Corridor News

Why the Alliance exists, and what happens next

The railroad through Chester and Ludlow has never gone away. Freight runs on it every week. The State of Vermont has owned it since 1963. Amtrak stops at both ends of it, at Bellows Falls and at Rutland, every day. The only thing missing is a way for a person to get from those stations into the valley, and, eventually, a train that does the whole trip.

Three of us decided in March that the missing piece was not another study but an organization: something that can hold a conversation with the state and the railroad over years, count its supporters in public, and bank small, visible wins along the way. We spent the summer reading how fifty-nine other places tried this, from Maine's Downeaster to a ski train in the Adirondacks that ran seven years and folded. The lesson was consistent. Demand was almost never the problem. What separated the survivors was whether somebody built an institution that could outlast an election.

So here is what happens next. This fall we will help the Chamber's Holiday Express understand where its riders come from. This winter we will publish an honest guide to reaching the valley on the trains and buses that already run, and we will ask the state two plain questions: what condition is the track in, and what does its lease with the railroad say about passengers. And we will count. Three founders today. Be the fourth.

One thing you can do: join the list, and forward this to one neighbor who rides Amtrak.

How the Okemo Valley got into Vermont's rail plan

Every few years Vermont rewrites its State Rail Plan, the document the Federal Railroad Administration reads when it decides what the state may apply for. In the fall of 2024, while the 2025 plan was in draft, Preston Bristow asked Chester residents to send one sentence: that in addition to extending Amtrak's Valley Flyer trains north, they supported routing a train along the state-owned line from Bellows Falls through Chester and Ludlow to Rutland.

Enough people did that it made the plan. The final version, accepted by the FRA on December 29, 2025, records in its chapter on public comment that "many members of the public expressed support for new rail service, recognizing it would likely start as bus service, among Bellows Falls, Chester, Ludlow, and Rutland in part to serve important tourism opportunities and a valuable southern Vermont east-west link." The 2021 plan contained nothing of the kind.

And this comment became more than a comment. Turn to page 62 of the plan, Table 17, "Tier 3 Recommended Initiatives," and one of them reads: "Investigate a coordinated connection (rail, bus, etc.) at both Rutland and Bellows Falls to connect passengers between the Ethan Allen Express and the Vermonter to Killington, Ludlow/Okemo and Chester." In plain words: the state's own plan now recommends investigating exactly the connection this Alliance exists to build.

Honesty about what that means: Tier 3 is the furthest-out tier, nothing in it is funded, and a scheduled train through the valley is not itself on the list — the connection is. But the state's rail director has said a project must be in the plan before it can qualify for federal money, and this one now is, by name, naming our towns. The next campaign is to deliver that connection, and then to get the train itself into the next plan. That is a job for a constituency, which is what this site is for.

One thing you can do: if you sent a comment in 2024, tell us. We would like to know how many of you there were.

What a 1998 study found, and why nothing happened

Twenty-eight years ago Okemo Mountain Resort hired a Pennsylvania rail consultant to ask whether a ski train could run to the mountain. The regional planning commission kept the report, and this spring it found it for us. The findings were better than most people remember. Of 699 skiers surveyed at Okemo over seven weekends, 522 said they would ride a train there, most of them from New York and Connecticut. Engineers priced a new interchange track at Bellows Falls and a siding at the resort at roughly $600,000. An Amtrak division manager walked the line, said it would take Amtrak equipment, and offered to run trial trains from Rutland the following season.

Then nothing. The report names the reason in one sentence: the track, fine for freight, was limited to 10 miles an hour for passengers, and Amtrak would not schedule service until it was upgraded. Nobody priced the upgrade. No committee formed. The resort was in the ski business, not the train business, and the idea had no other home.

We take two things from it. The demand was real and probably still is; and a study, however good, is not an institution. Whether that 10-mile-an-hour figure is still true is the first question we have put to the state.

One thing you can do: if you were part of the 1990s effort, or remember it, write to us. We are collecting the history.