I rode a two-day excursion from Morrisville to Whitefield in (IIRC) September of 1986. We stayed overnight at a wonderful old hotel called the White Mountain House, that I can't now find on the Web. Very nice trip.
I talked with the general manager before departing Morrisville, and he told me the line west of there was out of service account lack of traffic. Apparently when the state bought the railroad (early 1980s) they upgraded the whole thing on the promise of traffic from a talc processing plant and a feed mill on the west end, as well as some traffic on the east. But neither of those establishments actually shipped by rail, so the railroad put the west end out of service.
In fact, the GM told me their only large shipper was the paper mill in Gilman, VT, which they reached over the former MEC Mountain Division, which they had leased from Guilford between St. J and Whitefield.
I'm very glad I rode this trackage when I could.
There has been talk recently about the re-opening of the paper mill in Gilman, which would apparently require reactivation of the rail line between Whitefield and Gilman. That's shorter than Gilman to St. J, and there is no other traffic on the line.
Randy Resor, aka "NellieBly" passed away on November 1, 2013. We honor his memory and his devotion to railroading at railroad.net.