New England region played a big part too in the development of railroads in the US back in the early decades of the 19th-century. The big network of textile mills, which started in Providence, Rhode Island, then later in Lowell and Lawrence, and Uxbridge, MA. were situated along rivers and canal systems. The Blackstone Canal, which ran alongside the Blackstone river between Providence and Worcester, was very busy with traffic in the early 1800s. There was a problem though. The canals provided transportation with the same water that was used to power the big textile mills. During the summer months, the water levels are much lower, and this caused the canals to dry up as the water was diverted in the mill sluice ways. Riots would break out between the canal boat operators and the mill owners over water rights. As time went on, one of the earliest railroads in the US was built - the Providence and Worcester. This railroad still exists as an independent shortline railroad, after being part of the the New Haven and later Penn Central briefly. The Middlesex Canal provided similar services between Lowell and Boston, and later on in the early 1840s the Boston and Lowell was built, and the canal company went out of business. The railroads had the advantage over the canals in other ways, besides being able to operate in nearly all kinds of weather. Remember when the winter comes, the canals freeze; in the summer, the water dries up. This made the service unpredictable, so the railroads shined by carrying goods and passengers year round. Another famous railroad was born around the same time - the Boston & Maine, which was founded in New Hampshire, but had subsidiaries all over. The old Andover and Wilmington served as a connection to the B&M, and eventually became part of the mainline to Portland Maine. Eventually the original A&W route was abandoned due to the rolling hills that it followed, and the B&M route, as we know it today, was laid around 1848.
Today the mainline still exists for the B&M and P&W. The P&W is doing quite well, and nearly all of the exent system is their original line with a few extra B&M and Conrail spin-offs added in as well. The B&M went through major periods of boom and bust as the economy changed when the manufacturing facilities closed as jobs and companies moved away. By the late 1960s the B&M was bankrupt again, and the local transit authority - the MBTA - purchased all of the existing track in Massachusetts up to the borders from the B&M. The B&M was reorganized, and in the early 1980s, became part Guilford Transportation. What was once a Class I extending from Montreal Canada all the way to Troy, New York, and all the way east to Portland, Maine is only a shadow of its original self. Much of the trackage, other than the basic mainline from New Amsterdam, NY to Portland, is long gone, becoming trails or lay abandoned. The Main Central, another famous company, also became part of Guilford in the same period, and lost most of it's lines as well. Guilford has done its share of ripping up more trackage from the system, so what was once over a 10,000 mile system, is only about 500 miles or so long on the B&M, and probably less than that for the MEC. This is typical of US railroad history. They built a great network, with nearly 300,000 miles of trackage, and pare it down to nearly nothing today. This is sad because there are now areas where the tracks should be active again for passenger service, but the funds are not there to restore the lines, and the NIMBYs have moved, so they're becoming recreational trails.
John
