All Aboard? One Group Leads a Rail Service Revival to Connect Aquidneck Island

The Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad Company have been thinking about what the future could hold for rail service linking Newport and Fall River.

“Looking at Aquidneck Island as a whole, especially Newport, it's at capacity, pretty much, especially with the two main roads that run the length of the Island, East and West Main Road,” Daniel Carlin explained to The Newport Daily News. 

“There's very little that we can do to increase capacity on those roads, so the only way you can really, you know, naturally get people, more people, on and off the island, and continue to develop the island sustainably would be with some alternative mode of transportation, like utilizing the rail corridor or passenger and freight transportation,” he said.

Carlin is a member of the board for the nonprofit Old Colony and Newport Railway. Since 1979, the organization has focused its efforts on preserving Aquidneck Island’s heritage rail service. In 2015, the group merged with the Newport Dinner Train company to become the Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad Company. Old Colony, however, still maintains its nonprofit conservation mission.

According to The Newport Daily News, volunteers with Old Colony began restoring the Newport Secondary track in 2018. They ultimately connected the rails at the Newport station to the rest of the Aquidneck Island tracks this year.

The newly reconnected railway also allowed the organization to create a public train excursion experience. That event occurred in July, bringing approximately 40 passengers from the small red station on America’s Cup Avenue in Newport along the 90-minute journey to Bayside Station in a 1950s train car. Following positive public response, the organization is planning another similar excursion for Sept. 14.

According to Carlin, the organization has intensified its community presence by attending transportation planning meetings and state and local summits. The group is now advocating to reconnect the Newport Secondary track to the national rail line through its original access point in Fall River.