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WinstonAtlas t1_jcw22xy wrote

I hope we can learn from some other rural tourist dependent places and build a little bit of rail accessible travel.

Having a smol train come once an hour on some single track mountain lines, like is done to serve ski towns in Switzerland or Japan, could really take the toll off of rural roads that get overwhelmed with tourists during peak seasons. More walkable towns with 5-7 story buildings where both locals and tourists can afford to stay, and less $30 per day parking spaces in the mountains.

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HayrideTrail t1_jcxn029 wrote

So you want to build a train station, parking., access roads, an electric catenary, a power sub station and put this on an easement built through town with flashing safety lights. Is this the idea?

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WinstonAtlas t1_jd62uo7 wrote

I think you’d avoid creating new lines. See what you can serve with existing rail ROW, and if some resort investor wants to bring it to Stowe, then you could think about what the best alignment is. Generally you want to avoid going through towns, because eminent domain is expensive

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HayrideTrail t1_jd7ttqm wrote

Existing rail right of ways either don’t exist or have been converted to bike paths. This is true through-out New England and elsewhere. Rail had its day in the mid 1800s.

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AlexG55 t1_jcydvgn wrote

There's an active railroad that goes through Okemo ski resort, with chairlifts and bridges with ski trails going over it. It doesn't have passenger service at the moment- I sometimes daydream about whether it would be possible to run a sleeper service there from New York.

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Loosh_03062 t1_jcylegy wrote

Unlikely, considering the once-daily-each-direction Vermonter doesn't (outside of major problems)) do overnight6 runs and doesn't have sleeper cars in the consist. The closest it gets to Okemo is Bellows Falls and the best anyone could hope for would be a shuttle bus making the trip up and down 103 to connect to the Amtrak route. Even Killington doesn't justify more than a shuttle from Rutland when the Ethan Allen goes through. I don't think anyone sees enough potential return on investment from building a Jackson Gore station, upgrading the infrastructure, and conning anyone into running scheduled passenger service.

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AlexG55 t1_jcyuu5o wrote

This would have to be a private excursion-charter service like they have in Europe (for instance there's a weekly sleeper from the Netherlands to the Alps in winter which isn't a regular scheduled service and isn't run by a normal operator).

Sadly I think the financial and regulation environment in the US make it impractical to run something like that at a price people would pay.

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WinstonAtlas t1_jd62ao8 wrote

I think you could justify running extended Empire Corridor train per day past Okemo in the winter, if it wasn’t too expensive to upgrade the tracks. Definitely a limited amount of people to use it and it’s a small resort. But maybe it would grow with a promise of rail service.

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