Vermont, New York became rivals over rail link

Government transparency jumped the track in 1972 as New York and Vermont competed to become the northernmost link in a new Amtrak passenger rail route between Washington, D.C., and Montreal.

“The Rockefeller administration is taking federal officials for a train ride Friday, but nobody seems to know how much the trip will cost or who will pay for it,” the Associated Press reported in a story published in The Post-Star of Glens Falls on June 9, 1972.

Spokesmen for the state Department of Transportation and for the Delaware & Hudson Railroad told reporters that these details had not yet been figured out — but that the economic development potential offered by the train trip was too great to be held up by bureaucratic haggling.

“The entire business of the cost is not a matter of public concern,” C.B. Sterzig, a lawyer for the railroad, told the Associated Press.

At the time, Amtrak was a new government-backed entity that had taken over the operation of the nation’s intercity passenger trains the previous year. Private railroad companies, which had run passenger trains under federal regulation for decades, were allowed to get out of the money-losing business if they turned over their train cars and locomotives to Amtrak, which continued to operate only on a skeletal route network deemed essential by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In the Northeast, the new Amtrak network had no routes north of Albany or Springfield, Mass.
But in 1972, Congress passed a federal spending bill that required Amtrak to re-establish international service to Canada. In the West, the law called for restarting service from Washington state to Vancouver, B.C. And in the East, the law mandated a new link between Washington, D.C., and Montreal — setting off a spirited contest between New York and Vermont.
“Both states claim that a resumption of service is necessary to help spur their economic development and to provide an impetus for expansion of industry and tourism along both routes,” The Post-Star reported on June 14.

New York officials said a route following the Delaware & Hudson line — through Saratoga Springs, Fort Edward, Whitehall and Plattsburgh — was the better option, because tracks were in better condition. The D&H had provided two trains a day between New York City and Montreal until Amtrak began operation the previous year.

Vermont’s proposed route — through Brattleboro, White River Junction and Montpelier — had not had passenger service since 1966.

Vermont got the first chance to pitch its case on June 8, when “The Train,” comprised of three passenger cars and two diesel locomotives, carried Amtrak officials and various dignitaries from Montreal through Vermont and on to Springfield, Mass., along the proposed route.

“Thousands of Vermonters gathered at unused and, until recently, unthought-of passenger rail stations Thursday to cheer the first passenger rail train with scheduled stops in the Green Mountain state in six years,” the Associated Press reported on June 9.

“The stops had the ring of a nostalgic litany — Essex Junction, Montpelier, White River Junction,” the report continued. “But to state and local officials who gathered along the Central Vermont Railway’s right of way, ‘The Train’ was serious business.

At St. Albans, about 3,500 people gathered to cheer when the train pulled into the station. City Hall and one of the city’s largest department stores closed for the morning, and two other large employers allowed workers to leave their jobs to attend.

At Essex Junction, nearly 2,000 people turned out.
“Schoolchildren waved flags and onlookers held up placards to show their support,” the AP reported.

At Montpelier, one supporter held up a sign that read, “Rickety-Rack for Amtrak. We Want the Trains Back.”

New York got its chance the next day, when a similar-sized train traveled from Albany to Montreal via the D&H route.

U.S. Rep. Carlton King, R-Saratoga Springs, state Assemblyman Lawrence Corbett, R-Fort Edward, and state Transportation Commissioner T.W. Parker traveled on board with Amtrak officials.

Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairman Earl Bump and county Superintendent of Public Works Fred Austin led a group of Warren County residents that joined a Washington County delegation at the Fort Edward station for a regional show of support.

“Pulling into the station about 20 minutes late, the three-car, two-engine train carried 45 passengers representing all levels of government, the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, and the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak,” The Post-Star reported on June 10.
“Many men in the crowd wore railroader’s caps and said they used to work for the D&H,” the paper continued. “Several older men with young children said they were showing their grandchildren their first passenger train.”

Edward Ryan, the D&H general agent at Fort Edward, said that in the early 1950s, 10 passenger trains a day stopped at the Fort Edward station, including two sleeping-car trains. The last passenger train that had stopped at Fort Edward was on April 30, 1971, the day before Amtrak began.

In the end, Vermont won the competition, after 10 weeks of study, even though New York’s proposed route from New York City to Montreal was 59 miles shorter and would have required less infrastructure work.

The Vermont route needed an estimated $3.4 million in track improvements — the equivalent of about $24 million in today’s dollars — while the New York route needed only $1.6 million (the equivalent of $11.3 million today) in upgrades, The Post-Star reported on Aug. 25.

One of the factors in Amtrak’s decision was that Vermont’s route would feed into Penn Station in New York City, allowing the new Montreal trains to run through to Philadelphia and Washington. Trains on New York’s route would have arrived at Grand Central Terminal, so through travelers to the south would have had to switch to connecting trains about a mile away at Penn Station. (A link to Penn Station from upstate New York had not yet been built.)

Amtrak’s new overnight train, the Montrealer, began running through Vermont by the end of 1972. But by 1974, the administration of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller had worked out a deal under which the state would subsidize Amtrak’s operation of a second Montreal train — a daylight run dubbed the Adirondack — on the D&H route.

Amtrak canceled the Montrealer in 1995, but the Adirondack continued to run until early 2020, when it was suspended in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is expected to resume operation in the coming months.

 

Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star of Glens Falls for 21 years before retiring in 2017. He now is a freelance writer focusing on the history of politics, labor and media in the region.