In 1971, the PV&T purchased the Hoosic Tunnel & Wilmington Railroad from the Pinsly organization after the New England Power Company’s Bear Swamp facility severed the HT&W’s southern connection to the Boston & Maine.
Originally the HT&W was connected to three other railways; the Boston & Maine just east of the Hoosic Tunnel, the Southern Vermont Traction Company at Wilmington, and the PV&T at Heartwellville. The line from Readsboro to Wilmington was abandoned after being comprehensibly destroyed by the 1938 hurricane, Bear Swamp doomed the line down to the Hoosic Tunnel, but the line from Readsboro up the Deerfield River to Heartwellville remains in service (thanks, in large part, to the upper part of that branch being a double-track mainline shared with – and maintained by – the PV&T, so it remained operational during the years when Pinsly was doing most of their interchanging with the Boston & Maine to the south.)
The HT&W had been dieselised when it was a Pinsly railroad, but when the 1973 oil embargo started the line was electrified, replacing the single S-2 (ex-LT&L #100, which had been displaced because of the LT&L’s ongoing electrification) with a rotating collection of small motors from elsewhere in the system.
The line still operates in 2025, with two regular clients – a small wood products mill in Readsboro & the glassine paper factory at Monroe Bridge.