Beyond Coalbridge Street…

Coalbridge Street was always conceived as the small yard terminus of the Wantage Terminal Company, but quite where Ballard or Wantage were located was deliberately obscure. In recent months I’ve studied maps of New England and talked at length with good friend Chris as we piece together the clues to where this characterful shortline existed… If you study a map of Northern New Hampshire you’ll find the mill town of Berlin, and the Boston and Maine served the town via a line across northern New Hampshire via a town called Jefferson. Roughly half way between Berlin and Jefferson can be found the small village of Ballard, where the Wantage Terminal plied it’s trade, serving the small town of Wantage and connecting its people and industry to the rest of the country via those two iron ribbons.Of course we know that even in the 1940s the Wantage Terminal was on borrowed time, and by the late 60s the original company folded. The line was bought by a local Co-operative who incorporated the…