New England Central, or “NECR” is headquartered in St. Albans, VT. It is a subsidiary of RailAmerica, Inc. The Company’s 40 affiliated railroads operate in 27 states and 3 Canadian provinces with approximately 7,500 miles of track.
The NECR consists of 330 miles of main track from the Canadian border to Long Island sound in VT, NH, MA, and CT. We also have 50 miles of sidings and 77 miles of yard tracks. We maintain 227 bridges, 160 signaled crossings, and 74 miles of wayside signals for train control, and three tunnels.
We connect and interchange with 11 railroads, including Canadian National, CSX Transportation, and Vermont Rail System.
Within Vermont, we own and operate 218 miles of main track stretching the length of the state from Brattleboro to East Alburg.
The NECR was preceeded by the Central Vermont Railway, which was owned by Canadian National. New England Central took over in 1995
We host two daily Amtrak trains per day (The Vermonter). These trains operate on our railroad from Palmer, MA to St. Albans, VT, a distance of 237 miles. Within VT, the train has station stops for St. Albans, Essex Jct./Burlington, Waterbury/Stowe, Montpelier, Randolph, White River Jct., Windsor, Bellows Falls, and Brattleboro. It also serves Claremont, NH and Amherst, MA on NECR. The train provides service to/from all major east coast cities south of Springfield, MA to Washington, DC- including NYC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
The primary business for the NECR is hauling freight. We handled 38,791 loaded railcars in 2007.
In Vermont, the NECR handled over 10,000 loaded cars for in state customers in 2007. In addition, another 14,000 loaded cars passed through the state of VT enroute to their final destinations in southern New England. Principal commodities hauled are forest products, paper, primary metal products, agricultural feed and feed ingredients, road salt, chemicals, and petroleum products.
The largest customers in Vermont are Burlington Electric at Burlington, Gas Supply at Montpelier, Cargill in Swanton, Barretts Trucking in White River Jct., and Irving Oil in White River Jct.
St. Albans’ Italy yard is the busiest freight yard in Vermont. For 2007 over 44,000 freight cars were handled in this yard.
The NECR interchanges/connects with all of the Vermont state owned lines operated by the Vermont Rail System. Without the NECR, there would be no way for these lines to move freight between their respective isolated lines.
In 2007, the NECR handled over 12,500 cars with Vermont Rail System.
RailAmerica, Inc. employs 95 people in the state of Vermont. Our annual payroll in 2007 exceeded $4,000,000. We maintain substantial operations in St. Albans (general office/locomotive and car shop/MOW shop/accounting/dispatching), White River Jct. (office and yard), Essex (back up dispatch office and RR office),and Brattleboro (office and yard).
In 2007 the NECR spent $1,300,000 on capital work in Vermont. We surfaced 55 miles of track, inserted 11,000 new ties, upgraded our Essex office and St. Albans turntable. Our normal capital budget for the entire NECR ranges between $4 and $7 million per year.
In 2007 the NECR spent over $6.6 million dollars with Vermont based vendors for goods and services. These included track ballast, locomotive and vehicle fuel, lodging, contractors, and various utilities.
The Bellows Falls Tunnel project was completed in the fall of 2007. This now allows the NECR to solicit both intermodal “double stack” container business as well as “auto rack” business. Both of these would be new traffic for NECR in 2008.
The NECR serves most of the major population centers of Vermont-
St. Albans, Colchester, Essex, Burlington, Randolph, Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, White River Jct./Hartford/Hanover/Lebanon. In excess of 200,000 Vermonters live in these population centers.
