Lakes Region Service

Does anyone know when the last regular passenger trains operated to the Lakes Region in NH, where they terminated and originated and what equipment was used. Thanks

Doesn't fully answer your question, but my Nov., 1956 Official Guide lists 4 trains per day between Boston and Plymouth (124.6 miles away), making stops at Laconia and Weirs Beach among others. Equipment wasn't a Budd Highliner, which was used on the Intervale run.

The B&M ran RDC service between Boston and Laconia until 1965. In the early '60s these trains were extended to Weirs Beach and Meredith in the summer months, but I don't know if that carried through 1965.

I did see a 1966 summer timetable, so I imagine it was not much longer after that.

The years quoted by the previous posters sound right.

This doesn't answer the question, but is related to trains to the Lakes Region and includes a snippet of a 1914 passenger schedule:
http://www.belknapmill.org/activity/200609/students.htm

I grew up in Laconia, and a train to Old Orchard Beach would have been great in the summer!

John Johnstone wrote:I did see a 1966 summer timetable, so I imagine it was not much longer after that.

This sounds about right. I was about 5 at the time, and I remember my cousin (grandmother's cousin actually) taking the train down from Alton Bays during this time. In 1965/66 the service was an RDC or perhaps 2-cars max. It's too bad that the service wasn't still active now.

John

That can't be right Citron. All common-carrier rail service to and from Alton Bay ended in the late 1920's. The B&M abandoned the Lake Shore route north & west of Farmington before the Great Depression. He may have ridden RDCs on the Northern Division from Laconia, but definitely not from Alton.

From the Hobo RR website http://www.hoborr.com/history.html

"In the early part of the twentieth century, the line hosted many passenger trains as well as local freights serving the on line towns and continuing to northern New Hampshire, Vermont and Canada, however the favored route for through traffic was the former Northern RR between Concord and White River Jct, Vt. The trackage between Plymouth and North Haverhill, N.H. was abandoned on October l, 1954. Passenger service was cut back from Plymouth to Laconia (Meredith in the summer) and eventually ceased altogether on January 5, 1965."

I thought that the Plymouth-Blackmount segment was abandoned on October 30, 1954, not the 1st. Not that it really matters though...