- Ken PIcard ©️ Seven Days
- Ken Picard
This "backstory" is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2022.
When I started working at Seven Days 20 years ago, I noticed the Burlington rail yard right behind the office was busy with locomotives, tankers, flatbeds and boxcars arriving and departing every day. I thought, Now, there's a story waiting to be told.
Trains offer rich metaphors, and the English language is steeped in railroading terminology: jerkwater town; doubleheader; full head of steam; bells and whistles; getting sidetracked, derailed and railroaded; and, of course, the proverbial train wreck. I was astounded to discover that, despite the long history of railroads in Vermont, no one had ever written about the locally owned company that runs one.
Sometime in the mid-2000s, I walked into the Vermont Rail System headquarters on Burlington's waterfront and spoke to a very pleasant receptionist about my interest. I left my business card.
Related How Family-Owned Vermont Rail System Became the Little Economic Engine That Could
No one called, leaving me to assume that either VRS executives saw no benefit to a reporter sticking his nose up their cabooses or someone there had read my prior reporting on the railroad industry. In April 2001, while working for the now-defunct Missoula Independent, I wrote an investigative story called "Hopes Derailed," examining the mishandling of a 1996 train accident in Alberton, Mont. The wreck, then considered the worst chlorine spill in U.S. railroad history, forced the evacuation of more than 500 people, many of whom got injured without any compensation. The story was a scathing indictment of the railroad's safety record — decidedly not the kind of piece that would make me appear friendly to the communications department of another short-line railroad.
Then, in 2019, came a glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Nicole Carlson, daughter of VRS co-owner and CEO Dave Wulfson, emailed me and asked if I'd write a story about a VRS project: the Green Mountain Railroad's dinner train. Naturally, I did the interview, after which I pitched her the idea of writing an in-depth piece on her family's company. Carlson agreed to ask her father, but I never heard another word.
Fast-forward to this past summer and the return of passenger rail service between Burlington and New York City. While working on a profile of Melinda Moulton, the cofounder of Main Street Landing who had been instrumental in Amtrak's return, I mentioned to her my longtime desire to write about VRS. Moulton, who knows Wulfson well — her husband, Rick, serves on the Vermont Rail Advisory Council — vouched for me to Wulfson and VRS president Selden Houghton. Houghton wrote back, "Ken, feel free to reach out."
As I discovered, VRS wasn't being evasive; it just had little reason to speak to reporters.
"We're certainly not keeping a low profile on purpose," Wulfson said during an interview in August. "There's a lot of people that don't really understand what we do."
Like me, they do now.
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