OVER a century ago, 50 trains a day pulled into White River Junction, at the nexus of the Connecticut and White Rivers in Vermont.  The meatpackers, paper mill and cracker factory those trains serviced are gone, but culture-minded visitors  including skiers headed to Woodstock, Okemo and Killington nearby  have begun to take notice of the artistic community springing up around the tracks.  The anchor of this arty revitalization is the Tip Top Media and Arts Building (85 North Main Street; 802-356-1933; www.tiptopmedia.com), a former industrial bakery that now houses 33 studios, workshops and small businesses.  “In 1999, an electrical company had been working here, and they were pretty much done with it,” said Matt Bucy, a visual artist and architect who oversaw the renovation, which was completed in 2003. “I walked in to ask about renting a studio space, and they said I should just buy the building.” This fall, he rented out the final unused space to PhotoStop (802-698-0320; www.photostopvt.com), a gallery that offers workshops taught by exhibiting artists.  On the first Friday of each month, all of Tip Top’s studios open to the public, as hundreds of visitors sip wine and mosey from stone lithograph collections at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio (802-295-5901; www.tworiversprintmaking.com) to Venetian-style papier-mâché masks by Gabriel Q (802-356-3254; www.gabrielq.com).  But the laid-back attitude in White River Junction is far from the pretensions of the Manhattan art scene. “You won’t find anyone who takes themselves too super seriously here,” said Kim Souza, who organizes volunteer-run spring and fall fashion shows on Tip Top’s ground floor and also owns Revolution (26 North Main Street; 802-295-6487; www.shoptherev.com), a clothing boutique across the street with an emphasis on Vermont-based designers who use recycled materials in their creations, like the chic cardigans by Marion Settle that are made from reclaimed thrift store finds and start at $90.  The year-old coffee shop Tuckerbox (1 South Main Street; 802-359-4041; www.tuckerboxvermont.com) serves up fair-trade brews from the Vermont Coffee Company in Middlebury and beignets made fresh each morning. Local artists stop in for lunch options like tuna-fennel wraps and red pepper-chickpea soup.  Just down South Main Street, the historic rail station is now mostly quiet, save for one stop a day in each direction by Amtrak’s Vermonter line. But across the tracks, the circa-1889 freight house, which was restored in 2007, now houses even more art studios, along with Elixir (188 South Main Street; 802-281-7009; www.elixirrestaurant.com), an upscale dinner spot. It incorporates local ingredients in stick-to-your-ribs dishes like bacon-wrapped mini beef tenderloins ($19) and Maine lobster ($24), with live jazz on weekends.  The historic district along the railroad tracks still has its share of abandoned storefronts and empty buildings, but the to-be-developed atmosphere is part of what attracts. “So many towns around here are dressed up for tourists to be this fantasy of what Vermont should look like,” Mr. Bucy said. “Here, there’s still a little bit of grittiness.”
An artistic community has brought chic boutiques, cafes and galleries to a historic district, once just known for its train tracks.