The Return of the Alpine Express

Greeting the Railfans at Sanbornville's Depot

There was no question that the return of a railfan-sponsored snowtrain to Sanbornville last Saturday afternoon was the biggest happening to take place in the small Carroll County town in years.

Young railfan graces the cover of Mountain Ear, proudly wearing a cap adorned with railway badges, capturing the excitement of the returning Snowtrain.

As villagers gathered in the old depot area near the Town Hall, longtime observers put the day’s significance into perspective by noting that time was stirring up even more excitement than the annual Christmas parade, normally the highlight of the year. To many of the railroad fans and former railroad employees, the day was more than that – a chance to touch base with their past, recount their days on the line, and relive the glory days of railroading. Like White River Junction, Vermont, Sanbornville's raison d’etre has always been the railroad. While its first station was built in 1880, the town’s heyday was experienced in the early 1900s when it served as the northern division headquarters of the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M). According to local legend, the town received its name as the result of some election day maneuvering by its early station supervisor, John Sanborn. A politically crafty Democrat in a Republican-dominated county and state, Sanborn managed to win his place in history by assigning out-of-town jobs to as many Republicans as he could on election day, thereby keeping them away from the polls. The little town has been known as Sanbornville ever since. As the northern division headquarters of the B&M, Sanbornville’s rail operations grew, as did the town. A seven stall roundhouse was built, while the station was enlarged with the addition of a second story. A major fire in April of  1911 destroyed the roundhouse, however, along with its paint shop and a few other outlying buildings. The B&M decided to move its yard operations to Dover after the fire and thereafter built a new engine roundhouse in Sanbornville with only three stalls. The fire symbolized the beginning of the end for Sanbornville’s railroad business. Railroad passenger service across the country experienced competition for short line service from automobiles beginning in the 1920s as well, leading to greater cutbacks in the 1930s. Finally, the last regularly scheduled passenger train traveling on the B&M line through Sanbornville to Wolfeboro rolled past in 1937. Freight operations kept the station in business, although it was gradually cut from daily service to an only “as needed” basis, and then to none at all in 1961. The grand station was eventually torn down, with the railroad finally abandoning the line in 1972.  Purchasing the 12-mile line between Sanbornville and Wolfeboro that year for $90,000 was Don Hallock, a lifelong railroad buff who had previously been president of a tourist rail operation in Pennsylvania. Upgrading the poorly maintained track and opening a summer tourist line, Hallock had dreams of restoring Sanbornville’s rail buildings to their appearance during the town’s heyday, but financial concerns limited his efforts. As he noted while waiting for the special snowtrain to arrive on Saturday, “I had envisioned fixing up the yead, but I guess that I bit off more than I could chew.” Hallock sold the Wolfeboro Railroad in 1980 to a group of New York businessmen who continue to operate the line in summer. Of the crowd of 800 gathered at the depot Saturday, roughly 650 were members of a railfans group known as the Massachusetts Bay Railroad Enthusiasts, a Boston-based non-profit organization dedicated to all aspects of railroading. Credited with organizing the world’s first railfan trip in 1934, the group had sponsored hundreds of trips similar to Saturday’s snowtrain outing, working in cooperation with AMTRAK, the Boston & Maine, and other railways in the Northeast.

William Crawford, the club’s 38-year-old president, admits that renting a train for a typical outing is far from being an inexpensive venture, but noted that the rewards are well worth the $20,000-plus costs. A metallurgist for General Electric, the energetic Crawford - in between seeing to organizational details at the Sanbornville depot - explained that planning the special excursions such as Saturday’s snowtrain requires months of close cooperation and legwork by his club, the railroads, and local towns. More often than not, he happily says, there never is a problem in obtaining that cooperation. As a member of a select group of avid railfans, Crawford’s goal in life is to travel over all of the 180,000 miles left of trackage in the United States and Canada before he dies. He’s seen 40,000 so far. The club president and his fellow mileage collectors had hoped to add the section between Boston's North Station to Ossipee on Saturday, but difficulties ensued during the outing. After stopping for passengers in Winchester, Andover, Lawrence, and Bradford, the train and its 650 passengers had taken the B&M’s Western Route to Rollinsford, N.H., where it then joined the B&M’s Bark Peeler branch. The mileage enthusiasts then rode the train from Rochester to Gonic on a little used siding, back to Rochester, and then to Farmington. The passengers disembarked, climbed aboard schoolbuses, and drove to Sanbornville since no rail lines connect the two towns. While the group was enjoying a hot lunch presented by the ladies of Sanbornville’s four churches, the empty train backed down the tracks to Rochester before heading north. According to B&M Vice President Bill Rennicke, it encountered some delays when the 90-foot-long cars had difficulty maneuvering around corners designed for 50-foot-long freight cars. Meanwhile, the railfans finished their lunches, viewed the bargains, and HP model railroad display upstairs in the Sanbornville Town Hall, and waited. After that, they waited some more. As Bill Crawford checked his watch to the time of the 3:40 shown on the face of the town hall’s large clock and youngsters let go of their balloons in the tower, the diesel-powered train rolled into the depot, three hours late. The crowd cheered, the passengers climbed onboard, and the train departed for Boston at 3:55pm, cancelling all plans for Ossipee. At 4:10, the square was deserted and all was quiet, as life went back to normal in Sanbornville.