Photo of the Week: 12/9/2011

Today's photo was taken in April of last year, when I was living in Gilford. There was track work going on at Weirs Beach all winter, to be completed before the summer tourist season. I went up there every so often to photograph the work, and this is one photo I took not long before the work was finished. You can see the rail closest to the platform is spiked down, but the opposite rail still needs to be put into place. The platform, which is actually the boardwalk, has also been replaced in this photo. Here is the photo:

In the summer of 2008, a big rainstorm hit the area. A lot of water drained toward the lake, and brought the boardwalk and the ground underneath the track with it in one area. That section of the boardwalk was roped off, and dirt was replaced underneath the track, until something more permanent could be done. During the winter a year and a half later, they tore up the whole boardwalk, put in a retaining wall underneath it, rebuilt the boardwalk with that indestructible plastic decking stuff, and relaid the tracks with the same rail but brand new ties.

The boardwalk was built as a platform for the Boston & Maine, trains such as the Red Wing and Alouette once stopped here. When they were rerouted through White River Junction, this became the northern terminus for trains of RDCs coming from Boston in the winter, with Meredith, one stop north, being the terminus in the summer. B&M stopped running passenger trains in the 1960s, and today the only trains here are run by the tourist railroad.