by B&Mguy
NashuaActon&Boston wrote:The Peterborough & Shirley RR was quite a turkey. Early in RR construction for central MA, the P&S, begun around 1848, would never serve it's namesake towns - Shirley, Massachusetts & Peterborough, NH - neither ever graced by P&S rail. The MA segment of the line struck north from the Fitchburg at Ayer, MA and ran through rural W. Groton and Townsend, MA. North of the NH border the RR took a bizarre swing in it's course, made a fishhook turn away from Peterborough and settled it's northern terminus at the unlikely hamlet of Greenville, NH. Never a financially bountiful line, the P&S eventually became a B&M backwater branch that somehow managed to remain intact into the 1970s. But floods, washouts, poor ROW, etc. had by the mid-1970s reduced the active rail to West Townsend, and around 1981 Townsend also lost it's local turn. Today, only two customers and a mile of active track remain on what PAR calls their Greenville Industrial Branch.Very true. Although this branch was never successful, I have always found it to be one of the more interesting ones on the B&M as far as remains and history. Greenville alone has a really neat old depot, that is now being used as a Chinese restaurant. You can also still see the massive stone piers from NH route 31 while heading north out of town. I heard a story once that the bridge was so high, someone was able to fly a small plane under it! Much of the right of way in NH is intact and serves as a nice bike path through the woods.
The P&S never had a chance - even at it's height it was still a dead end branch line into rural NH hill country; no other RR connections, zero long term viability.
To add two more lines to the discussion:
The Boston and Maine Belmont branch ran about four miles east from the White Mountains Division in Lochmere (Tilton), NH to the small town of Belmont. Even when it was being constructed, many people were already questioning the practicality of this line, and asking how it would ever make money. Belmost was (and still is) a small rural town that didn't generate much traffic be it passenger or freight. The line was abandoned in 1929, with the exception on the first half mile or so from Lochmere which serves the last fright customer north of Concord on the line to Lincoln. You can still trace parts of the right of way on Google maps, and see just how rural this line was.
The B&M Bristol Branch which branched off the Northern Line in West Franklin was also a line that never had a chance. It was thought that maybe the White Mountains Division could be routed through Bristol and follow the Pemi the whole way north as opposed to the route through Laconia and Meredith. This idea was dropped, however, as Laconia was the industrial center of the area and had a higher need for train service, thus the Bristol Branch just dead-ended in Bristol. Even if the small town had provided enough business to keep the line afloat, it had the problem of flooding out almost every springtime since it was primarily built on the Pemi's floodplain. Because of that, this right of way is much harder to find today, and the site of the Bristol depot is impossible to access.