BELLOWS FALLS — The Green Mountain Railroad Depot on the Island in Bellows Falls sits quietly until a freight train rumbles north on the tracks with loud clacks and clangs just outside the depot's western door.
People start to wander in. At the other side of the building, freight cars await, decorated with less than the usually elaborate graffiti, for a tow to the railyard across the river in Walpole, N.H., for repairs.
Two young visitors to the depot on a recent summer Friday struggle to find space on the world map that hangs on one wall, looking to place a brightly colored pushpin to show Pavia, Italy, their hometown.
The twentysomething Italian couple on a two-week visit to the East Coast, will tour as many railway stations in Vermont as they can.
“In Italy, they are so ancient,” Niccolo Lanati, a train-station aficinado, says in heavily accented English. “They are disappearing, being replaced with new.”
“It is his special interest,” his partner, Natasha Brondino, says. “We got a… umm…rental? …car? …in New York City. We are driving north to Burlington, and will stop at many [railroad] stations along the way.”
“It's very relaxing to go to a [train] station,” Lanati says. He loves to watch people in train stations. He prefers to do that than go to a bar or nightclub he insists.
In Italy, Brondino uses a passenger train to travel to and from her job, three hours south of Pavia. There, she stays with her parents during the work week and travels back to be with Lanati over the weekend.
On the other side of the sunny room, an older couple finds the United States map, struggling to find space for their pin to mark their hometown in Florida.
“We're headed over to Nashua [N.H.] tonight,” the woman says.
“She's the navigator,” her husband says, laughing.
The couple drove from Florida and have routes planned throughout Vermont, visiting all the major transportation and scenic highways and byways in the state.
The atmosphere in the station as visitors move through is friendly, welcoming.
“The original building was built in 1849,” acting stationmaster Gary Fox tells the Italians. “There was a second floor where the workers lived. The first depot burned in 1920 and was rebuilt in 1922.”
“Those are skylights,” he says, pointing up. “They had to be covered over with asphalt shingles because the roof was leaking.”
“That bench comes from South Station in Boston,” Fox says, pointing to one of the three wood benches in the lobby. “When they redid the station, they sent their wood benches to smaller stations throughout the country. This one is ours.”
Fox's office in the depot is the former ticketing office, and he views the lobby through the small ticket windows that still stand.
Jesse Lafleur, staffing the depot, offers friendly, polite and quiet enthusiasm, eliciting patience from Jesse Welch of Charlestown, N.H., as he books a bus ticket for him to Waterville, Maine.
“I want to travel the whole U.S.,” Welch says as he waits. “I've been in 20 states so far, all on the bus.”
Fox notes while helping Lafleur negotiate the Greyhound ticketing system that there was a time in New England when east-west travel was indirect, rough at best.
A train ride
On this late summer day, 220 passengers embark on the restored coaches of the Green Mountain Railroad's Green Mountain Flyer on a scenic tour along the Williams River.
As passengers see waterfalls, cool green swimming holes and covered bridges, a huge snapping turtle below a remote overpass slides awkwardly over the rocks into the water.
The Green Mountain Flyer offers trips to and from Chester Depot throughout the season. On this trip, several different groups - the Model-T Club, the American Girl Doll club and the remaining passengers - assemble in their respective dedicated coaches.
Pat Fowler, sponsor of the American Girl Doll Club train ride and owner of Village Square Booksellers in Bellows Falls, reads stories as little girls and their dolls, their parents and grandparents sit along either side of the car exclaiming at the scenery, and doing activities for the kids.
Many passengers from up and down the Eastern Seaboard reminisce about their family ties to the railroad.
Conductor Dave Peters comes up from Connecticut on his day off, where he is a Congregational minister, to work the train.
“My dad worked in a rail shop, and my brother works in a rail shop,” Peters said. “It's in my blood. My congregation loves that I come up here to get away.”
Peters' face is serene, and the passengers, young and old, greet him with smiles as he performs his ticketing duties with a friendly demeanor.
Six-year-old Molly Frost of Townshend, whose American Girl doll, Hannah, sits in the car window, travels the rail “once a year,” according to her mother. “We've done this every year since she was a baby,” she says.
Martie and Judy Wendell are on board with their granddaughters, 5-year-old Emily Scieskca of Clifton Park, N.Y., and 8-year-old Carly Mattice of Canton, N.Y.
The two girls and their three dolls, Kit, Mia and Kirsten, wear matching pink and purple gingham dresses hand sewn by Mrs. Wendell. “I share the sewing with them and teach them how it's done,” she said with a smile.
The girls, busy coloring and jabbering with one another, pay little attention to what passes outside.
Mr. Wendell, a lifetime train enthusiast, lists trains from up and down the Eastern seaboard on which he and his wife have travelled, going back to when their son was as young as their grandchildren.
“We took the last ride here in Steamtown [in Bellows Falls] before it was moved,” Wendell says.
Steamtown, a museum of steam trains was built in the 1960s by wealthy industrialist Nelson Blount. The Green Mountain Flyer's tourist trains evolved from the last vestiges of the museum left behind from its move to Scranton, Penn., in the mid-1980s.
“We rode it down there, too,” he adds with a smile.
In the unaffiliated riders' car, Debbie Momary of Hackettstown, N.J., said she takes train rides every year on her vacation, “usually in Gloucester [Mass.], but this year it's Vermont.”
Carly Simeon of Dummerston is celebrating an early birthday with her son and grandchildren on the train. “My grandchildren all just love Thomas the Train,” she says, smiling. “The trip is definitely a family thing.”
A Westchester, N.Y., father and his 24-year-old son, who now lives in Portland, Maine, are taking a long weekend to spend together.
Tony West says he and his son “love trains - there's not enough of them.”
Allen West smiles and admits that his love of trains is not as intense as his father's, but he enjoys them nevertheless.
“It's not where you're going, but how you get there,” Tony West notes.
Saxtons River residents Mitch Harrison and his 5-year-old daughter, Siri, are also on board.
“She has always been into toy trains,” Mitch says, grinning.
On this, her first train ride, Siri's blonde curls and elfin face barely peer over the windowsill of the car as she chimes, “I've got my own train set.”
“This is a real train and we can ride them,” Siri says.
“It's an old-fashioned train ride,” her father says.