for one customer, 3M in eastern Tilton, and occasional equipment moves to the Hobo Railroad|Hobo and Winnipesaukee Scenic Railroads . The last freight customer on the old Northern above Concord, Rivco in Penacook, received its last shipments in 1992. In 1989 the railroad had started a passenger operation, the Granite State Railroad , which ran until 1993. The railroad also began to run trains of privately-owned cabooses between Northfield and Concord with more occasional cooperating runs with the Hobo Railroad|Plymouth & Lincoln Railroad to Lincoln, New Hampshire|Lincoln . |thumb|right|New England Southern 566 and 503 at the tower in Concord in 2004, the railroad's headquarters until their eviction by Pan Am in 2010. Alan Thomas photo, Rick Kfoury collection. In 2002, the railroad began serving a new customer, Ciment Quebec, in Bow. This profitable growth business caught the eye of Guilford, which had been watching New England Southern build up business in the area . Guilford, which had inherited ownership of the tracks from the B&M in 1983, rebranded itself Pan Am Railways in 2006 and announced its intention to discontinue the New England Southern's lease, so that they might assume operations themselves. Pan Am filed with the Surface Transportation Board for adverse discontinuance of the lease in 2008, and despite a lengthy legal battle and the protests of every freight customer, the filing was approved on April 29, 2010, and ultimately, Pan Am assumed control of the Manchester to Boscawen trackage. Switching services then went from at least three, four times a week , to once, as result. The New England Southern made its final run to Manchester on October 16, 2010, after 25 years of reliable service. Following the run, the railroad set up a new headquarters on state-owned trackage in Canterbury. In an ironic twist of fate, the shortline had been more or less relegated to its original form, operating solely on the White Mountain Branch. Since 2010 the railroad has operated on a as-needed basis, serving the 3M plant and delivering the odd equipment move to the Hobo Railroad. Occasional special moves, including 2014 and 2018 contracts with  the New Hampshire Army National Guard to ship military equipment to training exercises, have supplemented the railroad's income. In February 2019, an unauthorized press release was published stating the railroad was going to be acquired by United Rail, a corporate conglomerate based out of Las Vegas . On July 31, 2019, NEGS ownership announced that the deal with United Rail had not been finalized, as was supposed to happen by June 30, and that operations were returning to pre-sale conditions. Then on May 10, 2020, it was reported that the Vermont Rail System (VRS) was to acquire New England  Southern Railroad. In June of 2020, the sale was finalized and VRS became immediate operator of NEGS. Its sole engine (2555) was patched with GMTX logos and renumbered to 1505. Prior to this sale, since 2018, NEGS had been working on a significant unit train move of aggregates from the Lochmere area to Andover, Massachusetts. Hopefully, with the pending CSX June acquisition of PanAm Rwys., 2023 will see this traffic moving out of trucks and on to rail. The new NEGS owners, VRS, have their eye on the move, and can make this a reality. Operations. |thumb|right|The New England Southern  yard at Canterbury, NH . August 7, 2016. Rick Kfoury photo. Currently, the New England Southern operates under Vermont Rail Systems and regularly only on the state-owned White Mountain Branch in central New Hampshire. The railroad's sole interchange point is with Pan Am Railways at Concord, from which loaded cars come inbound and empties depart. Passenger train service. New England Southern operated several tourist train passenger service over its White Mountain Branch. These included: External links. Category:Concord, New Hampshire Category:New Hampshire railroads Category:Companies operating former Boston and Maine Corporation lines Category:Companies based in Merrimack County , New Hampshire