Train to Nowhere

Where to find the tracks that never made it to Boston

 
 
 
By Gavin Kleespies

his area was once crisscrossed by miles of rail lines, most of which were laid for horse-drawn railcars. Almost all of them have been paved over, and while we walk and drive over them daily, we have no idea they are there. Brookline Street in Cambridgeport is an interesting example of this hidden history.

The lines on Brookline Street were laid in 1881 by the Charles River Railway and were meant to connect
Inman and Central squares to Boston by traveling over what is today called the BU Bridge and then up
Commonwealth Avenue. However, this was a contentious time, and not everyone supported every rail
line; getting permission to start a project didn’t always mean that you would be able to finish it.

This is what happened to the Brookline Street rail line. Cambridge gave permission for its construction and the
Charles River Railway laid tracks to the bridge, but when they got to the other side, Brookline refused to
let the company continue. The Charles River Railway took its case to the legislature. In the end, it was given the right to lay tracks to the Boston and Albany Railroad’s station at Cottage Farm, at the end of the bridge.
This got it across the river, but left it well shy of a connection to downtown Boston.

While the Brookline Street rail line’s ambitions may have been stifled, the Charles River Railway went on
to have an impact on all of our lives. The CRR was absorbed by the Cambridge Railroad in 1886, and the Cambridge Railroad was absorbed into the West End Street Railway in 1887. This larger company pushed to update the rail lines from horse-drawn railways to an electric street railway. The first electric cars began running on the Brookline and Allston lines on New Year’s Day, 1889. The first electric cars in Cambridge ran on February 16, 1889, between Bowdoin Square in Boston and Harvard Square.

In 1897, the West End Street Railway was leased to the Boston Elevated Railway, which built the Red Line extension into Cambridge. So while the Charles River Railway and the legal fight over the Brookline Street rails may have been a distant memory, it was a small part of the company that connected Cambridge to the first subway in America.

Gavin Kleespies is director of the Cambridge Historical Society.