Central Vermont Railway: Map, Logo, Timetable, Rosters

Last revised: September 17, 2026

The Central Vermont Railway was the Canadian door through the Green Mountains. It ran north to south from Montreal to tidewater at New London, Connecticut, by way of St. Albans, Essex Junction, White River Junction, and the Connecticut River. Reporting mark CV. Vermont chartered the ancestor, the Vermont Central Rail Road, in October 1843. The first trains ran Bethel to White River Junction on June 26, 1848. For most of a century after 1898 the road was a Grand Trunk and then a Canadian National property that still lettered its own locomotives and kept its own shops at St. Albans. RailTex bought the line in February 1995 and renamed it New England Central.

Scott Hartley, in Trains for February 1991, called it a survivor. Jim Shaughnessy’s The Rutland Railroad is the book for the nineteenth-century fight with the neighbor to the west. George H. Drury’s steam chapter, and the diesel tables, live on their own pages. This page is the company: Paine and Follett, the Smiths, the 900-mile zenith, Grand Trunk control, the 1927 flood, and the sale that put green-and-yellow Geeps into RailTex paint.

Central Vermont 2-8-0 leading a northbound freight over a wood pile trestle at Smith Cove on the Thames River near Quaker Hill Connecticut circa 1952

A Central Vermont 2-8-0 leads a northbound general manifest over a wood-pile trestle at Smith Cove along the Thames River, near Quaker Hill, Connecticut, circa 1952. American-Rails.com collection. The New London end of the railroad sat on salt water. Steam after 1900 is the steam roster; this page is the company that ran it.

On this page: At a glance · October 1843 · June 26, 1848 · Vermont & Canada and the Smiths · South to New London · System map, 1941 · 900 miles, then 1896 · Grand Trunk and Canadian National · Ambassador and Montrealer · Steam and diesel · 1995, and New England Central

At a glance

The Central Vermont Railway logo. Author’s work.

Item	Detail
Railroad	Vermont Central Rail Road (1843); Central Vermont Railroad (after 1873); Central Vermont Railway (1898); Central Vermont Railway, Inc. (1929)
Charter	Vermont General Assembly, October 1843
Opened	Bethel–White River Junction, June 26, 1848
Headquarters	St. Albans, Vermont (shops and offices). Grand Trunk / Canadian National ownership from Montreal
Dates of operation	June 26, 1848–February 1995
Gauge	4 ft 8½ in
Route miles	470 (1933)
States / province	Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York (Rouses Point); Quebec
Principal lines	Montreal–St. Albans–White River Junction; White River Junction–East Northfield, Mass. (Boston & Maine trackage rights, 1900–1988); East Northfield–New London, Conn.; East Northfield–Greenfield, Mass.; Montpelier Junction–Montpelier–Barre; Essex Junction–Burlington; St. Albans–Richford; St. Albans–Rouses Point
Reporting mark	CV
Grand Trunk control	Two-thirds of the stock, 1898. Into Canadian National January 20, 1923
Successor	RailTex / New England Central, February 1995. RailAmerica 2000. Genesee & Wyoming 2012
Rosters	Steam (built since 1900) · All-time diesel

1933 mileage is the live Official Guide-era plant. Headquarters is the St. Albans office and shop complex. Information compiled September 17, 2026.

Charles Paine, Timothy Follett, and October 1843

Northern Vermont wanted a way to Boston that did not freeze. Canals were the 1820s answer, and nobody could finance a ditch over the Green Mountains. By the 1830s the railroad was the cheaper idea. Two promoters came forward with money and a route. Charles Paine wanted iron up the White River from White River Junction, through his hometown of Northfield, then west down the Onion River—today the Winooski—to Lake Champlain at Burlington. Timothy Follett wanted a line west from the Connecticut River through Mount Holly to Rutland, then north along the lake, and he wanted it because he already ran steamboats. Those two ideas became Vermont’s two railroads.

The Vermont General Assembly incorporated both in October 1843: the Vermont Central Rail Road for Paine, the Champlain & Connecticut River Rail Road for Follett. Follett’s company took the name Rutland & Burlington in November 1847. After bankruptcy it became the Rutland Railroad on July 9, 1867. The two men became rivals and stayed that way for a generation.

Bethel to Burlington, 1848–1849

Groundbreaking on the Vermont Central was in 1845. The first section opened Bethel to White River Junction on June 26, 1848. Northfield saw its first train on October 10. Windsor, fourteen miles down the Connecticut from White River Junction, opened February 13, 1849. Montpelier came on June 10, not on the through main but on a branch from Montpelier Junction—the hills would not give Paine a straight shot at the capital. Burlington opened December 31, 1849.

That was only the start of Follett’s trouble. For the rest of the century the Vermont Central boxed the Rutland & Burlington at almost every junction that mattered.

Vermont & Canada, Essex Junction, and the Smiths

John Smith of St. Albans chartered the Vermont & Canada Railroad on October 31, 1845 to carry Paine’s idea north: Burlington toward St. Albans and Swanton, then west to Rouses Point, New York, and a connection with the Northern Railroad of New York, later the Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain. The Vermont Central leased the Vermont & Canada on August 24, 1849. The connection with the Vermont Central opened in 1850 at Essex Junction, a few miles east of Burlington. Burlington sat on a branch. The point was to starve the Rutland of a useful interchange. Duplicate stations and duplicate track followed. Paine would not connect.

Paine lost the railroad in 1852 when Smith took it on a contract. Smith had no more interest in the Rutland than Paine had. The Rutland & Burlington went into bankruptcy around the same time and Follett left the business. The legislature, and an irritated public, forced an interchange at Burlington in 1858. The connection was in place by 1860. The hatred cooled. It never quite died.

Smith died in 1858. His son, J. Gregory Smith, took the Vermont Central and started buying. A Montreal & Vermont Junction subsidiary, formed in 1860, opened later in the decade from Swanton to St. Johns, Quebec, and the Grand Trunk into Montreal. The Sullivan County Railroad, Windsor to Bellows Falls, came in 1863. The long fight with the Rutland ended, on paper, on December 30, 1870, when the Vermont Central leased it. John Page had made the Rutland a real competitor from 1868; Smith had had enough of that.

South to New London

The rest of the south end arrived with the Rutland lease or just beside it. The Vermont Valley, Bellows Falls to Brattleboro, had been under the Rutland since May 1865. A piece of the Vermont & Massachusetts, leased by the Rutland on December 1, 1870, carried the Vermont Central to Grout’s Corners (Millers Falls), Massachusetts. The New London Northern, acquired about the same time, put the railroad on Long Island Sound at New London, with steamship service toward New York. The original Vermont & Massachusetts main north of Millers Falls is a Fitchburg story after 1874; this page keeps the piece that became Central Vermont.

In 1876 the Vermont Central dropped the Sullivan County and Vermont Valley leases and took trackage rights instead over the Connecticut River Railroad, later Boston & Maine. From 1900 until 1988 the Central Vermont used those rights from East Northfield, Massachusetts, to White River Junction. The Vermont main and the Massachusetts–Connecticut main were never a single piece of CV iron. The gap sat on the Boston & Maine.

System map, 1941

1941 system map of the Central Vermont Railway from Montreal to New London

A 1941 system map of the Central Vermont Railway. Author’s collection. Montreal at the top, New London at the bottom, the Boston & Maine gap on the Connecticut River in between.

Nine hundred miles, the Panic, and 1896

In March 1870 the Vermont Central took the 118-mile Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain, Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence to Rouses Point. Shaughnessy puts the moment: the largest railroad in New England, more than 900 miles, plus two steamship lines. That was the peak. The Rutland lease cost more than it returned. The Panic of 1873 did the rest.

The Vermont Central dropped the Whitehall & Plattsburgh and the Montreal & Plattsburgh, and the Lake Champlain steamer Oak Ames. It still went into reorganization that year and came out as the Central Vermont Railroad, Smith still president. The new company kept the Rutland and the Ogdensburg line and renewed the lease in 1890. Edward Curtis Smith, J. Gregory’s son, took the presidency in 1891.

Another panic in 1893, and the same high rentals, put the Central Vermont into bankruptcy in March 1896. It emerged in 1898 as the Central Vermont Railway, rid of the Rutland and the Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain. The Grand Trunk Railway took two-thirds of the stock. It never let go.

Grand Trunk, the Titanic, and the 1927 flood

Drury’s steam chapter opens on that 1898 date: after decades of financial ups and downs, the Central Vermont came under Grand Trunk control. The main ran from the north end of Lake Champlain southeast across Vermont to the Connecticut at White River Junction, south along the river to the Massachusetts line (partly on the Boston & Maine), then southeast again to tidewater at New London, with a few branches and a Boston interchange at White River Junction. South of East Northfield the Connecticut River line was branch-line in character. That is the railroad the photographs remember.

The Grand Trunk became part of Canadian National when the government took the company on January 20, 1923. From then on the Central Vermont was a trunk-line arm: about 325 miles Montreal to New London, plus short branches to Rouses Point and Richford, still lettered CV and still run from St. Albans.

Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Trunk, made one last try at a railroad that did not need Boston & Maine rights. He formed the Southern Vermont Railway to close that gap, and started a nearly 200-mile extension from Palmer, Massachusetts, toward Providence. Hays died in the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. The extension died with him.

The November 1927 flood put the railroad into bankruptcy again. It emerged in 1929 as Central Vermont Railway, Inc. Edward Smith resigned in 1932. That ended seventy years of the family name on the letterhead.

Ambassador, Montrealer, and the freight that paid

Through passengers were a three- and five-railroad problem. The Ambassador / New Englander was Boston–Montreal, Boston & Maine and Central Vermont iron. The Montrealer / Washingtonian was the overnight from Washington: Pennsylvania, New Haven, Boston & Maine Springfield–White River Junction, Central Vermont, Canadian National. Those trains have their own pages. The U-1-a Mountains that took them north of White River Junction are the steam roster.

Freight was milk, lumber, furniture, agriculture, and less-than-carload merchandise between New England and Canada. World War II filled the yards. After the war Canadian National pulled its Quebec trackage north of Alburgh and ran to Montreal on its own rails. In 1958 the Central Vermont sold the lines east of Montpelier Junction and abandoned 8.3 miles, Alburgh to Rouses Point. The Rutland, the old rival, shut down after a strike in September 1960.

Steam until 1957, then Geeps

The Central Vermont was the last New England railroad to dieselize. Steam was still at work in early 1957, after the New Haven and the Boston & Maine had already begun replacing first-generation diesels. The last Central Vermont steam run was April 4, 1957: 4-8-2 no. 602 on a freight. On May 20 that year two Canadian National 4-8-4s took extra sections of the Montrealer from White River Junction to Montreal. The class-by-class record after 1900—Consolidations, the ten 2-10-4s, the four Mountains—is the steam roster.

Alco switchers arrived in 1942. RS-3s and RS-11s, then Electro-Motive GP9s in 1956–57, finished steam. GP38ACs from Grand Trunk Western came in 1971. The green-and-yellow Geep is the locomotive the photographs remember. Unit-by-unit is the diesel roster.

Grand Trunk Corporation, and February 1995

On July 31, 1971, Canadian National folded its United States properties under the Grand Trunk Corporation: Grand Trunk Western, Central Vermont, Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific. From then on the Central Vermont was mostly a paper company. Locomotives wore CV lettering in the parent’s script. Don L. Hofsommer’s Grand Trunk Corporation is that chapter.

In early 1995 Canadian National sold the property to RailTex. Operations passed to the New England Central Railroad by February 6. RailAmerica bought RailTex in 2000. Genesee & Wyoming bought RailAmerica in 2012. New England Central still runs nearly 400 miles on the old Central Vermont, including the former Boston & Maine Connecticut River trackage the CV had only held as rights. Amtrak’s Vermonter uses the same iron. The shops at St. Albans are still a railroad office. The paper company of 1898 is not.

Sources

Hartley, Scott. “Central Vermont…A Survivor.” Trains, February 1991. Openings 1848–49; southern extensions; 1900–1988 Boston & Maine rights
Shaughnessy, Jim. The Rutland Railroad. October 1843 charters; Paine and Follett; 900-mile zenith
Drury, George H. Guide to North American Steam Locomotives, revised edition, p. 103. Grand Trunk control 1898; last steam April 4, 1957
Hofsommer, Don L. Grand Trunk Corporation: Canadian National Railways in the United States, 1971–1992. Grand Trunk Corporation July 31, 1971; CV as a U.S. paper company
Clegg, Anthony, and Ray Corley. Canadian National Steam Power. 1969
American-Rails.com: Canadian National (Grand Trunk January 20, 1923; IPO November 17, 1995); New England Central (RailTex February 1995); Boston & Maine; Rutland; Ambassador / New Englander; Montrealer / Washingtonian