In 1985, local interests purchased the Claremont & Concord Railway from the Pinsly organization and started running it with the small pile of GE 44 ton diesels that came with the system. The 44 ton diesels were not the greatest thing to come down the pike; they were small and the Cat diesels were not the most reliable thing in the world.
So, by 1993, the railway was getting somewhat tired of keeping the locomotives running and started shopping around for other power.
One of the fairly local railroads (that would be the PV&T) was undergoing a slow process of extending their electrification, so the C&C made inquirys about purchasing one or two of their used Alcos. But the PV&T made an intriguing suggestion; if the C&C electrified they’d find operating costs would drop quite a bit, and if they wanted to electrify the 5 remaining miles of the railroad the PV&T would be happy to provide a nominal-interest loan to purchase wire and hire PV&T wire crews to do the re-electrification.
Well, that’s a deal that was hard to beat. The C&C (now renamed the Claremont Traction Company) leased baldwin steeplecabs from the Connecticut Trolley Museum and the Seashore Trolley Museum, then went shopping around for a pair of motors of their own.
Eventually the CTC found a steel mill in Canada with a pair of GE industrial steeplecabs up for sale, so they were snapped up (as #1 & #2) and put into service instead. These units ran without problems until 2024, when #1 was rammed by a cement truck and snapped its frame in half. Business was good, but the cost of a new motor was not really affordable, and while the railway was shopping around for a diesel the PV&T came knocking and proposed a merger, which would put the CTC under the umbrella of the PV&T’s shops and settle the loan they’d taken out 40 years previous and still had a bit over half a million to pay off.
This proposal was greeted with a great deal of skepticism, but the current management eventually came around and sold the railway to the local class 1.
The CTC is still running as a separate railway with a class Q motor taking the place of the now-demised #1, and has been put under the control of the Groupe Ferroviaire Murmuration.