New England Southern Railroad
Recognizing the need of the on-line customers and the potential of the line for a sewer right-of-way, the State of New Hampshire purchased the branch and sought a shortline railroad to carry out operations.
Dearness had originally imagined this new railroad as a shortline system with operations only in Western Massachusetts, before learning of the NH White Mountain Branch situation, for which he submitted a bid.
The railroad made regular trips to Rochester Shoe Tree in Ashland, Quin-T Corp. in E. Tilton, Blue Seal Feeds in Plymouth, Gerrity Lumber in Meredith, and a number of other freight customers centered around Lake Winnipesaukee including the former Laconia Car Co. foundry, Allen-Rogers Mill, [[NESSIE, a combination of the railroad's early reporting marks, NES, and the nickname of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, the "Chessie System") provided freight service solely on the White Mountain Branch until 1984, when it entered talks with Penacook (an exception being the Merrimack Station Coal Plant, which would continue to be served by the late B&M President Alan Dustin to assume switching rights in Concord.
[1] In the late 1980s the railroad was also operating a Reload on former B&M branch in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts for Georgia Pacific, and provided rail-plant maintenance and on-site switching at the SD Warren Paper Mill in Skowhegan, Maine.
In the summer of 1987, AT&T began laying fiber-optic cable along the Northern Railroad mainline from Concord to Lebanon, and the New England Southern was contracted to re-lay ballast along the right-of-way.
[1] Dearness had intended to run all the way to Lebanon, but at the time the Northern was not being used for regular freight service beyond Penacook, and years of poor track maintenance and neglect under B&M ownership meant that the New England Southern ballast trains could only venture a bit further than the Potter Place station in Andover.
[1] Still, these historic runs proved to be the final time any trains passed through the communities of Boscawen, Franklin, and Andover; the track was removed by owner Guilford shortly afterwards.
[1] Freight service on the White Mountain Branch had dried up except for one customer, 3M in eastern Tilton, and occasional equipment moves to the Hobo and Winnipesaukee Scenic Railroads.
Occasional special moves, including 2014 and 2018 contracts with the New Hampshire Army National Guard to ship military equipment to and from training exercises, have supplemented the railroad's income.
[1] In February 2019, an unauthorized press release was published stating the railroad was going to be acquired by United Rail, a corporate conglomerate based out of Las Vegas.
[2] On July 31, 2019, NEGS ownership announced that the deal with United Rail had not been finalized, as was supposed to happen by June 30, and that operations were returning to pre-sale conditions.
