Opening of the Boston and Maine Shops

Type	Construction
Date	March 16, 1911 to February 9, 1914

The Boston and Maine Railroad's repair shops at North Billerica, known as the Billerica Shops, were the main locomotive and passenger car repair plant of the Boston and Maine system. The site was chosen in March 1911, the shops were built from 1911 to 1913 on about six hundred acres between the railroad's main line to Lowell and its Bedford branch, east of High Street, and locomotive repair work began there on Monday, February 9, 1914. The plant was the largest industrial undertaking in the town's history, and it changed North Billerica from a mill village into a railroad town.

The railroad had been looking for a single central shop for several years. By 1907 the Boston and Maine, which had absorbed the Boston and Lowell, the Eastern and the Fitchburg, owned about 1,100 locomotives, and its repair work was scattered among small and crowded shops at Concord, N.H., Lyndonville, Vt., Keene, N.H., Fitchburg and Boston. The Boston shops burned on December 5, 1907, and a new plant begun at East Somerville was given up as too cramped and too close to the lines planned for electrification. In 1910 the company hired a special engineer, F. K. Irwin, and Vice-President and General Manager Frank Barr appointed a shop site committee, which after months of canvassing recommended the property at North Billerica for its "ample area, least preparation of ground for buildings, accessibility, nearness to a labor market." The Lowell Board of Trade had worked to bring the plant near Lowell, and on March 16, 1911 the Lowell Sun announced that the North Billerica site had been chosen, with frontage of 3,100 feet on the main line and 2,400 feet on the Bedford branch, and that the shops would "employ 3000 men at least." The railroad recorded a plan of its purchase that year (Plan Book 28, Plan 73).

Field surveys for the deed and topographical maps began on February 10, 1911. The ground was largely swamp, and boulders in it hampered the foundation work. The Wilson-English Construction Company of New York did the grading, the McArthur Concrete Pile and Foundation Company of New York drove the piles and built the foundations, the McClintic-Marshall Company fabricated the steel, and W. M. Pike and Sons Company of Lawrence erected the buildings; the railroad's own forces laid about twenty-five miles of track with 120 switches. By the fall of 1913 the main buildings stood complete: the locomotive erecting shop, 838 by 160 feet; the locomotive blacksmith shop; a storehouse and office building 672 feet long; the power house, 120 by 114 feet; the car blacksmith and machine shop; the passenger car repair shop and paint shop, each 314 feet wide; a dry kiln, coaling plant and oil houses. A freight car shop and planing mill were planned but not yet built. The plant was laid out to make 30 general locomotive repairs and 180 general passenger car repairs a month. The town voted on July 15, 1912 to let the Water Commissioners extend the mains along High Street to supply the "Boston & Maine Railroad Shops," and the meeting of 1914 was asked to carry the High Street main another 1,750 feet north from the end of the line "near Boston & Maine car shops."

The shops opened in stages. The Lowell Sun of Saturday, February 7, 1914 reported that the plant would "start operations Monday" with between 200 and 300 men, all skilled machinists, and F. K. Irwin later wrote that "the actual work of repairing locomotives was begun February 9, 1914, three years from the time actual field work began." Men and work came from the old shops: the Keene repair plant was moved to Billerica in February 1914, and in September about seventy men (the figure is blurred in the newspaper scan) were transferred from Concord when work there was cut back. By September 25, 1914 more than 1,100 men were on the Billerica payroll, far fewer than the 3,000 forecast in 1911, and that month the Sun reported the shops "running on short time." The car shops had their own private box, No. 321, on the town's new fire alarm system, and the steam fire whistle put up at the car shops in 1915, for which the railroad was paid for labor and material, also blew the town's no-school signal.

The town prepared for a far larger influx than came at first. At the December 1912 meeting of the Billerica Board of Trade, John A. Murphy of the Lowell Board of Trade predicted three thousand employees and "an added population of at least fifteen thousand people," and urged housing laws and close review of new subdivisions. The Rev. Charles H. Williams, president of the Billerica Board of Trade, wrote in March 1913 that the "mammoth Boston & Maine car shops" would soon employ two to three thousand men, "for these men, homes and boarding houses must be provided," and Warren H. Manning's town plan treated the north part of town as its industrial section, with Bennett Hall, then newly leased as a hotel, as the place between North Billerica and the Centre for "the accommodation of the town's guests." Land dealers advertised house lots "within a few minutes' walk of the new Boston & Maine car shops" from 1911 on, Frank W. Coughlin laid out Mechanics' Park on the Tewksbury line in 1913, and in June 1914 Williams organized Billerica Garden Suburb, Inc., a co-partnership housing company on the English model, to build houses for the shop workmen between the railroad and the Concord River. A retail lumber yard opened at Bennett Hall Station in July 1912, citing the town's extensive new building.

The growth showed first in the schools. In early 1913 Superintendent Arthur B. Webber asked, "in view of the approaching completion of the car shops and the consequent growth of the section about them," for a committee on future school accommodations, and by 1915 his successor reported that although the state census showed the town only 450 people larger than in 1910, the school census had risen 182, or 34 per cent, in two years. In 1915 the town bought land just south of Bennett Hall for a new high school. Billerica counted 2,789 people in the federal census of 1910 (the town reports used 2,817), 3,246 in the state census of 1915 and 3,646 in 1920, and the water department's estimate reached 4,500 by 1918.

The Billerica Shops remained the Boston and Maine's principal heavy repair plant through the steam era and into the diesel years, rebuilding locomotives and passenger cars and later servicing the railroad's Budd rail diesel cars. As shop needs shrank from the 1940s, parts of the complex were sold or leased to other firms, and the property became the industrial park known as Iron Horse Park. The repair shops are no longer in operation. Old landfills, lagoons and shop wastes on the 553-acre site led the federal Environmental Protection Agency to list Iron Horse Park on the National Priorities List in 1984, and the Boston and Maine Corporation and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority later agreed to carry out the cleanup.

People

Warren H. Manning: Landscape designer whose Billerica town plan (1912-13) treated North Billerica as the industrial section around the new shops; advisor to the Billerica Garden Suburb
Arthur B. Webber: Superintendent of Schools (1910-1914) who in early 1913 asked for a committee on school accommodations in view of the approaching completion of the car shops

Opening of the Boston and Maine Shops

Opening of the Boston and Maine Shops

People

References