Grassroots Railroad Sports?

I did get a chance to chat with the Adirondack crew on Saturday, while waiting for the Late Shore Limited, I mean, Lake Shore Limited to arrive, and mentioned that I had submitted a volunteer form but hadn't heard back. I was informed that the lady who handled that had just returned to volunteering after over a month away due to her mother passing away. Explains why I hadn't heard anything. I'll wait a week or two, and if I don't hear anything then, I'll resubmit the form.

NickD said:

If you've got a couple of spare bucks, consider donating here. A group is trying to save Boston & Maine EMD SW1 #1127. This 1952-built SW1 is unique in that it's the only SW1 owned by the B&M that was equipped with M.U. connections, and is known amongst fans of the B&M for operating on the B&M's White Mountain Branch as well as the Hillsboro Branch on local freights. The locomotive is fully operational, has a valid blue card, still has it's original 6-567B engine and friction bearing trucks, and has been well cared for. It was running down on the Luzerne & Susquehanna but was traded in to Progress Rail and Progress Rail is willing to sell it, but only if $50k to purchase the locomotive plus another $15k to move it is raised by Monday, January 22nd. Otherwise it meets the torch. A pair of roller bearings trucks is on hand to be placed under the locomotive to ship it home to New England. If saved, it will be relocated to Danbury Railway Museum.

Some great news; the funds to save B&M #1127 were fully raised by Saturday morning, a full 48 hours ahead of time, so the little SW1 escapes the scrappers torch and will be headed up to Danbury Railway Museum.

The Rome Sentinel online newspaper oddly posted an article this weekend recalling the last day of passenger service on both the NYC RW&O and Adirondack Divisions. Strange, because it wasn't the anniversary (the date was April 24th, 1965). Included was a photograph of RS-3 #8256 with a RPO/baggage and two coaches at Tupper Lake, preparing to head south. With next year being the 60th anniversary, I'm hoping Adirondack Railroad either has their RS-3, #8355 (sooo close), running or mends bridges and can get #8223 back by then.

More passenger cars have continued to arrive at Reading & Northern, which already owns a large fleet of passenger cars. They are Lamberts Point and Salisbury Beach, both previously privately owned. Lamberts Point is an ex-Norfolk & Western observation car, built by Pullman in 1914. Salisbury Beach is an ex-Boston & Maine sleeper car, built by Pullman in 1954. Despite their nice appearance, neither will be going into service immediately, as the Reading & Northern is going to first determine how best to configure these cars for regular excursion usage.

Florida East Coast has unveiled their new paint scheme this week and reception to it has been, uh, strong. FEC was bought out by Grupo Mexico, who owns Mexican Class I railroad Ferromex, back in 2017 and this is a move to bring the company image more in line with the corporate entity that it's part of.  The problem is, this new livery is replacing the much beloved retro orange and yellow "Champion" livery and interesting Art Deco script, which was originally introduced in 1939 and relatively recently revived. On top of that, many have questioned the wisdom of painting a locomotive operating in Florida sun and heat in dark gray. Others have pointed out that, with Florida Man's issues with grade crossings, it may not be the best idea to paint the front of locomotives gray. And finally, there's the fact that this scheme, with 6 colors and numerous different stripes, seems insanely more difficult to mask and paint.

The classic livery that is now being retired. It was introduced in 1939 for use on EMC E3As on the Champion and was revived by FEC, after some years of a solid dark blue dip with a hurricane-inspired logo, back in 2013. Those weird tank things between the locomotives were Liquified Natural Gas tenders. FEC converted their ES44ACs to dual-fuel capability and could be run in pairs bracketing LNG tenders.

The Ferromex livery that the new FEC livery is designed to emulate in different colors, to show stronger corporate ties.

Bessemer & Lake Erie #643 is finally on the move. This big 2-10-4 was set aside by B&LE in their Greenville, PA roundhouse, along with a 2-8-0 and an 0-10-2 from their US Steel sister railroads US Steel and Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range. In 1983, B&LE sold off the #643, and while Steamtown bid on it, they were outbid by a guy named Glenn Campbell (not that Glenn Campbell), who moved it to an old Union Railroad Shops in Halls, PA from 1989 to 1992. Then #643 was moved to Mckees Rocks, PA and actually restored to operation in the old Pittsburgh & Lake Erie shops, but never actually ran, since the extreme weight, long rigid wheelbase and inherent roadbed-mangling tendencies of 63"-drivered 2-10-4s, made no one willing to host it. The engine sat at indoors until 2006, then was moved out of the building because the shops were being torn down, and had sat there ever since. There was always concerns about it's fate, with Glenn Campbell getting up there in age and it's extreme size and weight making it difficult to move. In 2019, Jerry Joe Jacobson, former owner of the Ohio Central and founder of Age of Steam Roundhouse, announced that he had bought the #643. In fact, he had tried to buy the #643 during the original sale in 1983, but had also been outbid by Campbell and had had his eye on it ever since. But even then, there has always been the question of how and when they were going to move it, not helped by Covid disrupting everything. In the meantime, Age of Steam had acquired and moved three more steam locomotives to Sugarcreek, making some people think that AoS had forgotten about the #643, or thrown in the towel because a move was going to be too difficult or expensive, or was going to sell it off. But recently, the switch was reinstalled to where it was stored, the boiler was separated from the frame, and now the whole assembly appears to be headed to Ohio.

One of the B&LE 2-10-4s at the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range's Proctor, MN roundhouse. After WWII, US Steel began dieselizing the Union Railroad and B&LE, and transferred a bunch of their steam power west to the DM&IR, including 18 of the B&LE's 47 2-10-4s and 9 of the Union Railroad's 10 0-10-2s

Finger Lake Railway has found their new subsidiary, Midcoast Rail Service, in a bit of an ugly situation. Back in 1987, Guilford Rail System was looking at abandoning the Maine Central Rockland Branch, which runs from Brunswick, ME, northwest to Rockland, ME, as part of Guilford's wholesale slashing of trackage. Maine wanted to prevent abandonment, bought the line from Guilford, and for the past 37 years has contracted operations out to various short line; Maine Coast Railroad (1990-2000), Maine Eastern Railroad (2003-2015), Central Maine & Quebec (2016-2019). In 2019, Canadian Pacific agreed to purchase the CM&Q, and finalized the purchase in 2020, but CP really didn't want the Rockland Branch.

Finger Lakes Railway had begun talks with the state to possibly take over the branch in 2021, but the rumor was that Dragon Products, a cement company in Thomaston, ME and the only major customer on the line was considering no longer shipping their cement out of Rockland on barges. Finger Lakes was obviously not enthused about the idea of taking over the railroad as the only major customer had it's foot out the door, but over the next year they held talks with Dragon Products and Dragon Products reversed their stance and decided to continue shipping products by barge out of Rockland (they load them aboard freight cars at Thomaston, then haul them to Rockland where it's loaded in the barge).

In 2022, Finger Lakes officially took over the Rockland Branch, opening up a new subsidiary called Midcoast Rail Service and leasing the line from Maine for 3 years. Things seemed to be going great, they were moving plenty of cement for Dragon, and in the summer of last year they also began leasing an RDC from AllEarth Rail (a subsidiary of AllEarth Power, a solar panel company that bought 12 RDCs with the idea leasing them to the state of Vermont for Vermont to operate passenger rail) to run regular excursions over the line as well. Finger Lakes/Midcoast had even installed a disabilities-compliant bathroom in the car at their own expense.

Well, the whole situation has started to come undone. First, while Dragon Products assured Finger Lakes that they would keep moving products by rail, they didn't assure them they would stay in business. Dragon Products announced in September of last year that they were going to begin winding down operations at the plant and laying off all employees. With that, Midcoast Rail Service is looking at 90% of their traffic evaporating. They announced that moving forward they would try to pivot the line to some sort of passenger line. The passenger excursions had been fairly successful, but the RDC suffered a mechanical issue that knocked it out of service. Midcoast began questioning the wisdom of trying to run 7 day a week excursions with RDCs, which are headed towards 60+ years old for the newest ones, as well as safety in a collision (the Rockland Branch has many grade crossings) and issues with disabilities compliance, and then had the decision made for them when AllEarth decided to sell off the entire fleet of RDCs. AllEarth apparently failed to convince Vermont to start commuter service and to lease their RDCs, and decided that they didn't want to sit on a fleet of Budd cars that weren't running or generating revenue.

Midcoast now finds itself in a bit of a jam; freight traffic is winding down and they don't have any passenger equipment. Midcoast, MaineDOT, and the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority are now trying to convince Amtrak to extend the Downeaster, an Amtrak service between Brunswick and Boston that's operated by Amtrak and managed by NNEPRA, to just continue farther north to Rockland. Amtrak would operate it, Midcoast Rail Service would maintain the tracks and handle dispatching, and NNEPRA managing the whole affair. Amtrak seems to be unenthusiastic about it, dragging their heels and coming up with a list of issues with the plan (concerns over some bridges, needing to rebuild platforms, etc) and Its crews need to be trained, while overhead costs tacked onto equipment usage potentially make the operation substantially more expensive than if it was an independent initiative. The national carrier also necessarily calls the shots on right-of-way improvements it requires and is responsible with NNEPRA in striking an operating agreement with Midcoast.

Midcoast has said that they are also willing to operate passenger services over the line using their own locomotives towing passenger cars, and just schedule so that departures from Brunswick line up with the arrival of the Downeaster. The other issue, according to those more familiar with the region, is that there really isn't that much to do in Rockland (other than the yearly Lobster Festival) or Wiscasset or other locations on the line, and that the stations along the line are a couple miles from the downtown areas, requiring some sort of shuttle service.

Fortunately, Finger Lakes does retain an option to bail on the three year lease early if it becomes blatantly obvious that the line is not profitable. Finger Lakes is saying they don't want to throw in the towel yet, and is hoping to reinvent the line, but it definitely seems like a bit of a stacked deck currently.

In reply to NickD :

The towns along there are nice but small; I doubt there would be a lot of demand except maybe in the high tourist season. If there was a high-speed ferry to Bar Harbor and other ports in Acadia, however, they could probably rack up enough from people in three months to make it profitable, since it would allow tourists to avoid the horrible traffic around Acadia that time of year. As it is, the only ferry from Rockland is to Vinalhaven, which is again very nice but not heavily populated or trafficked.

In reply to 02Pilot :

Yeah, there's big difference between a scenic little line that runs excursions with three or four cars once a month and a line that can support five daily trips 7 days a week. I can understand Amtrak's reluctance to take it on

Its a pity that Maine Central 4-6-2 #470 is landlocked up to Hancock on the Downeast Scenic Railroad. They're restoring it to operation up there, but the Downeast Scenic, which runs on the old Maine Central Calais Branch, has no connection to the outside rail network. If Midcoast Rail Service is going to transform the Rockland Branch into a passenger-only operation, 120mil round trips behind a steam locomotive with historical connection to the trackage would be pretty a big draw, even if it was just loaned to them for a couple months a year. But, it had to be disassembled and moved in pieces from Waterville to Hancock to begin restoration. It'd be cost-prohibitive to disassemble it again and move it back down to Rockland or Brunswick.

In reply to NickD :

I can't imagine Maine Scenic would want to give it up. They're close enough to Acadia that I'm sure they can book as many runs as they want in the summer. I happened to be staying in Hancock once and drove past the terminus - it was a mob scene, and I think that was in May.

And the only feasible way to move it would be by barge, but there aren't even any places around Hancock where it could be offloaded from a truck onto a barge big enough, at least not that I can think of.

In reply to 02Pilot :

It's owned by a separate group that's just being hosted by Downeast Scenic. I was just saying, if there was an active rail connection, it could potentially be ferried back and forth, if New England Steam Co. desired and other railroads were willing to allow it, like how N&W #611 is moved around. But, yeah, lack of an outside rail connection means that's dead before it gets off the ground 

When Morristown & Erie was running the Rockland Branch under their Maine Eastern Railroad subsidiary, one of the locomotives they were using was an ex-Canadian National M420W that was #3573. 

Yep, that's no coincidence, that's the same M420W as the Adirondack Railroad runs now. After M&E lost the contract to run the Rockland Branch, they moved it down to the main property at Morristown, NJ, and then eventually sold it off to the NYS&W Technical & Historical Society, which also owns the Chinese Mikado that the NYS&W imported, where it received the green paint on the nose. Then two years ago, NYS&WT&HS sold it off to the Adirondack Railroad.

I do feel like I need to start turning my attention towards New England. Vermont is closer than southern Pennsylvania, where I seem to spend most of my time, and a surprisingly large amount of the old Rutland is still quite active under Vermont Rail System name. Amazing considered the Rutland was always derided as "going from nowhere to nowhere" and was always a distant runner-up to the other New England roads in every metric. VTR even operates the ex-Rutland between Bellows Falls and Burlington, which had been the Green Mountain Railroad and was used by Steamtown USA, and on occasion runs passenger trains behind their ex-Rutland/ex-Green Mountain RS-1. Other than the RS-1, it's an otherwise all-EMD show but they've got a really nice bright red and white livery, including a really nice-looking SD70M-2.

Also, right on the NY/VT border is the all-Alco Batten Kill Railroad, which operates a section of the old D&H Washington branch and the D&H subsidiary Greenwich & Johnsonville. I've heard this one can be tough to catch though, since it's a "runs as needed" operation. Some guys say the've been by there 10 times and only caught it running once or twice. Calling and checking with the office ahead of time can help nail it down though. What's frustrating is that when I went up to Conway a year and a half ago, the Batten Kill was holding a photo session the same day as the trip on the Conway Scenic, and I went over to see if I could catch the equipment being moved the day before. There was no signs of life, so I left, only to mention it to someone at Conway and find out that they did move everything down, about an hour after I left. Argh.

Unfortunately, I've heard that New Hampshire is pretty much a void, other than Conway Scenic. There's a couple of G&W lines, most of them running stuff in either the "Orange Plague's" colors or GATX blue and white leasers. I forget which railroad it was, but there's one that no longer has any power of their own, and their entire roster is literally just GATX lease unit. New Hampshire Northcoast is pretty remote and another one of those "runs when needed" operations that's impossible to catch. I was talking to some guys down to the R&N who were from the region and they said "Yeah, there's not much to see in NH other than Conway." I saw a pretty amusing meme that while labeled as taking shots at all New England, is apparently more aimed at New Hampshire.

And Cape Cod Central, a passenger operation of Massachusetts Coastal Railroad, runs excursions from Buzzards Bay to Hyannis and back over former New Haven rails using a pair of ex-New Haven EMD FL9s.

I actually just finished Jim Shaughnessy's book on the Rutland Railroad, which was an interesting read. Not a railroad that you hear about a lot, or see a lot of photos on, partially because it ran in relatively remote territory and partially because it went out of business fairly early.

In the 1840s, Vermont came up with the idea to provide a rail connection from the Great Lakes, across the northern portion of New York, down the western edge of Vermont and then on down to Boston. Vermont chartered several railroads, all at roughly the same time, and they were supposed to all work together to interchange traffic and accomplish this goal, but very early on, the Rutland & Burlington was squeezed out by the Vermont Central and the Vermont & Canada, leaving the Rutland & Burlington mostly to run between those two cities, and the Vermont Central and Vermont & Canada did their best to avoid interchanging traffic to the R&B, which stunted its growth.

The Rutland & Burlington, through a series of acquisitions and leases, began to build itself out through the 1850s and 1860s, and the component that really breathed life into the R&B was the Champlain Transportation Company, which operated steam ships across Lake Champlain. While the Vermont Central, which was leasing the Vermont & Canada, had to go around the north end of Champlain, the Rutland & Burlington just floated their traffic directly across the lake to a connection with the D&H. This began moving a lot of traffic to the Rutland, which had dropped the "& Burlington" part of the name in 1867, and the Vermont Central eventually agreed to lease the Rutland at a substantially inflated rate in 1871. By 1896, the Vermont Central went into receivership, largely from paying far too high a lease rate on the Rutland, and the Rutland emerged as an independent company once again. 

Over the next couple years, the Rutland expanded it's reach with more construction and acquisitions; to Rouses Point via a series of causeways and trestles across Lake Champlain, to Canada via the purchase of the Rutland-Canadian Railroad, to Bennington via the purchase of the Bennington & Vermont, to Chatham, NY via the purchase of cthe Chatham & Lebanon Valley Railroad, and most importantly, to Ogdensburg on Lake Ontario via the purchase of the Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain. This resulted in an inverted L-shaped railroad that ran north from Chatham along the NY-VT border, then turned left at the northern end of Lake Champlain and headed all the way across the very northern edge of NY to the Great Lakes. It also purchased a number of ships that operated across the Great Lakes to Detroit and Chicago under the Rutland Transportation Company, which made the Rutland a fairly healthy railroad. The goal of connecting directly to Boston had been given up on, but at Chatham it connected to the New York Central's Boston & Albany subsidiary, where traffic could either go east to Boston or south to New York City. The Rutland became quite dependent on milk traffic, with the first refrigerated boxcars being constructed for the Rutland for hauling milk. Unit trains of milk, often as long as 22 cars and pulled by one of the road's Pacifics, served the dairy farms of northern NY and western VT, whisking it on it's way to New York City and Boston.

In 1902, Doctor William Seward Webb assumed presidency of the Rutland. The Rutland crossed what had been his Mohawk & Malone Railroad, since becoming the New York Central's Adirondack Division at Malone, and Webb was an in-law of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had founded the New York Central, so it all made a certain sense. Primarily, Webb, originally an inhabitant of Vermont, desired to become governor of Vermont, and saw that many railroad men went on to great careers in politics. It didn't pan out for Webb, but by 1905, the New York Central had acquired a controlling interest in the Rutland, since it fit neatly into their empire; the west end connected to the RW&O division at Ogdensburg, the Adirondack Division crossed it at Malone, it connected to the B&A Division at Chatham, and it would allow the NYC to establish a presence on the eastern border of NY, where the D&H had been operating pretty much unchecked.

The era under the New York Central's control was the first real period of health and stability in the Rutland's existence but was sadly short-lived. The New Haven became concerned over the NYC's control of the Rutland and Boston & Albany, seeing those as the prelude to the NYC's invasion of New England. In response, the New Haven acquired a controlling interest in the New York, Ontario & Western, which, while poorly-routed and financially frail, mirrored a lot of the New York Central from Weehawken to Oswego, as well as reaching the anthracite fields in Scranton and connecting with the New Haven at Maybrook Yard. This was purely a negotiating tactic; the New Haven proposed trading their controlling interest in the NYO&W for the NYC's shares of the Rutland in 1911. Talks began and the New York Central and New Haven instead settled on giving half their shares of each railroad to the other, leaving neither in control. The NYO&W was fully onboard, since it had been badly neglected and abused under New Haven control, while the Rutland strongly fought the idea, since they realized that once they stopped being a piece in the NYC empire, they would go back to struggling to make ends meet.

The Rutland fought the decision and kept it tied up in courts until 1915. Unfortunately, this backfired against them, because in 1914 the Panama Canal Act was passed and included a provision for the ICC that banned railroads from operating other forms of transportation competing against themselves unless they were operating at a loss as a necessity or convenience of the public. New York Central technically still owned the Rutland Railroad and the Rutland Railroad owned the profitable Rutland Transportation Company, so the NYC was essentially competing against itself (it moved traffic from the same points fully by rail) and the ICC forced the Rutland Railroad to close down the Rutland Transportation Company. The NYC, knowing it was going to be ridding itself of the Rutland Railroad didn't exactly fight hard against the ICC ruling.

The hits kept coming. In 1917, the federal government nationalized all the railroads under the United States Railroad Administration, expecting WWI to be a more drawn-out affair and concerned about the railroads abilities to handle wartime traffic. Unfortunately, the railroads were forced to operate at a loss and saw heavy traffic, which chewed up a lot of infrastructure and equipment while depleting bank accounts, and by the time they were returned to private control in 1920, most of them were in a state of serious disrepair. The Rutland was one of the many railroads that was wrecked by USRA control, although they did at least get six USRA Light Mikados and two USRA 0-8-0s out of the deal. Granted, the 0-8-0s, allotted to the Rutland during the war, were diverted to the NYC instead and didn't arrive on the Rutland until after USRA control ended. This was followed by a severe flood that wiped out most of the Vermont railroads in 1927, followed by the Great Depression, and finally it was pushed into receivership in 1938.

The Rutland's creditors actually filed for liquidation, but there was a strong push by customers, towns and villages that it served, and even the Vermont government to keep the railroad alive. Many of the towns and customers served by the Rutland were quite remote, and the state realized that if the railroad went out of business, they might be forced to construct highways, to the tune of $10-12 million in 1938 dollars. The "Save The Rutland" campaign worked, and money was raised to get the railroad back on it's feet, while the state lowered it's tax evaluation and also provided bailout money. The Rutland even introduced a new named fast freight "The Whippet", which was pulled by an old Consolidation that was semi-streamlined just for the service. Still, the Rutland barely dodged a bullet when the unions, believing the Rutland was now flush with cash, made a movement to strike unless they got a raise. The Rutland, which was really spending all the money on new cars and rebuilding their roadbed, managed to avoid a strike by giving a small raise, but it was a prelude of struggles to come.

WWII brought renewed traffic to the Rutland, and the railroad purchased it's last steam power, a trio of gorgeous light Mountains, in '46. But post-war saw the same story as everywhere else; passenger traffic dropped off and highway developments stole away traffic. The Rutland was especially hard off, because it really had very little on-line traffic. Western Vermont was lacking pretty much any heavy industry or large population centers. It was mostly just agricultural traffic and some bridge-line traffic.  In 1950, the Rutland reorganized and emerged from receivership, again with much assistance from the state, through the reduction of tax valuations, deferral of tax payments and some state investment.

The reorganization saw the Rutland Railroad become the Rutland Railway and the new management immediately launched into a trimming down of the railroad. Total employment was cut back, diesels were ordered, as much unprofitable traffic was ditched, and passenger service was abandoned where it could be. In 1951, the Chatham branch, also nicknamed the "Corkscrew Division" for it's torturous routing, was approved for abandonment, since it developed zero on-line traffic, and Rutland moved it's traffic to Chatham via roundabout trackage rights agreements with the NYC and Boston & Maine.

The biggest move was the purchase of sixteen diesels; 10 Alco RS-3s and 6 Alco RS-1s, spread across several orders. They replaced the old teakettle Ten-Wheelers and Consolidations first, then the newer Pacifics and USRA Mikados, and finally the L-1 Mountains. Shaughnessy's book tells how the new president of the railroad, installed in the 1950 reorganization, came across a grade crossing while heading home one summer evening, and stopped as an L-1 Mountain came storming up a grade, putting on a show as it raced into the twilight, the crew waving and whistling as they passed, and he claims to have shed tears because he had ordered several RS-3s just the week before and signed the death warrant of the L-1s. Not a single Rutland steam engine escaped the torch, as the scrap money was needed to fund the purchase of the diesels.

Unfortunately, labor troubles reared their heads again and on June 26, 1953, the Rutland was hit by strike, the first strike in Rutland history. The unions has been working below the national average since before the railroad went into receivership in 1938, and assumed that, due to the reorganization and investment into the railroad, the railroad's bank accounts were flush with cash. this was not the case, and after three weeks of striking, a compromise was reached. All crews would receive a minor raise, along with retroactive pay, although they woul;d still be under national average. The strike did have a positive effect on the Rutland, oddly. Passenger service, which was always sparesely-ridden, had been halted and in those three weeks, the passengers all went to other methods of transportation. When the Rutland resumed passenger service, they found they had absolutely zero riders any more and, with ICC permission, all passenger service, long a drain on the line, was completely eliminated

The '50s brought further decline in service, although the Rutland tried to reinvent itself as a bridge line, since there was little on-line traffic left anymore, other than a marble quarry at Florence, Vermont, and the Howe Scale Company in Rutland, VT. Construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway brought a rush of traffic to the Rutland, moving construction materials, but then all that traffic was lost as soon as the Seaway opened and the Seaway also stole away a lot of their bridge traffic. Still, the Rutland was in good physical shape and had zero outstanding debt, with the diesels having been paid off rapidly. It even managed to pay dividends in 1956, 1957 and 1958.

As part of a further effort to streamline operations, employees were trimmed down from 1200 to 400, and in the summer of 1960, it began discussing changes to operating rules and division points, mostly eliminating a division point and moving the center of operations from Rutland to Burlington, requiring many of the employees to relocate.  The changes would also have lengthened the total time of runs from Burlington to both Bellows Falls, VT and Ogdensburg, NY, due to their creation of a new overnight stop that would delay returning trains until the following day. Under operating orders in place at the time, crews would make the run from Rutland to Burlington or Bellows Falls and back in a day, or from Malone, NY to Ogdensburg and Burlington and back in a day. The Rutland shut down for 41 days on September 16th, 1960, as the employees struck and the Rutland was forced to stick to the old operating plan with three separate divisions. Then on September 25, 1961, the unions struck again, this time demanding a pay raise to bring them in line with national averages. The Rutland fought back, saying that while the railroad was operating at a small profit currently, giving the employees those raises and being forced to maintain the three divisions would force the railroad to operate at a significant loss, and so the Rutland filed for complete abandonment.

The Rutland sat quiet for two years as the negotiations dragged on. The unions refused to budge on either point, and the Rutland refused to operate at a significant loss. And the longer the strike dragged on, the more it's remaining customers moved away to other methods of transportation. Finally, on September 18, 1962 the ICC approved the abandonment application, effective January 29, 1963. The state of Vermont feared the loss of the rail network, and the Rutland was in good physical condition, so the state tried finding buyers for the line, getting a postponement of the abandonment to effective date May 20th, 1963. When no buyers showed up, Vermont came up with the radical (for the time) plan to buy up the lines that had potential for $2.7 million and then find operators for the line. Not uncommon now, but this was literally the first time anything like this had been done.

The line west, from Alburgh, across Lake Champlain, through Rouses Point and Malone and over to Norwood, NY was all abandoned an torn up in 1964. The NYC had abandoned the north end of the Adirondack Division in 1961, and then Malone lost it's other railroad in '64, going from two railroads to none in just three years time. New York took ownership of the Ogdensburg to Norwood end of the line. The Middletown & New Jersey's president formed Vermont Rail System to take over the old Rutland mainline from Burlington down to Rutland and then the branch down to Bennington. Nelson Blount, searching for a place to house his steam locomotive collection and host excursions, was persuaded to take over the line from Bellows Falls north to Rutland, and handle freight services as well under the Green Mountain Railway Company. 

The very last official move of the Rutland came in early 1964. Nelson Blount's collection was in North Walpole, NH and needed to be moved to Bellows Falls, VT and the B&M was dragging their heels on allowing his equipment to be moved. It got down to the day before Steamtown was supposed to open and the equipment was still stranded across the river. The Rutland still existed, although much of the equipment was sold off, and would exist until the midnight that night, at which point it would become Green Mountain. The remaining Rutland employees came up with the idea to call the B&M and request a special move. They then asked Blount for a list of the equipment he absolutely needed to run, and under cover of darkness ran Rutland RS-1 #405 over to North Walpole, grabbed a locomotive a couple cars, and shuttled them back to Bellows Falls before the B&M could catch on. And with that, 120 years of the Rutland came to an end.

A handsome Rutland 4-6-2 leads a milk train, which has one of those unique Borden's butter dish milk cars at the very front. The late Rutland steam locomotives were very attractive engines, small in proportion but clean-lined, with a closed-in pilot deck, dark green boiler jacket, and a silver smokebox.

A Pacific and a Mountain, both of the Rutland, wait side by side at Bellows Falls.