Boston and Lowell Railroad

Built

1835

The railroad through North and East Billerica is the main line of the Boston and Lowell Railroad, chartered in June 1830 and opened between Boston and Lowell on June 25, 1835, one of the first steam railroads in the United States. The Boston and Maine Railroad leased it on April 1, 1887 and ran it as part of the main line of its Southern Division, from Boston through Lowell and Nashua to Concord, New Hampshire; the state's rail inventory still calls it the New Hampshire Main. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bought it with the rest of the Boston and Maine's commuter lines on December 27, 1976, and it is now the MBTA Commuter Rail Lowell Line, with a station at North Billerica. Freight trains of the Boston and Maine's successors, Guilford Transportation Industries (1983), Pan Am Railways (2006) and, since June 1, 2022, CSX Transportation, still use it.

The line enters Billerica from Wilmington over the Shawsheen River on a rubble stone arch built for the Boston and Lowell, the Lowell Railroad Bridge over the Shawsheen River, the last of the original arch bridges on the line. It runs northwest through East Billerica, past the site of the East Billerica station at Gray Street, along the Boston and Maine's Billerica repair shops between Pond Street and High Street, and into North Billerica, where the station stands beside the mill village at the falls of the Concord River; it leaves the town for Lowell north of Town Farm Lane. Across the town it keeps near the line of the Middlesex Canal, which crossed the same ground from the North Billerica millpond to its aqueduct over the Shawsheen. James F. Baldwin, who surveyed the route, laid it out to cross very few roads at grade, and no public road in Billerica crosses it on the level: Pond Street, High Street, Gray Street, Andover Road, George Brown Street and Town Farm Lane are carried over it on bridges (Pond Street Bridge, High Street Bridge, Gray Street Bridge, Andover Road Bridge, George Brown Street Bridge and Town Farm Lane Bridge), and Mt. Pleasant Street passes under it on the Mount Pleasant Street Railroad Bridge just south of the North Billerica depot.

Henry A. Hazen, writing in 1883, thought the town had gained less from the railroad than it might have. Before it opened, twelve to sixteen stagecoaches a day had passed through Billerica, and the canal and the railroad together left little business for the Middlesex Turnpike, whose charter was repealed in 1841. The first advertised service was two trains each way a day, leaving Lowell at 6 A.M. and 2 1/4 P.M. and Boston at 9 A.M. and 5 3/4 P.M., at a fare of $1.00; by 1882 there were twenty-five passenger trains, "with almost as many more for freight." But the line passed well to the north and east of Billerica Centre. "Some feared and repelled the railroad; others, more sagacious, saw its benefits and sought its location on a more northerly route," and Hazen believed a route through Woburn, between the village and Fox Hill, would have made the Centre a suburb of Boston. The search for a railroad to the Centre led to the Billerica and Bedford Railroad, the two-foot gauge line opened from Bedford to North Billerica in 1877 and sold off in 1878, and in 1885 the Boston and Lowell built its own standard-gauge branch from Bedford, mostly on the same roadbed, joining the main line at North Billerica station.

The railroad was planned by the founders of Lowell over the opposition of the canal's investors, and it soon took the canal's trade. The Middlesex Canal had been dug to carry the commerce of New Hampshire to Boston; it paid dividends from 1819 to 1843, after which its receipts fell below its expenses. Its charter was surrendered in 1851 and the canal was sold in sections in 1852, generally to the owners of the adjoining land. Hazen wrote that the proprietors "complained that the railroad had been permitted to damage their chartered rights without indemnity, but they had no redress." The canal's dam and millpond at North Billerica survived and went on driving the mills.

At North Billerica the railroad served the mills at the falls. A flag stop called Billerica Mills was in use by 1838, and in 1842 the Faulkners deeded the railroad a small lot beside the tracks, with rights of way from the highway for those having business with the railroad. Francis Faulkner's woolen mill (Faulkner Mills) stood on the east side of the river, and Charles P. Talbot, who came in 1839, and his brother Thomas Talbot built their dyewood mill and in 1857 their woolen mill (Talbot Mills) on the west. The Talbots began their chemical works in 1849 "in a building near the depot," and later moved them sixty rods east "by the railroad." The present depot, the North Billerica Railroad Depot, was built about 1867 on land bought from the Talbots in December 1866, near the older Depot Warehouse beside the tracks; Station Street and Ruggles Street grew up as the ways to it, and the Thomas Talbot Memorial Hall was later built just east of it. At East Billerica a station near John O. Richardson's saw-mill on Content Brook served the Gray Street neighborhood; its agent, Peter B. Bohonan, was appointed the first East Billerica postmaster in 1877. The East Billerica Station closed on January 18, 1965, when the Boston and Maine cut its commuter service back to the cities and towns of the new MBTA district.

In 1913 the Rev. Charles H. Williams counted three stations within a mile and a quarter of every part of the level land in the north of the town, East Billerica and North Billerica on the main line and Bennett Hall on the branch. Locomotive sparks often set the brush along the right of way on fire; the fire department answered several such alarms in 1914. The Boston and Maine built its general locomotive and passenger car repair shops beside the main line between 1911 and 1914, near the junction with the branch. The low bridge at Mount Pleasant Street was a long-standing problem: in 1910 the town and the railroad took the drainage under it to a special commission of the Superior Court, which divided the cost equally "between the said Town of Billerica and the Boston and Maine Railroad as lessee of the Boston and Lowell Railroad." The bridge was rebuilt in 1929 and again by the MBTA in 1992, and trucks still strike it. On June 8, 1976 the town transferred its six road bridges over the railroad to the Commonwealth, which has since rebuilt them all.

By the 1960s the line's passenger trade was almost all commuters. In 1982 the Boston and Maine ran some fifteen weekday round trips between North Billerica and Boston for the MBTA, and 138,860 passengers used the station; by 1987 Amtrak ran the trains under contract to the MBTA, and later contractors followed. The Lowell Regional Transit Authority, the MBTA and the town enlarged the station parking in the 1990s, and after a long effort by the Billerica Historical Commission the old depot was restored rather than torn down; the rehabilitated station was celebrated on October 13, 1998, and that year it served more than 450,000 passenger trips. On the night of January 23, 2015 a retractable section of the outbound platform collapsed as passengers left a train, and two people were hurt. In 2017 to 2019 the MBTA relined and repaired the 1835 stone arch over the Shawsheen.

Operators

Boston and Lowell Railroad (1835-present)

Boston and Lowell Railroad

Boston and Lowell Railroad

Operators

References