In the summer of 1987, AT&T began laying fiber-optic cable along the Northern Railroad mainline from Concord to Lebanon, and the New England Southern was contracted to re-lay ballast along the right-of-way. Dearness had intended to run all the way to Lebanon, but at the time the Northern was not being used for regular freight service beyond Penacook, and years of poor track maintenance and neglect under B&M ownership meant that the New England Southern ballast trains could only venture a bit further than the Potter Place station in Andover. Still, these historic runs proved to be the final time any trains passed through the communities of Boscawen, Franklin, and Andover; the track was removed by owner Guilford shortly afterwards. Today, the track ends just north of the U.S. Route 4 overpass in Boscawen, near the Merrimack River and the Hannah Duston State Historic Site. The right of way north of that location has been transformed into the Northern Rail Trail.