By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT — For Maggie May, Claremont’s small town personability is one of her community’s favorite traits.
“Even though it’s a city, you can go downtown and people know you by name,” said May, a Claremont resident and volunteer host at Claremont’s Amtrak station. “So instead of saying you live in a city, it’s really a very large, friendly town.”
That same friendliness and human connection has also come to define the Claremont Amtrak station, entirely due to the Claremont Station Host Program.
The Claremont Station Hosts are a group of volunteers who assist passengers boarding and debarking the Amtrak Vermonter, which runs two trips daily between St. Albans, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. The hosts, a novel service on the Vermonter line, keep passengers updated about the train’s arrival time and answer questions about train travel and Claremont’s services and offerings.
“We like to think of ourselves as goodwill ambassadors for the city of Claremont,” May told Sean McDonald of New Hampshire Chronicle on Monday.
New Hampshire Chronicle, an evening television program on station WMUR that spotlights special people and places in the Granite State, met with Claremont Station Host volunteers on Presidents’ Day for a story about the program.
Prior to the program, which began in 2017, arrival at the Claremont station was often a “desolate” experience, the volunteers said. Located on the outskirts of town, the closest business is The Cycle Depot, the bicycle shop located alongside the station platform, which may be closed before the evening train’s arrival.
“In those days it wasn’t unheard of to have passengers get off the train, not realizing the situation of being in a very rural environment, and taking their suitcase and walking up the road toward the city,” said former city mayor and station host Charlene Lovett.
“Many times someone gets off assuming they can call an Uber or find a [taxi] quickly, and they can’t,” said volunteer Sharon Wood. “So we always encourage people to make their arrangements ahead of time. You can have a cab waiting here if you arrange it.”
The station hosts also have their own step-stools to assist passengers on or off the trail, as the Vermonter does not always have a stool when it arrives in Claremont.
“So [if they didn’t have the stool] the conductors would have to tell the passengers to jump down or climb up,” Wood said. “And it’s a bit of a stretch to do that.”
Shortly before noon a couple from New York arrived at the station to take the train home following a local visit. On-duty host Scott Magnuson greeted the couple in the lot, let them know the southbound train was running 10 minutes behind schedule and showed them to the heated shelter where the couple could comfortably wait.
The shelter was volunteer-built in 2015, with the heaters added later through fundraising by the volunteers, Wood said.
The shelter is just one of numerous improvements to the station since 2015, which have included improved platform lighting and signage, a resurfacing of the waiting platform and upgrades to make the station compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant.
Despite a significant increase in ridership at the Claremont station, which increased by over 800 riders between 2012 and February 2020, many people, including Claremont residents, are completely unaware of the station’s existence.
“Sadly, they don’t,” May said. “When I tell people about it they are surprised.”
Increasing public awareness is another aim of the Claremont Station Host Program, whose volunteers share an avid love for trains, as well as the city and its history.
“In these rural areas people are not as familiar with train travel,” Lovett said. “And sometimes when people aren’t familiar with something they apt not to choose it as a mode of transportation.”
Claremont is the only New Hampshire station on The Vermonter line, which will eventually expand its service to Montreal, Canada.
McDonald said that New Hampshire Chronicle learned about Claremont’s Station Host Program through May, who had contacted the television program about doing a story.
“We thought it was a nice, visual story,” McDonald told the Eagle Times. “It took a little while to get out here, weather and scheduling wise, but we finally made it.”
There are currently 18 active volunteers in the Claremont Station Host Program. There are two shifts per day and each shift schedules two station hosts.
For more information about the program, including becoming a station host volunteer, contact Sharon Wood, membership chair, at [email protected] or 603-542-6454.
The program also accepts donations to fund their station and service improvements. May said the association receives a small annual stipend from the city though the group “has a wishlist that grows all the time.”
reporter @eagletimes.com
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