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Electric Railroads of Vermont

The Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway

The Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway was built on the nearly abandoned right-of-way of the Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad. The Electric Railway was built to transport passengers to a summer resort on Glastenbury Mountain.

An Industrial & Logging Steam Railroad to Nowhere.

The Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad, Mining and Manufacturing Company, was chartered in 1855, as a lumber, mining, and transportation company. The owners were R. C. Root, John Harper and Samuel H. Cornell of New York. Cornell's portion of the company was purchased by Trevor W. Park and William Butler Duncan. The lumber company, eventually built a steam railroad, in 1872 by mortgaging timber lands and other properties to secure bonds.

Many engineers claimed that the grade would be too steep and the railroad could not be run. A Mr. Jarvis whose experience included the Erie Railroad and Croton Aqueduct, said that it could be done with good equipment. The first 8 miles above Bennington had a maximum grade of about 4.35% (230 feet in a mile). Some branches had a maximum grade of about 4.73% (250 feet in a mile). The line was constructed using 36 pound rail to a gauge of 4 foot 8 inches, standard gauge is 4 foot 8 and a half inches.

The railroad followed Walloomsac brook valley as most of the company's timber tracts were in this valley between 1,200 and 1,500 feet above sea level. From April 1872 to November 1872 Morrison & Bering's Swedish work crews worked when the weather permitted, about 15 days per month on average. In October the first trains began to run. In 1873 The line bought a 4-4-0 from the Housatonic Railroad. It was retired in 1875, when a lighter Rogers 4-4-0 was purchased, from Shepaug, Litchfield & Northern R.R. This Rogers steam engine was sold to the Bennington & Rutland R.R. where it retained its original number, 3, after the Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad shut down, in March of 1889.

The Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad, Mining and Manufacturing Company's main sawmill could produce 1,000 board feet of lumber per hour. They operated up to eighteen 1,600 bushel charcoal kilns. In 1888 most of company's accessible timber had been cut. In 1888 a blizzard shut down the line for about 3 months. March 1889, operations on the B.&G.R.R. stopped. In 1890 the company's mortgage was foreclosed.

An Electric Railway Rises from the Ashes of a Lumber and Charcoal Railroad.

Bennington's Herbert Martin decided to make the mostly unused Bennington & Glastenbury right of way into a trolley line. The idea was to have a summer resort just under the summit of 3,764 foot Glastenbury Mountain. Chartered in November of 1894, the Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway, replaced the original 36 pound Swedish iron rails with 65 pound US steal rail. They replaced and repaired the trestles. A steam power plant was built with two 90 horse power generators, located in Woodford. A casino was built about 4 miles out of Bennington. William M. Freeman put up the wires, and support system. All this was done between May 1895 and July 24 when the first trolley car arrived at Camp Comfort.

Dreams are Sweet.

The Bennington Electric Railway, also chartered in November of 1894, was elated when the B.& W.E.Ry. was denied permission to create a belt line around Bennington. The Berkshire Street Railway would later build an extension to North Bennington.

The Bennington and Woodford bought, three second-hand, open single truck trolley cars from Saratoga. There were plans to acquire some new large 45 foot double truck, interurbans, after a successful first season. The company did not get any new equipment, they did however acquire a fourth single truck open trolley and a trailer (second hand). The article on the B&W electric railway stated that some one remembered the company operating an unusual 2 truck trolley for a while, although there were no written records to that effect. The unusual trolley was said to have been made by combining two single truck cars.

According to O.R.Cummings, in the C.R.E.R.A. publication on the Berkshire System, the unusual car was made by the Bennington & Hoosack Valley, rather than the Bennington and Woodford. This trolley was made from a combination of two single truck powered trolleys and/or two trolley trailers.

The first year was a great success, mostly because of advertising and publicity in affluent sections of New York State. On October 6th, 1895 the Bennington & Woodford's first season came to a close. October 12th a special excursion was run for some folks from Bellows Falls.

In 1896 the Casino and a theater were opened and the line was extended to a mill that was converted into an dance hall, with bowling alley, a hotel across from the entertainment hall was reopened as "The Glastenbury Inn".

A rainstorm causes the collapse of the trolley line.

In July of 1896, there were reports of Camp Comfort being sold at a receivers sale. This may have been the beginning of the company's down fall.

On October, 5th 1898 a torrential down pour caused flooding and the 1st few of miles of trolley roadbed north from North Bennington were washed down stream. The company never rebuilt.

Bennington Electric Railway's successor, The Bennington and Hoosac Valley Street Railway, acquired their equipment and eventually constructed a trolley route from Bennington to North Bennington. It is interesting to note that the construction of this extension was not done until after the fall of the Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway, even though it was Bennington Electric Railway officials who blocked the expansion of B & W electric railway from North Bennington to Bennington, at a public town meeting a few years before the wash out occurred.

Credits: Information on the Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway is from:

Transportation , A publication of the Connecticut Valley Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, Vol. 6 part 2 May 1952, Bennington & Glastenbury Railroad Bennington & Woodford Electric Railway, by Donald E. Shaw.

Transportation Bulletin, A publication of the Connecticut Valley Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, Vol. 72 January-December 1972, Berkshire Street Railway, by Cummings, O.R..

Electricity spawned a proliferation of trolley car systems in and between villages. These trolley lines enhanced local passenger transportation and also served a number of camp resorts and other vacation spots, such as the inn/casino in Glastenbury. The arrival of the automobile at the turn of the century foretold the end of the trolley era, and passenger cars and tractor-trailer trucks would eventually lead to an enormous decline in the use and significance of rail service. Transportation improvements represented one of several causes that led to the consolidation of schools and school districts in the region (in 1869 there were 150 separate school districts in the county).

Credits: Credit much from 'Electric Railroads of Vermont'-Author Unknown. There WAS a website but seemed abandoned 2001.

The township of Glastenbury is almost entirely National Forest, but for much of the last one hundred years it was owned by one family. The timber magnate Trenor W. Park passed Glastenbury along to his grandson, Hall Park McCullough, whose grandson, Trenor Scott, sold most of his holdings to the Forest Service. Scott still retains substantial acreage today. Fayville, a logging community in the northwest corner of Glastenbury, is the only area of the town that was ever thickly settled. Fayville is now abandoned and all that remains is a clearing of some fifty acres. A logging railroad known as the Bennington & Glastenbury briefly became a tourist attraction near the turn of the century, taking people to an inn converted from a boarding house used by loggers. The railroad tracks were washed out in the 1898 flood and were never replaced. A cellar hole is all that remains of the inn.

CREDIT:Vermont Wilderness Association

Bennington & Woodford Electric Railcar. All the joys of a rural trolley ride are summed up in this picture of an excursion in an open car on the Bennington & Woodford, a nine-mile ride to an amusement center in Vermont. The line opened in 1895, and was washed out forever in a flood in 1898.