Vermont Rail System photo of new transload facility in Barton.
by CB Hall Vermont Business Magazine In collaboration with Troy's Couture Trucking, Burlington-based Vermont Rail System (VRS) has completed a new transload facility in Barton. The two companies will christen the new facility with an open house at noon on Thursday, December 8. The event, which will run until about 1:30, will feature light refreshments and a question-and-answer session about the facility. VRS will have its own vintage passenger coaches on hand in case attendees need to get out of the weather.
The facility occupies 80 acres three miles north of Barton village, at the railroad's crossing of May Farm Road. Construction began in 2014, when it became evident that an existing transload facility run by Couture down the railroad line in Lyndonville was operating at capacity.
The railroad in question is the Connecticut River branch of the Washington County Railroad, which is owned by the state. VRS operates the line as part of its statewide system, which encompasses about 325 miles.
“We're excited to have it operational,” VRS assistant vice president Selden Houghton said of the new facility.
“It allows us room for expansion and growth in the future,” Couture Trucking president Dwayne Couture said.
Couture's firm, which employs 26, primarily handles transportation of dry bulk goods, such as dairy feeds. The Barton facility will specialize in taking malted barley, shipped in from Wisconsin by rail, on to craft breweries around the Northeast.
With the burgeoning of microbreweries throughout the region, malted barley is a bigger deal than one might think. The Lyndonville facility, which the one in Barton will supplement, itself replaced an overloaded, initial facility in Orleans. All three have primarily handled the growing trade in the commodity.
VRS president David Wulfson expected the installation would handle four to six hundred railcar-loads yearly. He declined to discuss what cargoes, in addition to the barley, the facility might handle in the future. He anticipated that it would generate five to ten new jobs.
In contrast to Shelburne, where another VRS transload facility has encountered a storm of protest from the town and its citizens, officials in Barton have welcomed the development – support from the town's selectboard being unanimous, according to the board's chair, Robert Croteau. “It helps justify the expense to maintain the railroad,” he told VBM. “We think that it's good to keep the railroad as busy as it can be.”