Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 37, 2019

Bellows Falls station is an Amtrak intercity rail station in located in the Bellows Falls village of Rockingham, Vermont, United States. The station is served by the single daily round trip of the Washington, D.C.–St. Albans Vermonter. It has a single side platform adjacent to the single track of the New England Central Railroad (ex-Central Vermont) mainline. Three railroads were completed to Bellows Falls in 1849, followed by the Vermont Valley Railroad in 1851. This placed Bellows Falls at the junction of two major trunk lines. A two-story brick station was constructed in 1851 at the junction of the four railroads. After a number of mergers and leases over the next half-century, service was consolidated into three major railroads by 1900. The Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) and Central Vermont (CV) ran north-south service through Bellows Falls, while the B&M and Rutland Railroad collaborated on east-west traffic on the Boston–Montreal route via Bellows Falls. Much of the downtown area, including the train station, was destroyed in a 1921 fire; it was replaced in 1922–23 with a one-story brick building on the same site. Passenger service declined over the following decades, with all passenger service to Bellows Falls ending in 1966. In 1972, newly-created Amtrak restored the Washington, D.C.–Montreal Montrealer. Bellows Falls was served by the Montrealer from 1972 to 1987, and 1989 to 1995; since 1995 it has been served by the Vermonter. The station building and a circa-1880 Railway Express Agency (REA) building nearby were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as part of the Bellows Falls Downtown Historic District. The former REA building houses the offices of the Green Mountain Railroad.