The Cheshire Railroad

This line, which was built in 1845-1849, ran from South Ashburnham, MA to Bellows Falls, VT.  At its southeastern end, it connected with the Fitchburg Railroad and so into Boston.  At its northwestern end, it connected with both the Rultand (and so to Burlington) and the Vermont Central (to White River Jct).

Today, we were hiking at Little Monadnock, in Fitzwilliam, NH.  The access to the trail is through Rhododendron State Park.  I hadn't really done my homework before setting out and was unaware that we would be crossing the old right-of-way quite close to the park.  Fitzwilliam was one of the stops on the line.  The next one further North was at Troy.  This section of the map is currently on Google Maps but, as usual is hopelessly inaccurate.  Do they pay people to do such a bad job?  For whatever reason, their track ends about half a mile South of Rhododendron Road.

View Historic New England Railroads (NH - Southern) in a larger map
Therefore, I've drawn in the entire line between Winchendon and Bellows Falls (it's a kind of orange color).  I'll probably be going back to edit it a little, but it's fairly accurate.

Introduction

This is a blog about my railroading activities.  These are chiefly centered on my mapping efforts (to map all of the abandoned railroads of New England).  Here's the link to the railroad maps.  Occasionally, I might talk about walks (or bike rides) on rail trails, rides on actual trains, etc.  There are likely to be rants about the Google software that I use to do the mapping.  I suppose you can't expect much from something that's free!