Hamilton-Wenham-Conomo railway line
| Hamilton-Wenham MA-Conomo MA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 9.45 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Society: | last BM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Hamilton Wenham Conomo (also Essex Branch ) is a railway line in Essex County in Massachusetts ( United States ). It is 9.45 kilometers long and connects the cities of Hamilton and Essex . The standard gauge line is closed.
history
When the main line Boston – Portsmouth of the Eastern Railroad was built, the city of Essex had no rail connection. In the middle of the 19th century, however, a shipyard and some small industries had settled here, so that a rail connection was required. For this purpose, the Essex Branch Railroad Company was founded on April 22, 1869 , which was formally set up in 1871 and immediately began construction. On July 1, 1872, the route from Hamilton & Wenham to Essex went into operation. The operations management was incumbent on the Eastern Railroad, which bought the railway company on October 3rd of that year.
From 1884 on, the Boston and Maine Railroad ran after leasing the Eastern. In September 1887, she extended the route by 900 meters to South Essex. The terminus was called Conomo , although the Conomo Point settlement on Essex Bay is about two miles to the east. In addition to passengers, wood was primarily transported on the route for delivery to the shipyard and, in winter, ice that was extracted from Chebacco Lake .
In 1926, Boston & Maine applied for the line to be closed. However, protests from the local industry, particularly the shipyard, resulted in the Interstate Commerce Commission rejecting the application and only approving the closure of the section from Essex Railway Station to Conomo, which was completed in 1927. Freight traffic continued to decline after the global economic crisis, so that in August 1942 the railway company again applied for closure, now on the grounds that the rails were needed for the armaments industry. The application was granted in November and in the same month the railway company shut down and dismantled the line, which had also been used for passenger transport until the end.
Route description
The line branches off the main line from Boston at the Hamilton-Wenham station (also Hamilton and Wenham ), which has meanwhile been reduced to a simple stopping point, and initially leads through the urban area of Hamilton in a northeastern direction. The first stop, Miles River, was at Bridge Street . Here the route curves and now runs parallel to Bridge Street up to Woodbury Street, where the next stop was. From here the route continues eastwards to turn north just before Chebacco Lake. It touches the northwest corner of the lake and then continues north of the lake eastwards, now in the Essex metropolitan area. Here was the Centennial Grove stop, where a sports and picnic area had been opened in 1876, which provided additional passengers on weekends. The side street Harry Homans Drive is now on the former railway line . The route now continues in a northeasterly direction parallel to Western Avenue and Martin Street to the center of Essex. The station, which served as the terminus of the line from 1872 to 1887 and from 1927 to 1942, was at the level of Shepard Drive. The extension to Conomo, which was operated for only 40 years, led in a south-easterly direction in a straight line to the terminus on Southern Avenue, on which an overland tram of the Bay State Street Railway made it possible to continue to Gloucester . The route has largely been preserved, only a few sections in Essex Falls and east of Hamilton-Wenham have been built over. The only significant engineering structure on the route was the bridge over the Essex River between Essex and Conomo.
passenger traffic
In the summer of 1881, three daily train pairs from Hamilton & Wenham to Essex and back were enough to cope with the traffic. The trains were connected to passenger trains on the main line towards Boston. Under the management of Boston & Maine, Sunday traffic was discontinued, but a fourth pair of trains was added, which had been discontinued by 1900 at the latest. At the beginning of the 1920s, another pair of trains was canceled, so that before the Essex – Conomo section was closed, only two weekday trains ran. However, a pair of trains went through to and from Boston on Saturdays. From 1932, only one pair of trains ran Monday to Friday and two on Saturdays, which was retained until the line was closed.
Sources and further reading
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Traveler's Official Guide of the Railway and Steam Navigation Lines in the United States and Canada. June 1881 edition, pages 26-27.
- 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