The Snow Train — How the Railroad Brought Skiing to New England
Near North Conway, New Hampshire
In the early nineteen thirties, the Boston and Maine Railroad began running snow trains, dedicated weekend services carrying skiers from Boston's North Station to North Conway and other snow country. The idea was straightforward and almost immediately transformative. Pack a crowd of city dwellers into a heated railcar on Saturday morning, deliver them to the foot of the White Mountains, collect them exhausted and happy on Sunday afternoon.
The trains became enormously popular within a single season. By the mid-nineteen thirties, snow trains were running from other cities as well, delivering large crowds of skiers to the White Mountains each weekend. The railroads printed promotional posters, sold ski packages, and sometimes arranged for instructors to ride along and give lessons in the cars.
North Conway became one of the most fashionable winter destinations in the Northeast, not because skiing was already established here but because the trains made it accessible. The snow train era faded in the nineteen forties and fifties as automobile ownership spread and highways improved, but it had already set North Conway's identity as a winter sports town. The Mount Washington Valley's reputation as a skiing destination grew directly out of those weekend trains.
