The railways that made up the Northeastern District of the Trust’s railway network originally had a wide variety of passenger services, but with the expansion of all-weather highways that service, like it did everywhere else, gradually evaporated down to nothing.
The last PV&T intercity passenger service in the United States ended when Amtrak was created in 1971 (the Parsons Vale bought into Amtrak, which then decided to not continue the PV&T’s Portland & Boston to Montréal trains), while the last LT&L trains (Ottawa to ville de Québec) were transferred to VIA Rail Canada, which discontinued them when VIA’s budget was cut in 1989.
PV&T commuter trains (operated by the MBTA post 1985) from Boston Lowell lasted until 1992, when the MBTA stopped running on the PV&T in favor of increasing service on the parallel ex-Boston & Maine rail network.
But soon after the ending of this last commuter service, there was a mysterious resurrection of passenger traffic;
In 1993, the LT&L purchased the bulk of the CAR, which had VIA’s Atlantic running on it between Sherbrooke & St Johns. At the time of the purchase, VIA was restricted by law to operate only on CPR & CNR trackage, which so disgusted the new owners that they took back operation of the train on that line (operating the Atlantic as a joint train with VIA) until Parliament amended VIA’s governing law to allow trains on LT&L rails as well.
After this small (and successful, in the context of the hole in the water than you shovel money into, operation of) project of running passenger trains, the PV&T decided that they wanted to have passenger trains running on their railway again. And, in 1996, in cooperation with the transport agencies in Québec, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, Amtrak agreed to start running a (state & PV&T subsidized) Boston-Montréal service (named the Alouette in honor of the long-vanished B&M train of that name) along PV&T rails.
(Amtrak’s Adirondack operates on the Delaware & Hudson north of Albany, of course, but that was – and continues to be – a purely trackage rights agreement and does not involve the Trust at all.)
These two – three if you want to count the D&H – services continue to operate in 2026, as well as a handful of commuter operations on the P&W, Old Colony, and CSS&SB – but in the last 2010s the Trust started to underwrite various other demonstration services as well.
In 2003, the MBTA started operating commuter trains on the SLR’s line from Needham, MA to Woonsocket, RI, using the MBTA’s first orders of EMUs instead of diesels (the SLR offered much better terms if the MBTA would only operate electrics on the line.)
In 2015, the LT&L (a) built a pair of high speed rail trainsets to run corridor services between Ottawa & ville de Québec in a (successful) attempt to coax VIA into providing service on the north shore of the Saint-Laurent, and (b) started running ski & tourist trains on the Chemin de fer Charlevois between ville de Québec & La Malbaie.
In 2021, the TSR, after purchasing the stub of the Orangeville Brampton Railway, started running – in the middle of the plague! – a demonstration commuter service between Brompton and a connection with GO Transit at Dixie.
And in 2024, the PV&T, B&Q, and BAR got together and set up a demonstration passenger service between Portland & Brownville Junction (Portland/Brunswick/Augusta/Bangor/Brownville Junction), which started operation in 2026 (The plan for this is to have the state of Maine co-subsidize it and for Amtrak to operate it as part of its network, but they are both standing back to see what sort of ridership materializes.)