Barber – Winchendon railway line

Barber MA – Winchendon MA
Route length:	53.08 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Society:	Barber – Gardner: PW , Gardner – Heywood: PAS , Heywood – Winchendon: most recently BM
Legend from Worcester to Rochester 0.00 Barber (formerly Barbers, Keilbahnhof ) Interstate 190 Worcester Tram (Holden Street) 2.20 North Worcester MA 5.36 Chaffin 6.86 Dawson 8.51 Holden MA Worcester Tram (Main Street) 10.43 Jefferson North Cambridge – Northampton (Holden Junction) line 13.07 North Woods Quinapoxet River 16.22 Brooks 19.36 Princeton MA Ware River 27.42 Hubbardston MA Northern Massachusetts Street Railway (South Main Street) Connection to Greenfield Fitchburg – Greenfield route Connection from Fitchburg 37.34 Gardner MA Industrial connection 38.88 Heywood 47.33 Red School from South Ashburnham from Palmer Millers River 53.08 Winchendon MA to Bellows Falls and Peterborough

The railway Barber Winchendon is a railway line in Massachusetts ( United States ). It is 53 kilometers long and connects the cities of Worcester , Holden , Gardner and Winchendon , among others . The standard gauge line belongs to the Providence and Worcester Railroad , which operates the freight traffic on it. The section from Gardner to Winchendon has been closed.

history

The town of Barre on the Ware River wanted to join the growing railroad network in central Massachusetts in the 1840s. The Barre and Worcester Railroad Company requested a connection from Palmer via Barre and Holden to Worcester and was granted the concession for this on April 26, 1847. The company was established on May 19 of that year. However, they soon added to the plans and now also wanted to build a line from Holden to Gardner, which was expected to be a good volume of traffic, as there was a connection in Gardner to the main line of the Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad , which was under construction , which continued to Vermont and ultimately Canada . The railway company was renamed on March 24, 1849 in Boston, Barre and Gardner Railroad and set up again on September 6 of that year under its new name.

Since not enough money could be raised, the project was suspended for 20 years. Construction work did not begin until 1869. On September 4, 1871, the line from Barber in the north of the city of Worcester to Gardner was opened. In order to obtain a more direct connection to Vermont and Canada, the line was extended to Winchendon, where it joins the South Ashburnham – Bellows Falls railway line , on which the express trains from Boston to Canada also ran. The extension went into operation on January 5, 1874. The planned route from Holden via Barre to Palmer was built in the 1880s by the Massachusetts Central Railroad as part of the North Cambridge – Northampton railway that crosses in Holden.

From March 7, 1885, the Fitchburg Railroad operated on the route , which bought the route on July 1 of that year. In 1900 the management switched to the Boston and Maine Railroad after it had taken over the Fitchburg. Passenger traffic was discontinued in March 1953 and in 1959 the Boston & Maine closed the section from Heywood to Winchendon. In 1972 the shutdown was also completed between Barber and Gardner, but the Boston & Maine sold this route to the Providence and Worcester Railroad , whose main route ran between their eponymous cities and which could thus be extended to the north. The Providence & Worcester resumed operations to Gardner in 1974 and has been operating the route since then. The short section in the urban area from Gardner to shortly before Heywood station was operated since 1983 by Guilford Transportation , which had taken over Boston & Maine and has been operating under the name Pan Am Railways since 2006 . In 2009 Pan Am Railways and the Norfolk Southern Railway jointly founded the Pan Am Southern subsidiary , which will shut down the short section last known as the “Heywood Branch” with effect from August 7, 2012.

Route description

The line branches off at Barber station from the Worcester – Rochester railway line and heads northwest. The Barber station was originally developed as a wedge station , today only the freight station adjoining the former passenger station is in operation. The route is winding through North Worcester and Holden. The North Cambridge – Northampton railway once crossed at the same level in Holden, north of Jefferson Station . The route continues north along the west bank of the Quinapoxet reservoir . It then passes Princeton and Hubbardston a little away from the respective town centers. The Gardner junction station is reached after a total of around 37 kilometers. Here the line joins the Fitchburg – Greenfield railway line in a westerly direction . It used to cross this route at the same level and continue north. The northern part is also still preserved as a siding in the urban area of ​​Gardner, but is only connected in the direction of Fitchburg, the track crossing in Gardner was removed as early as 1959. This freight connection will also be closed in August 2012. The track is still just before the former Heywood station, which was on Central Street. The route continues northward between Crystal Lake and Perley Brook Reservoir . Today a forest path runs from Green Street to Old Gardner Road on the railway line. The line joins the former main line South Ashburnham – Bellows Falls shortly before Winchendon and reaches the former Winchendon hub.

passenger traffic

In 1881 three pairs of trains ran the route from Worcester to Winchendon. After the takeover by the Fitchburg Railroad, the train service was expanded and in 1893 five pairs of trains ran on weekdays and one pair of trains on Sundays. In the mid-1910s, continuous operation on the Winchendon – Peterborough railway was introduced and in 1916 five pairs of trains ran on the route on weekdays and three on Sundays, of which one train continued via Peterborough to Hillsborough, one to Elmwood and one to Peterborough on weekdays. On Sundays two trains went on to Peterborough.

After the First World War and the Great Depression, the volume of traffic also fell sharply in the wake of increasing individual traffic, and in 1932 Boston & Maine offered two pairs of trains a day from Worcester via Winchendon to Peterborough. Before the cessation of passenger traffic in 1953, only one weekday pair of Worcester – Peterborough trains ran on the route.

Sources and further reading

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Decision of the supervisory authority on the decommissioning
2. ↑ see timetables of the route from the years mentioned.

literature

• Ronald D. Karr: The Rail Lines of Southern New England. A Handbook of Railroad History. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 1995. ISBN 0-942147-02-2
• Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. (2nd edition) SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010. ISBN 1-874745-12-9

Web links

• B&M Corporate History, 1914, pages 206–208 (PDF; 6.2 MB) (English)
• List of stations (with miles) and staff from 1923 (English)