Hoosac Valley Train Rides

Hoosac Valley Train Rides is the public-facing brand for the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum's excursion service between Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts. The museum, founded in Lenox in 1984 as a not-for-profit, began that year running passenger excursions over Housatonic Railroad trackage between Lee and Great Barrington, suspended them after several years because of deteriorating track, and revived them from 2003 to 2011 out of the restored Lenox station — until the Housatonic declined to renew the state operating lease. A $200,000 state grant in 2014 moved the operation north to the Hoosac Valley: the Town of Adams spent $500,000 converting a former car wash into a railroad station, and MassDOT purchased the northern portion of the Adams Branch from Pan Am Railways, restoring the first four miles south from North Adams. Service began in May 2016 from a temporary North Adams platform, and a further $2.6 million MassDOT grant funded a permanent platform in downtown Adams plus the remaining mile of track, finished in late 2017, with excursions departing Adams from 2018.