The same thing happened in Boston!
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the trolley lines from Cambridge to Somerville and Medford Square were torn up. I remember the trolleys to Union Square in Somerville, but they disappeared when I was very young.
Fastforward to 2019 and the lines were restored at a massive cost of something like $3 Billion or more. The lines no longer run on the street and instead follow the former Boston and Maine ROW from Lechmere Square to Somerville and then on to Medford on the rest of the branch. $3 Billion to replace something that existed before.
On the western side of the city, the Heath Street extension of the Huntington Avenue Line, which terminates at Cleveland Circle, used to continue to Jamaica Plain and terminate at Forest Hills. In the early 1980s, the line was mothballed using "a cost cutting move" as the excuse by bus-centric management. In the intervening years, long afterwards, the line was upgraded to the new LRV standards including signals using our taxpayer money, but excuse after excuse was used not to restore the service. Finally, in the early to mid-2000s, it was a case of either do it or get off the pot. The "T" stalled and stalled and ended up going to court where surprisingly, all of a sudden, the judge ruled in favor of the "T" allowing the transit agency to rip up the tracks and knock down the historic station! Yup, after all these years, we lost that line anyway.
During this battle, NIMBYs came out of the woodwork including those that didn't live in the area to complain that the trolleys "might" make noise, and worse attract the riff-raff from elsewhere. The word is some lawyers "hired" these people to come in and protest to shut down the trolley service, which is very possible because they did this up my way too for a new commuter station for exactly the same reasons.
Roughly a year or so later, we also lost the Watertown branch that also used to serve a carbarn located in Watertown Square that was used for heavy repairs. During a morning commute, traffic was tied up to the hilt due to the "T" moving some dead LRVs on Rt. 128 (I-95) to Newton to put them back on the tracks. The problem is they are too heavy for the local roads and the tracks they once ran on are no more. The service on this line was killed at the same time as the Forest Hills line was. When people pushed the "T" to restore service on this line, they ripped the tracks up in the same manner only without protests this time.
Again, there are some "studies" being done to restore service to these areas! I wonder how much it's going to cost this time.