There are signs of this building still there today but not much. If you look to the right headed North just before you get to where the final road crosses, (in next picture) you can still see some of the rubble from it.
This
is where the final road crosses the line before you enter the causeway
onto the lake. Here what it looks like today.
Quite a difference!
Daniel MaCneil Has
this to share about the area:
By way of background, I grew up
in Burlington and spent my summers at the family camp on Porter's Point
in Colchester. I have many early memories of watching trains
cross the fill while we were fishing or boating on the lake. For
reasons I don't quite understand,this began a lifelong fascination with
the line, but especially the sections in Colchester and the fill. You might
be interested to know that after the line was abandoned, virtually everything
was left in place except for the rails, spikes and tie plates. (Those
were torn up and salvaged in 1965 as I recall.) That meant all of
the signs, signals, batteries, switches, telephone poles with glass
insulators) and wires were just left to rust and rot. This made the
line, especially the fill, a kid's paradise for rail adventure and imagination.
As you would expect, the signals and signs on the land section in Colchester
were quickly scavenged by Colchester
and Mills Point souvenir hunters. Drive around that area today and
you will find some of them in camp driveways, etc. However, the fill
was less accessible so it did not get picked over until the late 1960s
and early 1970s. My brothers and I were part of that process.
In 1969, we needed ties for a new patio. By then, many of the ties
had deteriorated, but with a little work and digging, there were plenty
of very good ones left. We loaded them into our boats and off we
went. While doing so, we also had great fun climbing the signal towers
near the draw bridge and fiddling with the battery lockers (cement structures)
located near the towers. We also looked hard for tie plates, which
we found to be great
anchors for our slalom course buoys.
However, they were hard to find because most of them were picked up and
salvaged with the rails.
I'll also pass along
some local gossip about the bridge tender's shack on the Grand Isle side
of the draw bridge. As you probably know, the shack was burned to
ground after the line was abandoned. As kids, we heard that the shack
was burned by some "indians" on the war path. Subsequent years provided
additional clarification - turns out the "indians" were some local high
school/college aged kids who doused the shack with gasoline, then shot
it with flaming arrows from a nearby boat.
Finally, for scuba divers still looking for rail related artifacts, my brothers and I found in the mid 1970s that the lake bottom under both bridges was littered with tie/rail plates, spikes and sundry debris, especially from the open position support pedestal for the draw bridge. The latter was a stone structure in the center of the opening on the Malletts Bay side (check your photos for this). It was blown up as a navigation hazard a few years after the steel draw bridge was removed.
Enough for now, and thanks again for your site.
Daniel F. McNeil,
Portland, Oregon
