Railroad in Burlington, MA

Were there ever any plans for the railroad to go to Burlington, MA?

I wish... that way I could go railfanning during my lunch break!

As far as I know, there were never any trains going to Burlington (where I work part time in their Simon-owned Mall), but if there were any rails touching the confines of that town, I would have LOVED for the Red Line to go from Alewife to the Burlington Mall to increase ridership and all the shopping centers and hotels in that area of town.

Do trolleys count? In ancient times, the Bay State Street Railway (the largest trolley company in the country in 1910 in terms of mileage) had a short-lived Woburn-Burlington-Billerica-Lowell line that passed through the town, but it was converted to buses in 1931.

The "steam" railroads never made it to Burlington. Without researching the question extensively, I suspect it was mainly a matter of topography -- the easiest route on which to build a rail line between Boston, Lowell, and New Hampshire lay to the east, along the route of the Middlesex Canal, so that's where the Boston & Lowell RR (today's MBTA Lowell line) built its tracks shortly after the age of dinosaurs (1835, actually).

You know, I always wondered if the gravel pits in the Lexington/Burlington area had once had rail service. I guess not, huh??

If you're interested in all the places where railroads ran before the track abandonments that began in the 1930s and continue today, you might want to check out the New England historical map collection maintained by the University of New Hampshire and available on line at <http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm>

They have a wide variety of topographical maps indexed by state and town, going back to the 19th century, and rail lines are easy to trace, especially on the more detailed grids.

While the UNH collection still exists, the official home of the Historic USGS Topo maps collection is now:
http://historical.maptech.com

The volunteers who created and maintain the site do make changes and updates from time-to-time, whereas the UNH site is no longer expanded or maintained.

Thanks,
-Ed Lecuyer
Asst. Webmaster for the Historical USGS Map collection
Amateur Rail Historian

You might also look for a copy of Lost Railroads of New England by Ronald Dale Karr. It will give you a thorough listing on New England railroad abandonments.
Perhaps Burlington was wise not to get caught up in the "railroad fever" of the mid 1800's. Numerous communities that "had to have a railroad" pledged public money to buy railroad stocks and bonds and then lost it when some of these marginal roads went bankrupt.

I don't recall any railroad running through Burlington. The closest one was probably the Woburn Loop which ran through Central Square in Woburn - about 1.5 miles from the Burlinton line.

As someone pointed out there was a trolley that ran from the line that went through Woburn to Burlington and Billerica terminating in Lowell. Before WWII my father used to take it frequently to date my mother in Somerville.

TomNelligan wrote:Do trolleys count? In ancient times, the Bay State Street Railway (the largest trolley company in the country in 1910 in terms of mileage) had a short-lived Woburn-Burlington-Billerica-Lowell line that passed through the town, but it was converted to buses in 1931.

I guess you could say that trolleys do count also. Since thay run in rail obviously, and I can qualify them to be trains in Burlington. But most people are right, Burlington was kinda out of the way to put a true railroad within their confines of that town.

As a native of Burlington and longtime student of the town's history, I can tell you that no heavy rail railroad ever passed through the town. The issue did come up as an Warrant Article at a town meeting in the 1840s, where it was met with vehment opposition by a member of the influential Winn family, who feared it would scare the cows in his pastures. I read an account once of that meeting, where Mr. Winn yelled something like: "No hissing smoking train is going to scare the cows in my pasture!". I believe that account is published in John Edward Fogelberg's comprehensive history of the Town: Burlington- Part of A Greater Chronicle . The town's geographical situation probably would have prevented the construction of any major lines anyhow, as the town center is high upon a hill, though it would probably have been possible to build a line roughly through Winnmere, parrallel to Winn St (or in place of what is a major portion of Winn St today) to Billerica, however the town's tiny population and lack of any industry other than a few farms and shod shops wouldn't have been much of a draw for a line that would have been redundant to the lines in Woburn and Wilmington to the East and Lexington and Bedford to the West, both of which provided service between Boston and Lowell.

In 1901 the Lowell and Boston Co. laid a single track trolley line from Woburn, up Winn St to Main Street (today's Center St), up Bennett Hill, through Burlington Center along Bedford Street, crossing the State Road (Today's Cambridge St) to a small passing siding, making a right turn on Church Lane to the bottom where it turned left onto Main Street (today's Cambridge Street, Route 3A) and on to Billerica and Lowell.
In 1906, due to problems getting the cars up Bennett Hill in the Winter, a successor company, with much controversy, relocated the line down to what is today's Winn St, bypassing Burlington Center (Ironically, when the line was first built, residents of Burlington Center complained of the noise generated by the cars). To mediate the loss of the streetcar service in Burlington Center, the streetcar company built Sears St from Center St to the trolley line, a distance of about 2/10 of a mile. A small waiting room was built at the foot of Sears St. The line ran until 1921 when it was replaced by a bus. Sears St was named for the president of the trolley company. An account of the line just prior to its inaguration of service may be read here.

Is today's MBTA bus #350 a direct descendant of that trolley and bus line?

Ron Newman wrote:Is today's MBTA bus #350 a direct descendant of that trolley and bus line?

I don't think so. I know when I was very young, there were two buses numbered in the 700s, one was express via 128 and I-93, the other a local, to Kendall Sq. (the sign backs designating those route numbers were still around in some locations a few years ago). After Alewife station was opened in the mid 1980s, the routes were renumbered to the 350 series, 352 being the express from LaCascia's Bakery in the northern part of the town to Government Center in Boston and the 350 being the serice via Cambridge St, the Mall then south on Route 3 through Woburn, Winchester, Arlington and on to Alewife Station. It took a much different route than the old trolley line.

I hate to be bring back such an old topic, but didn't the bedford & billerica railroad pass through burlington city limits? If not, it must have come pretty close.

The narrow gauge Bedford & Billerica RR, which became the B&M's standard gauge branch between those points, did not run through Burlington. The line ran well west of the town line.