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AlexG55 t1_jcydvgn wrote

Reply to comment by WinstonAtlas in What will the future of Vermont ski towns look like? by The_Idealist_Realist

There's an active railroad that goes through Okemo ski resort, with chairlifts and bridges with ski trails going over it. It doesn't have passenger service at the moment- I sometimes daydream about whether it would be possible to run a sleeper service there from New York.

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Loosh_03062 t1_jcylegy wrote

Unlikely, considering the once-daily-each-direction Vermonter doesn't (outside of major problems)) do overnight6 runs and doesn't have sleeper cars in the consist. The closest it gets to Okemo is Bellows Falls and the best anyone could hope for would be a shuttle bus making the trip up and down 103 to connect to the Amtrak route. Even Killington doesn't justify more than a shuttle from Rutland when the Ethan Allen goes through. I don't think anyone sees enough potential return on investment from building a Jackson Gore station, upgrading the infrastructure, and conning anyone into running scheduled passenger service.

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AlexG55 t1_jcyuu5o wrote

This would have to be a private excursion-charter service like they have in Europe (for instance there's a weekly sleeper from the Netherlands to the Alps in winter which isn't a regular scheduled service and isn't run by a normal operator).

Sadly I think the financial and regulation environment in the US make it impractical to run something like that at a price people would pay.

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WinstonAtlas t1_jd62ao8 wrote

I think you could justify running extended Empire Corridor train per day past Okemo in the winter, if it wasn’t too expensive to upgrade the tracks. Definitely a limited amount of people to use it and it’s a small resort. But maybe it would grow with a promise of rail service.

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