I've mentioned the original New England incarnation of Steamtown USA, so now seems like a relevant time to recount what I recently learned about the very early, pre-Bellows Falls, VT era, which was from about '61 to '63. As Nelson Blount originally envisioned it, Steamtown USA was not to be the train ride portion, it was instead supposed to be a museum styled in the theme of a turn-of-the-century village, a la Greenfield Village, that would have also had steam tractors and steam fire truck and the static display steam locomotives. The actual operating train portion was named the Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern, and the idea was that you would hop aboard an MS&N train and ride to Steamtown USA and tour the museum/village, and then ride back out aboard the MS&N. Also, worth pointing out that even early on, Blount intended for this to be a government-financed operation and was courting New Hampshire to help provide a location and some funding. Steamtown USA was never intended to be a fully privately-funded operation, Blount was wealthy but he knew he had limits. The New Hampshire governor of the time was willing to help with funding in hopes of drawing in tourist, Blount just had to find a site. Blount was interested in purchasing the Cheshire Branch off of the Boston & Maine and was in talks with them to purchase it and operate the Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern over it, and then New Hampshire would help with the construction of the Steamtown USA museum in Keene, NH.
Boston & Maine was dragging their heels on the sale of the Cheshire Branch , and Blount wanted to at least get the Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern up and running some trips, since he already had the locomotive, Canadian National 4-6-4T commuter tank #47, and cars sitting around burning money. He approached the Concord & Claremont, an independent New Hampshire shortline, about operating over their dormant Concord Branch trackage from Bradford to Lake Sunapee, and was able to sign an agreement to run there for the 1961 season. This then put Blount and his team in a bit of a scramble to get ready, since the coaches he had purchased were old wooden B&M coaches that had been gutted of seats and windows. In the weeks leading up to the first runs, they were busy putting a piece of pipe at half height across the windows for safety, buying up whatever seats they could find to install (including pews from a church that was being torn down) and slapping a coat of yellow paint on them that was still drying when they made the first runs.
The first runs were made in July 22 and went through to September 17, but steam operation came to an early end on August 25. This is where things get really interesting. In 1959, Nelson Blount had gone north of the border and purchased #47, a class X-10a 4-6-4T commuter tank. It was a good choice for his operations because it was designed to accelerate several cars up to speed fairly quickly, so it only had 63" drivers, and it was able to run in reverse just as nicely as forward. They didn't have long range, but he wasn't planning on long-distance running either. The #47 ran pretty well doing what he asked of it, but on August 25th it was kicked out of service by ICC inspectors. Now, the story that's always told is that the ICC came to check on the engine and that the discovery was made that the maintenance paperwork had been destroyed in a fire, and that the #47 would need a complete inspection. Search around for CN #47 on the internet and that is the story you'll find, hell, I believe the National Park Service still spouts that story even. That story is false, there hadn't been a fire at a CN facility that would have had maintenance paperwork since 1948, and the next one wouldn't be until around '64/'65. The actual story is so much more interesting.
Correspondences between Blount and CN were found showing that in 1959, when he approached the CN about buying an engine, they offered him the #47, but that they alerted him that the final four maintenance records had "been disposed of." Not destroyed in a fire, but simply disposed of because the engine was retired and they didn't see it being reactivated. Blount went ahead with the purchase anyway, was given the paperwork that they did have, and he moved it down to North Walpole, NH and put it into service. When the ICC came to inspect the engine, they asked for maintenance paperwork, he showed them what they had and the ICC noticed the four missing records. They put the locomotive out of service unless he could either provide full service documentation or he was willing to tear the engine down. Diesel power was substituted but ridership dropped as a result and Blount wasn't pleased that Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern trains were running with diesels, so he wrote CN and asked if they could please search for those maintenance records. CN did a search and indeed turned up a second copy of the maintenance paperwork and it included the four missing entries, but it also showed that the #47 had been due to be retubed in late 1957, CN had filed for and received a one-year extension on the flue time, they had run it until the extension expired and then retired the engine. Blount would need to perform boiler work for the ICC to allow him to run it again, and instead he decided to find an operational engine, leading to the #47 being parked, never to run again. Where it gets even crazier is that a gentleman who wrote a book on the MN&S said that during the writing process, the grandfather of a friend of his passed away and they were going through his railfan memorabilia. He found a sealed envelope in a stack of books and photos, opened it up, and found the original missing paperwork for the #47. The guy had visited CN around 1958 and toured the shops, and when he had asked for a souveneir, they had given him the maintenance paperwork for the #47, since it was retired and they had no plans to reactivate it.
Over the off-season, Blount operated on the assumption that he would be running on the Claremont & Concorde again, since there had been no issues with leasing the dormant tracks from them. He was still working on a deal with the B&M for the Cheshire Branch, with them basically saying that they wanted to sell him the branch but that they weren't ready to sell just yet. His team of mechanics went through Rahway Valley Railway 2-8-0 #15, which was stored with his collection at North Walpole, NH, and got it running as the new MS&N power for the '62 season. And then, just as it looked like the '62 season was going to be a success, he got the rug pulled out from under him. For reasons unknown, the Claremont & Concorde opted not to renew their lease of the Bradford-Lake Sunapee line. While the exact reason is lost to time, the logic is that, considering the C&C abandoned that line in '64, they were starting to make the moves to abandon the line and wanted Blount out of the way. So, he was left back in the same situation as he was in '61: Locomotive and cars all dressed up with no place to go. The Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern made some runs over the B&M Cheshire Branch in 1962, but then things were set back even further in 1963, when NH governor Wesley Powell, who had pledged support for Steamtown USA, lost his reelection. The new governor said that the Steamtown USA plan "did not take advantage of anything that is singularly and peculiarly New Hampshire" and pulled state support.
In 1963, Blount opened visiting to his collection of steam locomotives at North Walpole under the Steamtown USA and ran trips again on the Cheshire Branch, which B&M still wasn't willing to sell. By this point, with the lack of state support and B&M's continual delaying of the sale of the Cheshire Branch, Blount realized the situation in New Hampshire was becoming untenable. At this point, Vermont enters the picture. In 1961, the Rutland Railroad had filed for abandonment after years of decline, and the state of Vermont had taken ownership. Vermont wanted to keep the tracks active and servicing on-line customers and was searching for an owner. They were also aware of Nelson Blount's ongoing plight in North Walpole (since it was literally directly across the Connecticut River) and they made him an offer: they would give him the Bellows Falls-Rutland section of the Rutland, and all attached facilities, for his museum and excursions and in return he would keep the line operating and service freight customers. Blount was apparently not enthused about getting into the freight business, he strictly wanted to operate Steamtown USA and the MS&N, but his inner circle convinced him that it would be another source of revenue, and during the offseason he would be able to shift his MS&N employees over to the freight side of things rather than lay them off. Blount was convinced and formed the Green Mountain Railway, which would operate freight duties. This resulted in three entities on the same property: Green Mountain Railway owned the tracks and ran freight service, passenger excursions were run under the Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern banner (although the locomotives wore the Green Mountain name), and the roundhouse and display tracks at Bellows Falls were the under the auspices of the Steamtown Foundation for the Preservation of Steam and Railroad Americana.
The whole issue caused a stir with the B&M though. First, the B&M had now just lost the eventual sale of the Cheshire Branch to Blount. Second, the B&M had had designs for the Rutland and had been hoping to end up as the owner of it, and now Blount had just swiped 52 miles of it. And, with opening day of the Bellows Falls operation approaching, the B&M was refusing to move Blount's equipment out of North Walpole and across the river to VT out of spite. Just 24 hours before the gates were to open to visitors, Blount was in Boston pleading with the B&M to move his collection the short distance to Bellows Falls, when he received a phone call from the court appointees for the liquidation of the Rutland Railroad. They were aware of the problem and explained that technically, until midnight when the sale of the Rutland's final assets went through, the Rutland Railroad was still in operation and they still had one locomotive on the property, so if Blount could provide them with a list of the engines and cars he absolutely needed, the Rutland could authorize a special move. So, under literal cover of darkness, like something out of a movie, the Rutland Railroad dispatched the remaining Alco RS-1 over to North Walpole, collected Nelson Blount's equipment and brought it back to Bellows Falls, making the final run of the Rutland Railroad. With equipment in place to operate, he then later negotiated with Boston & Maine and had everything gradually moved onto the property over the following year.
The deal with Vermont for the Rutland ended up being a bit of a Faustian bargain. While he did get a location and trackage to run on, Vermont essentially told him "We gave you that, don't ever ask us for anything ever again." Without the state funding that he had envisioned originally, he was never able to build Steamtown USA as he had imagined it. By early 1967, he was reportedly already realizing the Vermont was not going to work out. He had written a correspondence to one of his inner circle saying that the strain of operating his seafood business (where he got his wealth), Edaville, the Green Mountain, and Steamtown USA/MS&N was starting to get to him and he was thinking of taking a step back and letting others be in charge. Ross Rowland also claimed that during a 1966 excursion where he borrowed CPR #1278 to run over the CNJ, he and Blount were talking and Blount said that the situation in Vermont was untenable and he needed to move someplace more conducive. Blount and Rowlands were supposedly in talks with New Jersey to take over the CNJ's disused Jersey City facilities and move everything down there.
All of that was cut short with Blount's death in 1967 when he crashed a small airplane during landing. Edgar Mead, who had been the final president of the Bridgton & Saco River, took over as director but in his own words "After Nelson's death, we just did the best we could." There were plenty on the board who could've run things, but they were so used to Blount being in charge and so shocked at his death that they just kind of fell into a holding pattern, paralyzed with indecision. The rumored NJ move, for example, died in that airplane crash as well. No major work, other than mechanical work on locomotives, was performed, so it never really realized Blount's vision. The Monadnock, Steamtown & Northern was deemed redundant and was basically rolled into the Green Mountain Railroad.
The railroad was beset by further issues after Blount's death. Ed Mead was superceded by Bob Barbera, who had some very odd ideas that soured relations between Steamtown and Class I railroads and railfans. The Vermont Board of Health began pressuring Steamtown over air pollution. A rift formed between the Green Mountain Railroad and Steamtown over the maintenance of the tracks, which turned into a bitter feud. The chairman and the director of the Steamtown board both resigned in 1980 after accusing the board of incompetence. In 1981, no excursions were run, after Don Ball, Jr., took over direction of Steamtown and discovered that the excursion train did not meet federal safety guidelines. Even at its peak year, 1973, Steamtown only drew in 65,000 visitors, and by 1981 was only bringing in 16,000 visitors, despite having the largest collection of steam locomotives anywhere. At the same time, the Valley Railroad in Connecticut was bringing in 139,000 a year. A 1982 snow storm collapsed the roof of the roundhouse, damaging several locomotives, including CPR #1293 and Meadow River Lumber #1.
Fifteen years after Blount had realized that there wasn't a future, the rest of his organization came to the same conclusion. They began a search for a new location, even looking at Orlando, Florida, before settling on the old DL&W complex at Scranton. In anticipation of this economic boon, the city and a private developer spent $13 million to renovate the ex-DL&W station into a Hilton hotel. After a difficult move of a fleet of locomotives which had sat out in the elements for over two decades, the stress of which is theorized to have contributed to Don Ball Jr.'s fatal heart attack, everything arrived in Scranton and work began on getting the disused facilities ready for visitors. When Steamtown opened in 1987, only 60,000 visitors turned out for the year. A big part of the issue was that Scranton had a roaring 13% unemployment rate and was in a severe state of decline. Another was that while the tourists in Vermont had enjoyed the sights of cornfields, farms, covered bridges, a waterfall and a gorge on a Steamtown excursion, the scenery from Scranton to Moscow isn't particularly great, including running through one of the largest automotive junkyards in the nation. By 1988, the Steamtown Foundation was $2.2 million in debt and they canceled all excursions for that year, ending Steamtown's era as a private organization.
