November 2025 Wheel Report
By Brian Solomon
Photos by Mike Lacey plus Santa’s Holiday Express photo by Chelsea Hupalowsky
Autumn keeps Right on Rolling
The 2025 Autumn season has continued with daily operations up through Veterans Day. In addition to four-daily Valley train schedules running between North Conway and Conway, the Mountaineer to Crawford has continued running on Saturdays and Tuesdays and has carried large numbers of visitors over the Mountain Division. Among the railroad’s autumn events was the new Halloween Express, which operated on October 18th & 19th and 25th & 26th. This was an on-board train experience with actors playing a variety of seasonally appropriate characters to delight young visitors. This effectively replaced the railroad’s October-scheduled Pumpkin Patch Express that had involved guests disembarking at Conway to collect pumpkins and explore outdoor displays. The new offering has a variety of benefits, including the ability for the railroad to continue to operate its normal Valley schedule instead of introducing a temporary schedule to allow for the extended Conway-layover. This enables the railroad to run more weekend trains which contributes to high late-autumn ridership. Conway Scenic accommodated both Valley train and Halloween Express ticketed passengers on board its North Conway-Conway excursion during the course of the event. Ridership throughout the season was robust.
Working on the Railroad
Following Veterans Day, the railroad enters a momentary quiet period before ramping up again for the Christmas season. This offers some needed time to make repairs, perform routine maintenance and recover from the autumn crush. Among other activities, the railroad operated a work train on Thursday November 13th with former Maine Central GP38 255 and 12-wheel depressed center flatcar MEC999 to transport new ties from the North Conway yard to Bartlett, where they will be used to improve track conditions on the Mountain Division.
Winter Trains!
The days of the railroad completely shutting down during the colder months ended several years ago. As this is being written, Conway Scenic is gearing up for its Winter season. Following Veterans Day, retail trains (those open for public ticket sales) will largely be operating on weekends operations planned through early March. In addition, the railroad will be operating on Black Friday, on weekdays between Christmas and New Years, and during President’s Week in mid-February, plus trains scheduled select weekdays for charters and other special moves. This includes the annual evening charter operations for the Believe-in-Books Literacy Foundation’s ‘Journey to the North Pole’ holiday specials. This year the railroad will be operating its own weekend daytime Santa’s Holiday Express excursions that will feature an on-board event aimed at delighting young visitors. These popular trains board from the North Conway Station, departing at: 9:30 and 11:30am and 1:30pm. Since holiday trains tend to sell out in advance, the railroad advises guests interested in traveling to book tickets as early as possible to avoid disappointment. The Winter Mountaineer will begin operations from North Conway over Crawford Notch on Friday November 28th, and will run Saturdays and some Sundays through the end of February. This is a wonderful opportunity to experience Crawford Notch in the snow season from the comfortable confines of a streamlined passenger train. Snow Train operations to Conway will begin after Christmas, scheduled in place of Santa’s Holiday Express. In addition the railroad has more Murder on the Rails performances planned for later in the season.