Here's a photo I took on September 03, 2017, SEVEN YEARS AGO, of a special Conway Scenic Railway train that operated from North Conway, NH to Whitefield, NH. Trips to Whitefield are pretty rare and, after recently looking at this tourist railroad's website, I don't see a mention of any, although we are going into the off-season.

This whole region of New England has lost a lot of its active railroad mileage over the last half century as the local economy has lost many industries that used to ship by rail, such as paper mills, and have been replaced by industries that pretty much don't ship by rail, such as Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream.

This is a historic crossing of two railroads and was pretty much the reason why this special train ventured to Whitefield. This was where the Maine Central's Mountain Division, that ran from Portland, ME to St. Johnsbury, VT, crossed the Boston and Maine's line that ran from Wells River, VT to Berlin, NH. A historic ball signal indicated which railroad had the right-of-way. One raised ball gave B&M trains authority and two raised balls gave MEC trains authority. This was where the term "high ball" came from. This crossing was not really an "interlocking" that I can see. All trains had to stop until they could interpret the positioning of the balls by day or lanterns by night.

The Conway Scenic Railway and the New Hampshire Central operate over some of the track in this region but a tremendous amount has been abandoned or railbanked and it's anyone's guess, over the long term, whether the railbanking will have been worth the effort.

I recently followed the MEC line to St. Johnsbury on GOOGLE Streetview and much of the track and highway crossing signals are still there, but you can hardly see the track anymore due to intense foliage.

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Here are a couple of YouTube videos of the train my friend Mark Metz and I rode, shot by some other railfans.

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