In 2017, Nashua eagerly embraced an opportunity to build a rail stop for the newly formed Boston Surface Railroad. It was a planned for-profit passenger rail service with a dirty public money secret we exposed back in 2017.
I aired my discovery on The Girard at Large Radio Show in September 2017. The for-profit business and Nashua were all looking to tap into federal grants to make things happen. Your money for their commuter rail fantasy never came together even though Nashua kept piling funds into reports to make it look like it would be suitable for Nashua and the Granite State.
Neither is true, nor has it been, despite the continued effort to push for commuter rail up through the Manchester Concord Corridor. And Boston Surface Railroad is proof of a failed concept. They couldn’t even get their limited passenger rail idea off the ground.
On June 28, 2019, the Boston Surface Railroad Company was involuntarily dissolved for failure to file an annual report by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, though it was reinstated two months later after the delinquent reports were filed.[10]
On October 6, 2019, the company filed a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Hampshire.[11] At the time, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation had won an eviction case against the company that would have ousted it from its headquarters at the Woonsocket Depot.[12]
But wait, there’s more! They’ve not given up. The next barrier to success was…the pandemic. Yes, I can see that. Trying to operate in any New England State was difficult, especially if you didn’t have a business, especially in New Hampshire, after your filing was rejected.
BOSTON SURFACE RAILROAD COMPANY, INC. was registered on Jun 11 2018 as a foreign profit corporation type with the address 1 Depot Sq, Woonsocket, RI, 02895, USA . The business id is 796805. There are 3 officer records in this business. The agent name for this business is: Todd Stacy. The business status is Rejected now.
Rumor has it they plan to try their hand at bus service in 2022, but that’s also from Wikipedia, and I can’t confirm that. Nothing on their website except an email list building form and an alert that service is suspended due to the pandemic.
The pandemic is over, didn’t you hear? It means the website updates are suspended as well. Always a good sign.
But Dems just passed that inflation reduction bill that was little more than a green energy boondoggle bailout. Rail is integral to that planned failure, so maybe Boston Surface Railroad can grab a piece of that?
I know Nashua will be fishing for cash to write another 30-page report extolling the value of commuter rail even though a private company couldn’t make it work after nearly ten years of failing.
