New England Southern's eco-425 #1615 in green & yellow paint

In 2020, the Parsons Vale bought the New England Southern, which operates on the southern third of the ex-B&M White Mountain Division between Concord & Lakeport. At the time of the purchase, there was not much freight traffic along that line, but a quarry in Belmont wanted to start shipping aggregates by rail and had been thinking about setting up a transload facility at Belmont Junction.

After the purchase, the NEGS became a subsidiary of the PVRT, which instead of setting up the transload at Belmont Junction rebuilt the old B&M branch into Belmont proper (which brought the carloadings up to around 4000 cars/year) and electrified the line from Belmont down to Concord.

In 2025, after the electrification (and rebuilding to handle 80mph trains) of the Concord-West Lochmere Junction segment of the line, PV&T through freight moved off the old Merrimack River mainline from Concord to Lochmere in favor of the NEGS’s (not quite as curvy, somewhat shorter, and thanks to the rebuilding in better shape) line.

PV&T power handles the aggregate traffic from Belmont, the PVRT extended their local switching district from Northfield down to Concord, and the NEGS keeps a single DL48 to handle local traffic from Lakeport through downtown Northfield.

  • Copyright © 2024 by Jessica L. Parsons (orc@pell.portland.or.us) unless otherwise noted
    Thu Feb 01 10:48:50 PST 2024