Next Route: The Milford-Bennington Railroad

After recently completing and releasing the large fictional Champlain Division Route, I have decided to create a route that will be much simpler, the real life Milford-Bennington Railroad of southern New Hampshire.

The Hillsboro Branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad was always a "twilight line" at best. In its earlier days it stretched from Nashua to Keene, but by 1972 the line had been diverted and cut back to a paper mill at Bennington, just south of Hillsboro. Thus, the B&M didn't even serve the line's namesake town anymore. The B&M continued to run the 20+ mile Branch from Nashua to Bennington up until 1985, when a strike on the newly created Guilford Rail System caused a huge delay in rail service. Frustrated by late deliveries, the Bennington Paper Mill switched to trucks.

With no reason to travel to the far end of the Branch, the trains stopped and Guilford had plans to abandon the Hillsboro Branch past Wilton, NH. However, the State of NH stepped in and purchased the Hillsboro Branch from Wilton to Bennington. They hired a new shortline, the Milford-Bennington Railroad, to serve a stone quarry in Wilton.

Armed with an ex-Canadian National SW900, several ex-Delaware & Hudson ballast hoppers and a B&M caboose, the MBRR ran the 8 or so miles from the quarry in Wilton to a processing plant back down in Milford. Guilford Rail continued to service the few other freight customers in Milford and Wilton, causing great legal issues with the MBRR and ensuring that they only had one customer, the stone quarry. They soldier on today, as they have for over two decades, hauling several stone trains a day between Wilton and Milford.