The M&WR covered bridge formerly over the Winooski River as seen on the White Mountain Central RR in 2003.

Granite City Extra

We then headed back east through Montpelier, crossing over the Onion River and Main Street at grade (and making a brief stop to roust the owner of an errant parked car fouling the track), just north of the former Montpelier & Wells River headquarters building and passenger station, still sporting its south-side passenger awning after all these years. The old M&WR - Barre & Chelsea - Montpelier & Barre shop area has been rather gentrified and is virtually unrecognizable as a former railroad yard except for an out-of­service turntable nestled between two clapboarded former railroad buildings. The turntable awaits a new use in the park-like area along the riverbank where the old enginehouse and shops building once stood before it burned.

Still on the right-of-way of the ex-CV Williamstown/Barre branch, we crossed the Winooski River twice on our way to Barre Transfer, the junction point with the old Montpelier & Wells River Railroad. About a half mile of the M&WR main line remains in place east of the junction, awaiting a new customer to locate there. In the meantime it is used for railcar storage. At MP 3.5 our passengers could look east just a few yards to see the stone abutments for the ex - MW &R covered bridge over the Winooski. The bridge was disassembled and moved in the late 1950's to a site very familiar to many of us: it now shudders to the rattling steam-powered trains of the White Mountain Central Railroad in Lincoln, NH.