Enterprise Newspaper, Friday, October 6, 1950
Rail Car Again Replaces Trains For Fall Service
A rail car is operating again this winter on the Woods Hole branch, shuttling between Woods Hole and Buzzards Bay twice daily to carry out the New Haven Railroad’s announcement last month that “there will be no cancellation of train service throughout the entire system with the resumption of standard time service.”
A gasoline-powered car is put in place at the end of the summer schedule as a replacement for the diesel-drawn trains of the busy travel season. The car is slightly smaller than the one in use last year, and no extra car has been provided in case of heavy travel. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the car’s power would be enough to haul an extra car.
Passengers sit in two compartments, one for smokers and a larger one for general use, behind the baggage compartment, the space for the engine and the generator which supplies the power, and the engineer’s cab.
Although it starts and stops smoothly, the “gas buggy,” because it is lighter than a regular passenger coach, tends to bounce and sway when in motion, making reading more difficult than in a full train.
Woods Hole Train and Ferry Terminal Photo courtesy of the Woods Hole Historical Museum
Passengers from the islands boarding the train at Woods Hole, and from the Falmouth stations are carried to Buzzards Bay station in the car. There they must disembark and cross the platform to board the train to Boston from the middle Cape. Similarly, coming from Boston, passengers for Falmouth, Woods Hole and the islands get off the train at Buzzards Bay and transfer to the rail car to complete their trip. For most of the day, between the two weekday runs each way, the rail car lies in the Woods Hole yards.
Although West Falmouth, Cataumet and Monument Beach stops have been eliminated from the fall and winter schedule of the New Haven in the interests of speeding up service, Harold W. Austin of Pocasset has appealed successfully for a stop at the Monument Beach station by the morning train to Boston and the late afternoon train to Woods Hole.
