North Chelmsford – Ayer Railway

North Chelmsford MA-Ayer MA
Route length:	21.23 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	Westford – Graniteville and North Littleton – Willows, formerly: North Chelmsford – Willows
Society:	North Chelmsford – North Littleton: PAR , North Littleton – Willows: PAS , Willows – Ayer: most recently BM
Legend from Lowell 0.00 North Chelmsford MA ( Wedge Station ) to Nashua Bay State Street Railway (Middlesex Street) Stony Brook (3 ×) 3.32 West Chelmsford MA Stony Brook Connection Fletcher Granite (quarry) 4.44 Brookside Lowell and Fitchburg Street Railway (Stony Brook Road) 6.89 Westford MA CP F307 (start of dual track) 9.83 Graniteville MA CP F309 (end of dual track) Nashua – North Acton route 11.88 Forge Village MA Change of ownership PAR / PAS 14.42 North Littleton MA (start of dual track) Connection to New England Milling Co. 17.16 Willows (formerly Sandy Pond) Connection to the Boston – Fitchburg line from Boston 21.23 Ayer MA (formerly Groton Junction) to Rochester , Fitchburg , Greenville and Worcester

The railway line North Chelmsford Ayer (also Stony Brook Branch ) is a railway line in Massachusetts ( United States ). It is 13 miles long and connects the towns of Chelmsford , Westford , Littleton and Ayer . The standard gauge route from North Chelmsford to North Littleton is owned by Pan Am Railways , which operates the freight traffic. Passenger traffic does not take place. The section from North Littleton to Willows is operated by Pan Am Southern , a joint subsidiary of Pan Am Railways and Norfolk Southern Railway . The section from Willows to Ayer has been closed. The trains run here on the parallel Boston – Fitchburg line .

history

On March 26, 1845, the Stony Brook Railroad Corporation received a concession to build a railway line in the valley of the Stony Brook , a tributary of the Merrimack River . It was supposed to provide a connection from the Lowell – Nashua railway to Ayer, where the main line of the Fitchburg Railroad ran along and another main line from Worcester to Nashua, which was still being planned at the time, was to cross. The railway company was formally set up on March 14, 1847 and immediately began construction work. The line went into operation on July 6, 1848. The management took over the Nashua and Lowell Railroad , which had leased the route. From February 1, 1857 to November 30, 1878, the Nashua & Lowell led the operation together with the Boston and Lowell Railroad , then until September 30, 1880 the Nashua & Lowell again alone. On October 1, 1880, she handed over management to Boston & Lowell. From September 1, 1881 to February 28, 1883, this operated the route jointly with the Concord Railroad , then again alone. Finally, on October 11, 1887, the Boston and Maine Railroad took over operations after leasing the Boston & Lowell.

Traffic on the line increased from 1911 when many passing trains were directed over the line. As a result, the line from North Chelmsford to Willows was double-tracked, which was not completed until 1928. In 1930 the railway company in North Chelmsford built a connecting curve in the direction of Nashua in order to be able to lead through freight trains over this connection. Several express trains, such as the Bar Harbor Express and the State of Maine Express , used the route on the way from New York City to Maine, as this way the terminal stations in Boston could be bypassed.

In April 1946, the rail company ran all trains on the Fitchburg Main Line, which was adjacent to the North Chelmsford railway line from Willows to Ayer, and shut down the parallel line on this section. In April 1953, Boston & Maine stopped local passenger services. Only the State of Maine Express ran the line until 1960. In 1957, apart from two short sections, the second track was dismantled. In 1983 Guilford Transportation took over Boston & Maine and with it the Stony Brook Branch. The company has been operating under the name Pan Am Railways since 2006 . In 2009, the Pan Am Southern began operations and the section from North Littleton to Willows was transferred to this subsidiary, which is jointly owned by Pan Am Railways and the Norfolk Southern Railway .

Route description

The line branches off at the former North Chelmsford station from the Lowell – Nashua railway line in a track triangle and heads in a south-westerly direction. It affects the city of Chelmsford, where West Chelmsford train station was located at School Street. Immediately afterwards it passes the lower Stony Brook reservoir , one of three small reservoirs along the route. At the southern end of the reservoir, the Fletcher Granite Company's private railway line joins the city of Westford , which leads to a granite quarry over a distance of around three kilometers. The railway line runs through Westford, where there were a total of four stations. In the Graniteville district, the line crossed the Nashua – North Acton railway line on a viaduct from 1873 to 1925 . From a point west of Westford Station to Graniteville, the line is double-tracked. There was no connecting track, although this route was also operated by Boston & Maine.

In the Forge Village district of Westford, the route runs along the north bank of Forge Pond . In the further course the route crosses the north of Littleton, where there was another train station on the north bank of the Spectacle Pond . This is where the property line lies today between the Pan Am Railways and the Pan Am Southern. In addition, the second double-track section of the line begins here, which leads to Willows. In Willows, where since 1946 the line joins the Boston – Fitchburg railway line , there was a stop. From here the route is closed. It runs right next to the main route to Ayer. Ayer station was a crossing station of two main lines with an additional branch line and the line from North Chelmsford, which flows in from the east.

passenger traffic

In 1869, only three pairs of passenger trains ran on the route from Lowell to Ayer, whose station was then still called Groton Junction. Even after the takeover by Boston & Maine, the train density was initially not much higher. In 1893 there were four trains on weekdays and one pair of trains on Sundays from Lowell to Ayer. From 1911 the daily express train from New York to Maine was added to these trains, but it did not stop between Lowell and Ayer. After the First World War, the train service was drastically reduced. In 1932 there was only one working pair of passenger trains from Lowell to Ayer and the express train every day.

After passenger traffic on the route from Ayer to Nashua was discontinued in 1934, the two passenger trains that had been running between Worcester and Nashua ran from Ayer via the Stony Brook Branch to Lowell, so that for a few years two weekday passenger trains ran again. One of these two trains was discontinued around 1940, the other in 1953. In October 1960 the express train also ran for the last time, in recent months only with a Budd Rail Diesel Car between Worcester and Haverhill.

Sources and further reading

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 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 87-88 (PDF; 6.9 MB) ( Memento from June 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
• List of stations (with miles) and staff from 1923 (English)