TILTON, N.H. — Dwight A. Smith, founder of the Conway Scenic Railroad, has died at age 100.
Smith, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in World War II, had been living at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton since 2020.
The Conway Scenic said in a statement that it “mourns the passing of its founder and visionary Dwight A. Smith … A long-time friend of the railroad that he helped found, Dwight will always be memorialized by steam locomotive 7470 — the engine that he purchased in 1968 and restored to service in 1974 to begin excursions on the Conway Scenic Railroad. This locomotive was formally named for Dwight in a public ceremony on Aug. 4, 2019. Conway Scenic owes its legacy to Dwight’s ingenuity and visit that preserved elements of the past for future generations to enjoy.”
According to a Laconia Daily Sun article marking Smith’s 100th birthday in January, Smith was drafted into the Navy in 1943, serving as a radar operator on the U.S.S. South Dakota until his math skills led to him being assigned to handle equations for ordinance. He graduated from the Navy V-12 program at Dartmouth College in 1947 as the only student with combat experience, after receiving his honorable discharge in April 1946.
He then joined the Boston & Maine Railroad, rising throughits ranks over 26 years, including becoming the railroad’s youngest station manager at age 30 in Springfield, Vt. On a 1968 rail excursion to North Conway, N.H., Smith noticed the town’s former B&M train station, along with a roundhouse and turntable. “It was a wasted resource … boarded up the way they were,” he told the Nashau Telegraph in 1977, saying he thought the town was “an ideal location” for a tourist railroad.
The station, roundhouse, and turntable had been bought three years earlier by local businessmen Carroll Reed and William Levy; Smith reached an agreement with the two men to form a tourist railroad following his visit. A six-year effort and legal fight followed — during which Smith left the Boston & Maine — before Smith and his partners won possession of 7 miles of the railroad. An agreement between the B&M and the three men was reached in July 1974, and the first Conway Scenic train operated on Aug. 4, 1974. Expansion of service onto the former Maine Central Crawford Notch branch began with a special train in December 1994 and regular service on Sept. 1, 1995.
Smith and the other original owners were bought out in 1999 by Russ Seybold — who had been the railroad’s president and general manager since 1990— and his wife. It changed hands again in 2018 with purchase by current owners Profile Mountains Holding Corp. [see “New Hampshire tourist railroad sold,” Trains.com, Jan. 31, 2018].
