Somerville – Harvard Square railway line
| Somerville MA-Harvard Square MA | |||||||||||||||||
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 contemporary map with the railway line
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| Route length: | 1.1 km | ||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||
| Society: | most recently Fitchburg Railroad | ||||||||||||||||
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The railway Somerville Harvard Square is a railway line in Middlesex County in Massachusetts ( United States ). It is 1.1 kilometers long and linked Harvard Square in Cambridge to Somerville Railway Station .
To better connect Harvard University and the city center of Cambridge, businessmen from Cambridge founded the Harvard Branch Railroad Company on April 24, 1849 and received the concession to build a branch line that branches off the Boston – Fitchburg railway at Somerville station and goes to the southwest should lead to the terminus north of Harvard Square. Construction work began in the summer and the single-track, standard-gauge line was opened at the end of 1849 . The operation led the Fitchburg Railroad . From 1853, however, plans were made to build a horse-drawn tram from Harvard Square to Boston, so that the line was shut down again in 1855 and subsequently dismantled. The following year the horse-drawn tram was opened as the first streetcar line in the greater Boston area, the route of which is still used today as part of the Boston subway by the Red Line . The route of the railway line was later completely built over. The Street Museum is located on part of the former railway line.
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