The Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad is a

heritage railroad A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

that operates on Aquidneck Island,

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

. It was formed in 2014-15 from the merger of the for-profit Newport Dinner Train and the nonprofit Old Colony and Newport Scenic Railway.

History

Scheduled passenger service between

Fall River, Massachusetts Fall River is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The City of Fall River's population was 94,000 at the 2020 United States Census, making it the tenth-largest city in the state. Located along the eastern shore of Mount H ...

and

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New Yor ...

on the Newport Secondary ended in 1938, and the

New Haven Railroad The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad , commonly known as The Consolidated, or simply as the New Haven, was a railroad that operated in the New England region of the United States from 1872 to December 31, 1968. Founded by the merger of ...

and its successors never made large profits from freight service on the line.

Penn Central The Penn Central Transportation Company, commonly abbreviated to Penn Central, was an American class I railroad that operated from 1968 to 1976. Penn Central combined three traditional corporate rivals (the Pennsylvania, New York Central and the ...

attempted to abandon the line in 1973; three years later, Conrail took over the line and sold the southern section to the state. The state in turned leased its section to the nonprofit, volunteer-run Old Colony and Newport Scenic Railway. The railroad operated with two GE 45-ton switchers (#84 and #4764) and a volunteer-owned Porter-built 50-ton centercab switcher (#7349). Passenger stock included an ex- Boston and Maine Railroad coach (#74) built in 1904 by the Laconia Car Company and an 1884 (?) parlor car (#73) built as an office car for the Intercolonial Railway in the Maritimes of Canada. An ex- Pennsylvania Railroad N5B caboose and an ex- Southern Railway flatcar were used for work equipment. The Sakonnet River rail bridge was damaged in 1988 and removed in 2007, isolating the line from the national rail network. Despite this, the for-profit Newport Dinner Train began sharing the line in 1997, offering

dinner train A dinner train is a relatively new type of tourist train service whose main purpose is to allow people to eat dinner while experiencing a relatively short, leisurely round trip train ride. This contrasts with conventional passenger trains, whose ma ...

s and other tourist-based operations. The relationship between the two operators, which had to share the primarily single-track line, was at times rocky. The Newport Dinner Train began using ex- Branford Steam Railroad

GE 44-ton switcher The GE 44-ton switcher is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Electric between 1940 and 1956. It was designed for industrial and light switching duties, often replacing steam locomotives that had previously been assigned thes ...

#6 for motive power in 2006; it was brought to the island by a barge. The railroad also owned two dining cars (one ex-

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was a United States Class I railroad formed in 1900, though predecessor railroads had used the ACL brand since 1871. In 1967 it merged with long-time rival Seaboard Air Line Railroad to form the Seaboard Coast L ...

, the other ex-Pennsylvania Railroad) and an ex-

Long Island Railroad The Long Island Rail Road , often abbreviated as the LIRR, is a commuter rail system in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of New York, stretching from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County on Long Island. With an average week ...

parlor car. In October 2006, the railroad purchased two former Wilton Scenic Railroad

Budd RDC The Budd Rail Diesel Car, RDC, Budd car or Buddliner is a self-propelled diesel multiple unit (DMU) railcar. Between 1949 and 1962, 398 RDCs were built by the Budd Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The cars were primarily adop ...

s. By early 2013, the dinner train operation was offered for sale. It was sold in November 2014 and rebranded as the Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad Company. The Old Colony and Newport ceased operations in early 2015 and eventually merged into the Newport and Narragansett Bay.

Equipment

Locomotives

Rolling stock

*Dining Car Aquidneck Spruce *Theater Car Atlantic Rose *Dashing Dan's Clam Car *Kitchen Bellevue Clipper

References

External links

*https://trainsri.com/ official website {{Rhode Island railroads Heritage railroads in Rhode Island Transportation in Newport County, Rhode Island Tourist attractions in Newport County, Rhode Island 2014 mergers and acquisitions Railway companies established in 2014