Colrain is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,606 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
A handcar is a railroad car powered by its passengers, or by people pushing the car from behind. It is mostly used as a railway maintenance of way or mining car, but it was also used for passenger service in some cases. A typical design consists of an arm, called the walking beam, that pivots, seesaw-like, on a base, which the passengers alternately push down and pull up to move the car.
Route 112 is a 54.11-mile-long (87.08 km) rural state highway through western Franklin and Hampshire Counties. It begins at U.S. Route 20 in Huntington and ends at the Vermont state line in Colrain, where it continues as Vermont Route 112.
Amherst is a former intercity rail station located in Amherst, Massachusetts. The station was built by the Amherst and Belchertown Railroad in 1853; it was served by the Central Vermont Railway until 1947. Amtrak service began in 1989 with the Montrealer; it was replaced by the Vermonter in 1995. The station was closed on December 28, 2014, when the Vermonter was rerouted to the faster Connecticut River Line to the west.
The Wason Manufacturing Company was a maker of railway passenger coaches and streetcars during the 19th and early 20th century. The company was founded in 1845 in Springfield, Massachusetts by Charles Wason (1816-1888) and Thomas Wason (1811-1870). Although the concept would later be popularized by the Pullman Company, Wason was the first to manufacture sleeping cars in America.
Streetcars or trolley(car)s were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail. Today, only Toronto still operates a streetcar network essentially unchanged in layout and mode of operation.
Mohawk Trail Regional School is a school located on Route 112 in Buckland, Massachusetts, United States. The public school currently serves grades 7–12 for nine towns: Ashfield, Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Hawley, Heath, Plainfield, Rowe and Shelburne.
The Shelburne Falls and Colrain Street Railway was a rural trolley line that operated in the western Massachusetts towns of Buckland, Shelburne and Colrain from late 1896 to late 1927. Interchange was with the Boston and Maine Railroad and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad at the south end of the line at the Boston and Maine's Shelburne Falls station, which was on the Buckland side of the village.
The Bridge of Flowers is in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, connecting the towns of Shelburne and Buckland. The seasonal footbridge – once a trolley bridge – has a garden of flowers covering it. It is only open between April and October.
The American Flyer was an early streamlined American passenger railcar built by Pullman-Standard in the 1930s. They were the first streamlined equipment operated in New England and acquired their name from the model trains that their design inspired.
The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.
The Holyoke Street Railway (HSR) was an interurban streetcar and bus system operating in Holyoke, Massachusetts as well as surrounding communities with connections in Amherst, Belchertown, Chicopee, Easthampton, Granby, Northampton, Pelham, South Hadley, Sunderland, Westfield, and West Springfield. Throughout its history the railway system shaped the cultural institutions of Mount Tom, being operator of the mountain's famous summit houses, one of which hosted President McKinley, the Mount Tom Railroad, and the trolley park at the opposite end of this funicular line, Mountain Park.
The GE 25-ton switcher is a model of diesel-electric switcher locomotive that was produced by GE Transportation at their Erie, Pennsylvania, facility between 1941 and 1974. Most examples were produced for industrial customers or the United States Armed Forces, although a number of examples were purchased by freight railroads as well. The majority of production was for customers in the United States and Canada, but export models were produced for buyers on five continents. Production totaled approximately 550 units over 33 years, making it one of the most widely produced switchers in American history.
The Manchester Street Railway was a light interurban railway that ran from Manchester to Nashua, New Hampshire.
The Springfield Electric Railway, affectionately referred to as the Toonerville Trolley, was an electric trolley system that operated in the city of Springfield, Vermont. The railway, which later became the Springfield Terminal Railway, was initially funded by the city in 1896 with the aim of establishing connections to the railroads passing through Charlestown, New Hampshire, across the Connecticut River. Eventually, the Boston and Maine Railroad gained control of the railway. While the trolley service ceased operations in 1947, making it the longest-running trolley in the state at that time, freight usage of the tracks ended in 1984. The Springfield Terminal name continues to exist as a subsidiary of Pan Am Railways which is now owned by CSX.
