EXETER, N.H. — Thirty-five years after regular passenger trains disappeared from southern New Hampshire, they are slated to rumble into town again this week, the Boston Globe reports.
This Friday, the Amtrak ”Downeaster” will make its inaugural 114-mile run from Boston to Portland, stopping to pick up VIPs in Haverhill, Mass., Exeter, N.H., and several other communities along the way.
And on Saturday, the new rail service will start four daily Boston-Portland round trips, stopping in Haverhill, Exeter and Dover N.H., and Wells, Maine. Also planned are weekend stops in Durham, N.H., and summer seasonal stops in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
New Hampshire rail advocate Robert L. Hall hails the Downeaster as the first passenger train service across the Massachusetts border to New Hampshire since 1965.
“Rail has a place in our future, not just our past,” said Hall, an Exeter High School special education teacher and board member of TrainRiders/Northeast, the nonprofit group that spearheaded the train’s comeback.
With northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire choking on their own traffic, passenger trains are key to helping solve some of the area’s environmental woes, said Hall.
“This country’s got to deal with mass transit,” said Hall, who also chairs the Exeter Station Committee. “Every car we take off the road helps cut down on emissions.”
Meanwhile, planners are looking into restoring more passenger rail routes to the region. This month marks the launch of a one-year study of reviving high-speed rail passenger service from Boston to Montreal, with possible stops in Woburn and Lowell in Massachusetts, and Nashua, Manchester, Concord, and Franklin in New Hampshire, and points north.
By 2005, daily MBTA service from Boston to Lowell is expected to extend to Nashua, relieving congestion on busy Route 3. A more tentative plan would extend MBTA service from Newburyport to Kittery, stopping in Portsmouth, Hampton, Seabrook, or Salisbury.
Yet another scheme would ferry passengers by rail from Haverhill across the border to Plaistow.
The idea of restoring service from Lawrence to Manchester got shelved earlier this year amid plans to widen Interstate 93 for the last time. But New Hampshire officials want to team up with Massachusetts to study future possibilities.
Peter Griffin, president of the 10-year-old New Hampshire Railroad Revitalization Association, said the new train service “will begin to address the needs of the universal industry of New England – tourism.”
“If people want to go Christmas shopping in Boston, this is the way to do it,” said Exeter selectman Paul Binette. “I don’t think they’ll find a place to park otherwise.”
Passenger rail service to New Hampshire had its heyday in the 1920s, when Granite Staters could ride all the way to Chicago by trolley, or hop on a train and get anywhere in the country. Then cars took over, fueled by cheap gas and the interstate highways that knifed across the landscape in the 1950s. Today, New Hampshire’s only surviving passenger train is an Amtrak ”Vermonter” that stops in Claremont, said Griffin.
Boosters hope the Downeaster’s comeback will change all that. Thirteen years in the planning, the new Portland-Boston service will run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Running up to 79 miles per hour, the nonsmoking trains will carry up to 230
passengers. They will offer gourmet food service and an electrical outlet for computer users.
The price of a round-trip from Exeter to Boston? $19. Said Hall: “That’s about the price of parking in Boston.”
One key question is whether the train will attract enough riders to stay in business. More than $50 million in public money was poured into new track and equipment. And the federal government plans to spend up to $2 million a year to subsidize the new service for three years.
The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which will run the new service, estimates that 320,000 tourists, day-trippers, businesspeople, and commuters will ride the new train the first year, a figure some have deemed too high.
But Griffin said, “Most rail projects do not pay for themselves. You have to look at the benefits …”
And a lifelong Exeter resident stopping for the football scores at Gerry’s Variety
and Trackside Cafe last week was upbeat.
“I think it’s going to work,” said William Lees, a retired utility company lineman, eyeing the new station stop where workers were rushing to finish a wheelchair ramp. “I can’t remember when the last train stopped here …”
The prospect of high-speed trains after decades of slow freight trains has raised some safety worries in the region. University of New Hampshire officials in Durham are scrambling to make sure students do not stray onto the tracks and get hurt.
Some also have raised fears of crime and excess development on the new train’s path. But Exeter town manager George Olson dismissed any crime fears as “a bit of a stretch.” As for development, he said, “we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Olson said the general mood in this historic community of 14,000 is ”giddy.”
“We’re all very excited,” he said. “… The advantages of train service far outweigh the fears.”
Hall, the rail advocate from Exeter, said the community was the first New Hampshire town to invest in its station stop. And when the new train rolls into town Friday, the tone will be festive.
Elementary school students will belt out a railroad ditty; the high school band will strike up a patriotic tune. And town VIPs will take a celebratory run to Portland for a toast with the likes of Maine Governor Angus King, and former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, acting chairman of Amtrak’s board of directors.