viewfinder wrote:Are you sure this is correct? Or am I remembering the fire in the M&B enginehouse in Montpelier? The burned locos were GE 70 tonners...or were there 2 fires?
WACR was (and is) the division created by the VRS when they started operating the line, no?
To answer the first half, pretty sure, and yes. Let me elaborate....
While the book says June 28 1998, I don't remember the exact date/month off the top of my head, but I do remember hearing about it in the late 90s. The book states that the two Alco S-1 locomotives were destroyed, along with other vehicles/equipment. Now on the topic of whether there were 2 fires, there was.... again Mr Lindsell states that the structure that burned in 1998 was built to replace a similar building which had burned in Feb 1907.
Originally, the Montpelier-Barre line, stretched all the way to Wells River. It became a Pinsly line in 1956, and was cut back to Graniteville. In 1980, the railroad, then the Montpelier & Barre, filed for abandonment, but the state took over and it then became the Washington County Railroad, a banding together of of some of the big customers on the line. The WACR remained until 1999 when the NECR leased the line for a few months, before Vermont Rail System took over. They adopted the WACR name and also use it on the Conn River Line north of St J. (Ref. Rail Lines of Northern New England.... Ref. Green Mtn Rails by RWJ) (just so I make sure this info isn't my own).
-Jay
