South Britain, CT ROW

Does anyone have information about the railroad through South Britain and Southbury, CT?
Did the tracks parallel Main Street?
Thanks,
Russ

This line ran between Bank Street Junction, SS-202, Waterbury and SS-201, Hawleyville. The section between Waterbury and
Southbury was abandoned in the summer of 1939 and the section between Southbury and Hawleyville was abandoned in June
of 1948. South Britain was on the section between Southbury and Hawleyville and thus lost rail in 1948.
At one time this line was considered as part of the through route between Hartford and Maybrook via Waterbury but the
grades especially out of Waterbury helped kill it early on as a through route. Some of this trackage within Waterbury lasted
for some time after abandonment west of there and in fact they went part way up the grade out of town to service a lumber
yard at least through the 1960's.
Noel Weaver

Noel:
I appreciate the reply.
There is a rail bridge over the river leading to a metal recovery business that still uses the railroad. I wonder if this was the line west to Southbury/Hawelyville?
Russ

photons wrote:Noel:
I appreciate the reply.
There is a rail bridge over the river leading to a metal recovery business that still uses the railroad. I wonder if this was the line west to Southbury/Hawelyville?
Russ

I assume you're talking Waterbury here. The bridge over the Naugatuck River has two tracks on it, one is the Metro-North
main track and the other is a yard track leading to the former line to Hawleyville which as you point out goes a little way
toward the old enginehouse area. I do not know exactly how far this track goes at this point. The old bridge at South
Leonard/Eagle Streets is long gone so it doesn't go too far.
I was up poking around Waterbury in November but I gave up driving around the south end of the city.
Unfortunately, today, Waterbury is a sad case of what used to be.
Noel Weaver

You might want to check out http://www.historicaerials.com/. You can look at CT in 1934 at pretty good magnification.

Attached is South Britain & the NY&NE ROW.

You can hike a decent part of the old ROW through Southbury and Oxford, almost to Waterbury. The ROW was purchased by a Dr. Larkin when the NYNH&H pulled out in '39, and converted to a bridle path. Got to be one of the first rails-to-trails conversions anywhere. There's a very cool stone arch bridge over Eight Mile Brook that is completely intact (which is surprising considering the floods that have happened in the years since the line was abandonded). You can get a good sense of how steep the grades were and how much the line must have cost to build simply by hiking the trail.

[quote="photons"]Noel:
I appreciate the reply.
There is a rail bridge over the river leading to a metal recovery business that still uses the railroad. I wonder if this was the line west to Southbury/Hawelyville?
Russ[/quote]

Russ, maybe you are referring to what's left of the old Watertown Branch, a mile or so north of the Waterbury Station. The customer would be Albert Bros, a scrapyard that continues to ship by rail, and is the largest remaining customer in Waterbury. The Watertown Branch once ran out of the upper Waterbury freight yard on its own track, but back in the 80's a switch was installed on the Naugy main (Torrington branch) at Thomaston Ave to eliminate the need for about a mile of duplicate track. So now Springfield Terminal uses the Naugatuck RR from Highland Jct to "Watertown Jct." to get to the branch, about once a week.

Thanks for all of the wonderful replies!
Noel: Very interesting history. I wish I could walk these areas.
Ridgefielder: I have seen this bridle path when detouring from the traffic of I-84. I will check it out more carefully now.
CannaScrews: I can't wait to explore the old maps.
Russ

This has been a very informative thread to me. I pass thru the Southbury, South Britain and Sandy Hook, CT every weekend and always try to discern new clues from the old ROW. I find the Historic Aerials link provided by CannaScrews to be especially helpfull, for finding traces of many of the other vanished branchlines in my area.