A Virtual Event with Curator Shawn Harrington and railroad expert Bill Badger in Collaboration with Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning. To register go to https://greenmtnacademy.org/program-list/15/history

Local historian G. Murray Campbell wrote in 1961: “There was a time when echoes of the whistles of three separate railroads could be heard in the daily life of Manchester.” First was the Western Vermont Railroad, later known as the Bennington & Rutland. The other two have long since become silent. The Manchester, Dorset & Granville (MD&G) ran five miles of railroad from Manchester Depot to the South Dorset quarries. The Rich Lumber Company, which felled large spruce stands up Lye Brook and around Bourne Pond and Bourne Brook from 1914 – 1919, operated a bustling logging railroad with 16 miles of standard gauge track. Material in the Manchester Historical Society archives has turned up a fourth rail operation. Although not a common carrier railroad, a Manchester lumber mill strung some wire and ran a small electric rail line on their property.