Andrew Grahl/photos by the author
RAILFANS FROM AS FAR AWAY AS FLORIDA flocked trackside to record a bittersweet day, the last run of the Central New England Railroad (CNZR). On Wednesday, December 31, 2025, the railroad moved its last car, as operating rights over the state-owned line was trans-ferred to Genesee & Wyoming’s Connecticut Southern Railroad (CSOR) on the next day, January 1, 2026.
ABOVE: Railfans following the last Central New England Railroad train, CNE-2, capture GP9 3760 southbound at the Windsorville Road crossing in East Windsor, Connecticut, Wednesday, December 31, 2025. Railfans came from as far away as Florida to record this historical event.
CNZR had been in operation since 1995 on former Conrail trackage. The railroad had operating rights on two branches owned by Connecticut DOT; one from Hartford Union Station northward on the 8.7-mile Griffins Branch to Bloomfield, Connecticut. Part of the original Central New England Railway, this branch has not seen consistent rail traffic since the 2021 closure of a Home Depot facility in Bloomfield.
ABOVE: Central New England GP9 3760 has just returned to Scantic Yard from a round-trip to the the CSO interchange for the last time, Wednesday, December 31, 2025. The chop-nose Geep is passing some of the historic equipment on the line, including RS-1 30, originally from the Genesee & Wyoming, and later, the Cape Cod Railroad.
The second line, the East Windsor Hill Branch, is a 13.5-mile line from the interchange with Connecticut Southern at Sullivan Avenue in South Windsor, northward to the Massachusetts border, although the railroad didn’t operate much beyond their yard at the border of the Scantic and Broad Brook sections of East Windsor, Connecticut, a total of just four miles. This line, formerly the New Haven’s Armory Branch, was the last Central New England line to run on New Year’s Eve 2025. There are two customers remaining on this line that infrequently receive cars; Nutrien Ag Solutions, and a brick manufacturer that uses the railroad’s Scantic Yard for transloading.
ABOVE: LAST TRAIN ON CNZR – Central New England GP9 3760 leads southbound train CNE-2 with one empty hopper car from Nutrien Ag Solutions, departing the Scantic yard in this aerial view on Wednesday, December 31, 2025. This final train is framed with out-of-service RS-1 50, which came from the Washington Terminal.
The crew began showing up at the Scantic Yard around 9:15 a.m., and Assistant Conductor Nick Rodrigue placed a homemade sign proclaiming Central New England RR 1995-2025 on the front of the locomotive. Shortly after the engineer arrived, who also happened to be CNZR President Amedee Belliveau, train CNE-2, led by former New Brunswick Southern GP9 3760, started moving around the yard at 11:20 a.m. to pick up one final empty covered hopper car from Nutrien Ag Solutions in Scantic, adjacent to the yard. As the train departed south for the last time, approximately 15 railfans made the low-speed chase following the train to the Connecticut Southern Railroad interchange at Sullivan Avenue in South Windsor. Besides the large number of railfans chasing (one counted 18 at Sullivan Avenue), many locals stopped at crossings and asked what was going on, before parking and taking out their cell phones for photos…
