Patricia Conly remembers lying in her childhood bedroom and watching the trains pass through Danville station out the window. Her older brothers used to hang around the place, waiting for a chance to help the station agent in exchange for a piece of candy.
“It was the hub of activity for the town,” said Conly, who heads the Danville Historical Society. “It was the meeting place, sort of like a general store.”
That was decades ago, before the Lamoille Valley Railroad — which served Danville on a route between St. Johnsbury and Swanton — ceased operations in the 1990s.
Today, the state is building the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail along that former route. And a group of Danville residents, Conly among them, wants to turn the station into a facility that would draw cyclists, hikers and snowmobilers into the town’s village center.
The 93-mile trail across northern Vermont is expected to be completed this fall, though the roughly 15 miles that pass through Danville and neighboring St. Johnsbury were finished in 2014.
Michael Hogue, chair of the Danville Train Station Committee, hopes a facility designed to serve trail users, rather than bygone rail passengers, will be an asset to the local and regional outdoor recreation economy. The committee was formed last year.
“It would bring both the economic impact, and the cultural impact,” Hogue said.
Danville’s green-and-white station, built in 1871, served both passenger and freight trains. Many of its historic features are still intact, Hogue said, and although the building certainly needs work, past preservation efforts have made sure “it’s not in danger of coming down.”
Hogue said the plan is to outfit the former passenger area with restrooms, an information kiosk and rotating exhibits about Danville and its transportation history.
The committee is less set on its plans for the old freight room, which currently houses the town’s recycling center. A feasibility study to be conducted this year should bring more insight as to what residents want to see in the space.
One idea is for local young people to run a bicycle donation and repair program out of the freight room, Hogue said. Another is to use the space for fitness and rehabilitation programs, perhaps managed by the Danville Health Center, which is close by.
Committee members have also discussed using the room as a base for bicycle tours around the town’s outdoor recreation facilities — again, run by young people. Hogue pointed to nearby Joe’s Pond and Danville’s two town forests, as possible stops.
Hogue said the committee also wants to improve parking near the station. A 2018 survey found that more than a third of town residents who use the trail park at the former station, though there were only five parking spaces available.
The committee wants to make sure that any enterprise established at the station can generate revenue, so Danville taxpayers aren’t on the hook for future maintenance costs, Hogue said.
Previous estimates have pegged the total cost of the station renovation project at about $475,000. According to Hogue, the committee has already raised much of that in grant funding from state and local organizations.
In March, the town of Danville, which owns the station, received a Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative grant of roughly $100,000 to fund new amenities there. Gov. Phil Scott was at the station to make the announcement.
The Preservation Trust of Vermont has also contributed construction funding. Ben Doyle, president of the trust, said he sees the station as an “exit ramp” off of the rail trail.
“You can just go for an hour ride on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, right? But you could also make a day of it stopping in different places along the way,” he said.
Hogue said he expects the project could be built and completed next year.
For Alison Low, a senior planner at Northeastern Vermont Development Association, the station project could serve as a model for other communities along the rail trail seeking to repurpose nearby historic buildings.
The planned renovations to Danville’s station, she said, were spurred in part by a 2019 study of ways to better connect the rail trail to the Danville and West Danville village centers. The study called for better wayfinding information as well as improvements to the town’s roadway and pedestrian infrastructure, among other developments.
Low, who lives in Danville, said she has been in planning meetings at the station when cyclists have come in from the trail, assuming that the building had public amenities.
“We have already seen that natural relationship to the trail,” she said. “So that’s very encouraging. And I think it just validates our efforts.”
