West Concord station
West Concord station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station located in West Concord and served by the Fitchburg Line. The station has two side platforms serving the line's two tracks, with mini-high platforms for accessibility; the 1894-built station building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The first station at Concord Junction opened in 1871 at the junction of the Fitchburg Railroad and the Framingham and Lowell Railroad, it soon became an important railroad junction, a new union station was built in 1894. Passenger service declined during the 20th century; the interior of the building was restored in the 1980s, the exterior was restored with the original tri-color paint scheme in the 2000s. The Fitchburg Railroad opened through Concord in 1844; when the Framingham and Lowell Railroad opened in 1871, Concord Junction station was established where the two lines crossed in the Warnerville section of Concord. The small station was soon joined by a freight house, engine house, turntable.
The Nashua and Boston Railroad opened in 1873, with trackage rights over the F&L to Concord Junction. The railroad offered Concord Junction–Nashua service timed to meet Fitchburg Railroad trains, making Concord Junction an important transfer point. Industrial activity in Concord soon clustered around the three railroad lines; the new Union Station opened in January 1894. The single-story L-shaped Queen Anne style structure incorporated a passenger waiting room, freight office, a baggage room in three separate buildings under one roof. A bay window protruded from the right angle of the station to give the stationmaster views down the rail lines; the asymmetrical design, slate roof, eyelid dormers, stained glass windows, bright three-color paint scheme were unusual for the area. Among the regular passengers at the station was John F. Fitzgerald, who used it between 1897 and 1903; the Nashua and Boston became part of the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1895, followed by the Fitchburg Railroad in 1900.
The F&L went through several ownership changes. Passenger service declined in the 20th century. Passenger service on the F&L ended in 1933, though north-south freight service through Concord Junction continued. At that time, the freight office and part of the roof were demolished. With passenger service only remaining on the Fitchburg mainline, the station and village soon became known as West Concord. Intercity service past Fitchburg ended in 1960; the MBTA was formed in 1964 to subsidize suburban commuter rail operations. This public funding stabilized remaining service on the Boston and Maine system in 1965. Around this time, the building began to be used as a restaurant. In 1982, a faux-brick exterior was added to the building and the space between the waiting room and baggage room was enclosed. Freight service on the ex-F&L from West Concord south to South Sudbury ended that year; the diamond crossing was soon removed and moved south, where it was put on display in a small park. In the late 1980s, a group of residents renovated the interior of the station.
In 1989, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Union Station. The Club Car Cafe opened in the building in 1990. Freight service north of West Concord ended in 1993. Mini-high platforms were installed shortly after the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making West Concord one of the first MBTA Commuter Rail stations to become accessible; the Friends of the West Concord Depot group formed in 2006 to support renovations of the deteriorated station building. The town and the MBTA split the cost of exterior renovations, which restored the original tri-color exterior design; the renovations were completed around 2009. National Register of Historic Places listings in Concord, Massachusetts MBTA - West Concord Station on Google Maps Street View
Hudson, Massachusetts
Hudson is a town in Middlesex County, United States, with a total population of 19,063 as of the 2010 census. Before its incorporation as a town in 1866, Hudson was a neighborhood and unincorporated village of Marlborough and was known as Feltonville. From around 1850 until the last shoe factory burned down in 1968, Hudson was known as a "shoe town." At one point, the town had 17 shoe factories, many of them powered by the Assabet River, which runs through town. Because of the many factories in Hudson, immigrants were attracted to the town. Today most people are of either Portuguese or Irish descent, with a smaller percentage of people being of French, English, or Scots-Irish descent. While some manufacturing remains in Hudson, the town is now residential. Hudson is served by the Hudson Public Schools district. In 1650, the area that would become Hudson was part of the Indian Plantation for the Praying Indians; the Praying Indians were evicted from their plantation during King Philip's War and most did not return after the war.
The first European settlement of the Hudson area occurred in 1699 when settler John Barnes, granted an acre of the Ockookangansett Indian plantation the year before, built a gristmill on the Assabet River on land that would one day be part of Hudson. By 1701, Barnes had built a sawmill and bridge across the Assabet; the settlement was part of the town of Marlborough. As early as June 1743, area residents petitioned to break away from Marlborough and become a separate town, claiming the journey to attend Marlborough's town meeting was "vastly fatiguing." Their petition was denied by the Massachusetts General Court. Men from the area fought with the Minutemen on April 19, 1775, as they harassed British troops along the route to Boston. In the 1850s, Feltonville received its first railroads. There were two train stations operated by the Central Massachusetts Railroad Company and by Boston & Maine, until both of them were closed in 1965; this allowed the development of larger factories, some of the first in the country to use steam power and sewing machines.
By 1860, Feltonville had 17 shoe and shoe-related factories, which attracted immigrants from Ireland and French Canada. Feltonville residents fought during the Civil War. Twenty-five of those men died doing so. Two houses, including the Goodale Homestead on Chestnut Street and the Curley home on Brigham Street, have been cited as way-stations on the Underground Railroad. Both properties remain in existence as of 2018. In 1865, Feltonville residents once again petitioned to become a separate town, they cited the difficulty of attending town meeting, as their predecessors had in 1743, noted that Marlborough's high school was too far for most Feltonville children to practicably attend. This petition was approved by the Massachusetts General Court on March 19, 1866; the new town was named Hudson after Congressman Charles Hudson, born and raised in the Feltonville neighborhood. Though the naming has sometimes been interpreted as a quid pro quo in exchange for his donation to the library, in fact, his gift came after he received the news of the honor.
According to the 1880 Middlesex Co. history, once the town was established, a committee was appointed "to inform Charles Hudson, of Lexington, that the new town was named Hudson as a compliment to him." Upon receiving the news, he sent a "flattering and satisfactory letter" to the committee in which he "spoke approvingly of the enterprise of the town and treated of the value of a free public library." He concluded with an offer of $500 in matching funds towards the construction of a free public library, which the citizens voted on and approved. Over the next twenty years, Hudson grew. Two woolen mills, an elastic-webbing plant, a piano case factory, a factory for waterproofing fabrics by rubber coating were constructed. Private banks, five schools, a poor farm, the town hall were built during this time; the population hovered around 4,000 residents, most of whom lived in modest houses with small backyard gardens. Some of Hudson's wealthier citizens built elaborate Queen Anne Victorian mansions, many of them still exist.
One of the finest is the 1895 Col. Adelbert Mossman House on Park Street, on the National Register of Historic Places; the town maintained five volunteer fire companies during the 1880s and 1890s, one of which manned the Eureka Hand Pump, a record-setting pump that could shoot a 1.5-inch stream of water 229 feet. Despite this glut of fire companies, on July 4, 1894, two boys playing with firecrackers started a fire that burned down 40 buildings and 5 acres of central Hudson. Nobody was hurt, but the damages were estimated at $400,000 in 1894; the town was rebuilt within a year or two. By 1900, Hudson's population reached about 5,500 residents and the town had built a power plant on Cherry Street. Many houses were wired for electricity, to this day Hudson produces its own power under the auspices of the Hudson Light and Power Department, a non-profit municipal utility owned by the town. Electric trolley lines were built that connected Hudson with the towns of Leominster and Marlborough, though these only remained in existence until the late 1920s.
The factories in town continued to grow, attracting immigrants from England, Portugal, Poland, Greece and Italy. These immigrants lived in boarding houses near their places of employment. In 1928, 19 languages were spoken by the
MBTA Commuter Rail
The MBTA Commuter Rail system serves as the commuter rail arm of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's transportation coverage of Greater Boston in the United States. Trains run over 398 miles of track to 137 different stations, with 58 stations on the north side with the remaining 79 stations on the south, it is operated under contract by Keolis, which took over operations on July 1, 2014 from the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company. The system is the sixth-busiest commuter rail system in the U. S. behind the three New York areas, Chicago area, Philadelphia area systems, is tied for fifth-busiest with Philadelphia's SEPTA Regional Rail in terms of weekday ridership. The line's characteristic purple-trimmed coaches operate as far south as North Kingstown, Rhode Island, as far north as Newburyport and as far west as Fitchburg, both in Massachusetts. Trains originate at two major terminals in Boston — South Station and North Station — both transportation hubs offering connections to Amtrak, local bus, intercity bus via South Station Bus Terminal, subway lines, but with as yet no passenger rail infrastructure directly connecting them, other than the existing MBTA subway lines.
MassDOT is entering into a study phase of the North–South Rail Link, which would provide a solution to the problem. In the second quarter of 2017, daily weekday ridership was 122,000. No lines feed into both the South Stations; the following lines terminate at South Station: Greenbush Line Old Colony Lines, consisting of: Kingston/Plymouth Line Middleborough/Lakeville Line Fairmount Line Providence/Stoughton Line Franklin Line Needham Line Framingham/Worcester LineThe following lines terminate at North Station: Fitchburg Line Lowell Line Haverhill Line Newburyport/Rockport Line The Commonwealth of Massachusetts's involvement with the operating facets of commuter rail began in 1967 when the Boston & Maine Railroad petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to discontinue all passenger services. Service north of the state line was discontinued, but most service in Massachusetts was preserved through a contract between the Commonwealth and the B&M, at this time still an independent railroad company.
The Commonwealth and MBTA began to purchase several lines, like the Lowell Line between Somerville and Wilmington, from the B&M. In 1969 the B&M transported 24,000 passengers every weekday on four separate routes, its yearly deficit was US$3.2 million. A pool of 86 Budd Rail Diesel Cars provided the service. B&M filed for bankruptcy protection in 1970. All remaining B&M commuter assets, with the exception of yard tracks and freight-only branches, were sold to the Commonwealth on December 14, 1976, though B&M was contracted to operate the service using its existing fleet of diesel railcars; the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the long-time operator of most South Station commuter trains, filed for bankruptcy for the last time in 1961. Two years earlier in 1959, the railroad had discontinued passenger service on the Old Colony division in southeastern Massachusetts. On July 28, 1965, the MBTA signed an agreement with the New Haven Railroad to purchase 11 miles of the former Old Colony mainline from Fort Point Channel to South Braintree in order to construct a new rapid transit line along the corridor.
The line was expected to be completed within two years. The agreement provided for the MBTA to subsidize commuter service on the railroad's remaining commuter rail lines for $1.2 million annually. The NH was included in the Penn Central Transportation Company merger in 1968, which itself filed bankruptcy in 1970. MBTA purchased many PC southside commuter lines on January 27, 1973, including the Providence/Stoughton Line as far as the Rhode Island border plus the branch to Stoughton, the Franklin Line and Needham Line and the Framingham/Worcester Line from Riverside to Framingham, as well as a number of abandoned lines and lines without passenger service including the Old Colony mainline from Boston to Braintree and the Plymouth/Kingston Line. PC merged into Conrail on April 1, 1976; the MBTA purchased the Fairmount Line to restore it for passenger service as a bypass during Southwest Corridor reconstruction. The Framingham/Worcester Line part of the Boston & Albany Railroad, was merged into the New York Central Railroad and its ownership subsequently passed to PC in 1968.
As part of the Massachusetts Turnpike Boston Extension's construction in the 1960s, the Worcester Line's roadbed between Route 128 and Boston was sold to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, with the provison that the control of the railroad remain with NYC. Conrail inherited the line which formed a vital freight artery between Boston's Beacon Yard and Conrail's Selkirk Yard; the Riverside-Framingham section was sold to the MBTA in 1976 as part of their larger acquisition of PC commuter assets, but the section past Framingham remained in Conrail control. In September 2009, Conrail successor CSX Transportation and the Commonwealth finalized a $100 million agreement to purchase CSX's Framingham to Worcester tracks, as well as the Grand Junction Railroad plus lines which will be part of the South Coast Rail project, to improve service on the Framingham/Worcester Line. After several years of construction and negotiations, ownership of the line was transferred to the commonwealth on October 4, 2012, with increased service on the outer section of the line beginning several weeks later.
The Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981 compelled Conrail to transfer operations of all pa
Budd Rail Diesel Car
The Budd Rail Diesel Car, RDC or Buddliner is a self-propelled diesel multiple unit railcar. Between 1949 and 1962, 398 RDCs were built by the Budd Company of Philadelphia, United States; the cars were adopted for passenger service in rural areas with low traffic density or in short-haul commuter service, were less expensive to operate in this context than a traditional diesel locomotive-drawn train with coaches. The cars could be used singly or coupled together in train sets and controlled from the cab of the front unit; the RDC was one of the few DMU trains to achieve commercial success in North America. RDC trains were an early example of self-contained diesel multiple unit trains, an arrangement now in common use by railways all over the world. Budd RDCs were sold to operators in North America, South America and Australia, they saw extensive use both on branch lines and in commuter service. As passenger service declined in the United States the RDC was the last surviving conveyor of passengers on a particular route.
Most RDCs were retired by the 1980s. In Canada, RDCs have remained in continuous use since their introduction in the 1950s; the RDC inspired several derivatives, including the unsuccessful Budd SPV-2000. The New York Central Railroad strapped two jet engines to an RDC in 1966 and set a United States speed record of 184 mph, although this experimental configuration was never used in regular service; the self-propelled railcar was not a new concept in North American railroading. Beginning in the 1880s railroads experimented with steam-powered railcars on branch lines, where the costs of operating a conventional steam locomotive-hauled set of cars was prohibitive; these cars failed for several reasons: the boiler and engine were too heavy and fuel took up too much space, high maintenance costs eliminated whatever advantage was gained from reducing labor costs. In the 1900s steam railcars gave way to gasoline, led by the McKeen Motor Car Company, which produced 152 between 1905–1917. J. G. Brill sold over 300 "railbuses" in the 1920s.
Newcomer Electro-Motive Corporation, working with the Winton Motor Carriage Company, dominated the market at the end of the 1920s but had exited it by 1932 as the Great Depression gutted rail traffic. The Budd Company entered the market in 1932. Up to that time Budd was an automotive parts subcontractor, but had pioneered working with stainless steel, including the technique of shot welding to join pieces of stainless steel; this permitted the construction of cars which were both strong. Budd partnered with Michelin to construct several rubber-tyred stainless steel rail cars powered by gasoline and Diesel engines; these saw service with the Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Texas and Pacific Railway. The cars were underpowered, the tires proved prone to blowouts and derailments, the cars were unsuccessful. Budd revived its railcar concept after diesel engines with a suitable combination of power and weight became available in 1938, although with more conventional steel wheels. In 1941 Budd built the Prospector for the Rio Grande Western Railroad.
This was a two-car diesel multiple unit. Each car was capable of independent operation; the cars were constructed of stainless steel and included a mix of coach and sleeping accommodations. The design was popular with the public but undone by the difficult operating conditions on the D&RGW, it was withdrawn in July 1942 another failure. However, several technical advances during the Second World War encouraged Budd to try again; the war years saw improvements in the lightweight Detroit Diesel engines and, just as the hydraulic torque converter. Budd, which by had produced more than 2,500 streamlined cars for various railroads, took a standard 85-foot coach design and added a pair of 275 hp 6-cylinder Detroit Diesel Series 110 engines; each drove an axle through a hydraulic torque converter derived from the M46 Patton tank, for a 1A-A1 wheel arrangement. The top speed for the design was 85 miles per hour; the control systems allowed the cars to operate singly, or in multiple. The result was the RDC-1, which made its public debut at Chicago's Union Station on September 19, 1949.
Budd manufactured five basic variants of the RDC: The RDC-1: an 85 ft all-passenger coach seating 90 passengers. It weighed 118,300 pounds empty; the RDC-2: an 85 ft baggage and passenger coach configuration seating 70 passengers. The baggage area was 17 ft long, it weighed 114,200 pounds empty. The RDC-3: an 85 ft variant with a Railway Post Office, a baggage compartment and 48 passenger seats, it weighed 117,900 pounds empty. The RDC-4: a 73 ft 10 in variant with only the Railway Post Office and baggage area, it weighed 109,200 pounds empty. The RDC-9: an 85 ft passenger trailer seating 94, a single 300 horsepower engine and no control cab. Several railroads used the designation "RDC-5": the Canadian Pacific Railway for RDC-2s converted to full-coach configuration and the Canadian National Railway for RDC-9s it purchased from the Boston and Maine Railroad. In 1956, Budd introduced a new version of the RDC, with several improvements; the new cars had more powerful versions of the Detroit Diesel 6-110 engines, each of which produced 300 horsepower instead of 275 horsepower.
They featured higher capacity air conditioning and more comfortable seating. The appearance changed as well: the side fluting continued around to the front of the car and the front-facing windows were smaller. In an experime
Fitchburg Line
The Fitchburg Line is a branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail system which runs from Boston's North Station to Wachusett station in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The line is along the tracks of the former Fitchburg Railroad, built across northern Massachusetts, United States, in the 1840s, it is one of the MBTA's more scenic commuter rail lines, passing by Walden Pond between Lincoln and Concord. Weekend service includes a specially equipped seasonal "ski train" to Wachusett Mountain during the winter. At 54 miles long, the Fitchburg Line is the second-longest line in the system, ranks as one of the worst lines in terms of on-time performance; the Fitchburg Line has the oldest infrastructure in the system, commuter trains must share trackage with freight trains on the outer segment of the line. Only ten of the line's nineteen stations, including both terminals, are handicapped accessible - the lowest proportion of any MBTA Commuter Rail line. A $150 million project completed in 2017 included adding nine miles of double track, an extension to Wachusett, rebuilding two stations, building a new layover yard.
The Fitchburg Railroad opened between 1845 from Boston to Fitchburg. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote about his skepticism of the Fitchburg Railroad near Walden Pond in his book Walden; the Boston and Maine Railroad leased the Fitchburg Railroad in 1900 and bought it in 1919. In 1948, The Master Highway Plan for the Boston Metropolitan Area proposed the construction of eight radial expressways around Boston connecting to the Inner Belt, Interstate 695. A section of the Northwest Expressway, carrying a concurrency of Route 2 and Route 3, was to run along the Fitchburg right-of-way from Union Square in Somerville to Sherman Street in North Cambridge; this expressway would have taken up some or all of the trackbed, four tracks wide in that section. After successful highway revolts, Governor Francis W. Sargent placed a hold on all highway construction inside Route 128 in 1970. Following a study, Sargent permanently canceled the 1948 plans in 1972, thus securing the corridor's future for railroad use.
In January 1958, passenger service on the Fitchburg Division was cut back from the B&M's western terminal in Troy, New York to Williamstown. All service west of Fitchburg was dropped on 23 April 1960; when the newly formed MBTA began subsidizing the Boston & Maine Railroad's intrastate service on January 18, 1965, service was only kept to communities in the MBTA's limited funding district. All service on the Fitchburg Line west of West Concord was cut, as was the low-ridership stop at Riverview; the MBTA scrambled to find funding. Service was restored as far as Ayer on June 28, 1965, along with the outer Rockport Branch and full schedules on the Lowell and Ipswich routes. Although some gains were made, including the reopening of Belmont Center and Waverley stations on March 4, 1974, the system continued to hang on by thin margins; the Central Mass Branch, which shared trackage with the Fitchburg, was cut on November 26, 1971. In December 1973, state subsidies for towns outside the MBTA funding district were halved, resulting in the MBTA needing to renegotiate subsidies from 14 municipalities.
Ayer, with just 14 daily commuters, refused to pay its $8200 bill in 1974. On March 1, 1975, the line was cut back to South Acton, dropping stops at Ayer and West Acton. Two used stops in Waltham – Clematis Brook and Beaver Brook – closed in June 1978. On December 27, 1976, the MBTA bought the Boston and Maine Railroad's northside commuter rail assets, including the entire length of the Fitchburg Line; the closure of the Lexington Branch the next month represented the limit of the contraction of the northside lines. Service was restored to Fitchburg and beyond to Gardner on January 13, 1980. Gardner service was ended on January 1, 1987 when Amtrak took over the MBTA contract, due to a dispute between Amtrak and Guilford. In December 2006, the MBTA began branding certain winter weekend round trips as "ski trains"; the train used includes a car equipped with ski racks. Due to the cyclic expansion and contraction for the first three decades of the MBTA's existence, the Fitchburg Line was neglected and its infrastructure began to decline.
The Fitchburg route was once double tracked from Boston to Troy, New York. By 2000, there was a 9 miles section of single track between South Acton and Ayer, a shorter section in Waltham; this limited the number of trains. Until the extension of the Providence leg of the Providence/Stoughton Line to T. F. Green Airport in 2010, the Fitchburg Line was the longest line on the MBTA system. In 2000, the Massachusetts State Legislature passed a bill that directed the MBTA to "conduct a feasibility study regarding the reestablishm
Assabet River Rail Trail
The Assabet River Rail Trail is a partially-completed multi-use path running through the cities and towns of Marlborough, Stow and Acton, United States. As a conversion of the abandoned Marlborough Branch of the Fitchburg Railroad, it is a rail trail; the right-of-way parallels the Assabet River in the midsection. At the north end it veers north to the South Acton MBTA train station while the south end veers south to Marlborough; when completed, the end-to-end length will be 12.5 miles. As of August 2018, the southwest end, 5.1 miles of the trail from Marlborough to Hudson is completed, the northeast end, 3.4 miles running from South Acton train station to the Maynard/Stow border is completed. No current plans exist for paving the middle 4.0 miles in Husdon. This railroad branch was progressively lengthened so that it reached from the Acton station to Maynard by 1849, was extended through Stow to Hudson in 1850, reached its Marlborough terminus in 1855. Passenger service was discontinued in the reverse fashion, so that Marlborough's service ended in 1930, Hudson and Stow in 1939, Maynard in 1958.
The branch continued to provide freight service into the 1960s. The last remaining rails and railroad ties in Acton and Maynard were removed in 2014. In 1851 transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who lived in Concord, wrote in his famous journal about a trek to Boon's Pond, which on the return included a walk along the railroad tracks that are now part of the rail trail. In 2005 the south end of the trail, with a length of 5.1 miles, was completed from Marlborough to a parking lot on Wilkins Street in northeast Hudson. Construction of 3.4 miles of the north end of the trail — from the South Acton train station running south to central Maynard and southwest to White Pond Road at the Maynard–Stow border — began in 2016. The groundbreaking ceremony for the north end was held on July 21, 2016; the ribbon-cutting event celebrating the completion was held August 10, 2018. Completion of the north end will leave a four-mile gap between the Marlborough–Hudson and Acton–Maynard portions of the trail; the east end of this gap is a dirt road known as "Track Road," but beyond that there are no bridges over the two crossings of the Assabet River and some parts are on private property.
Maps and updates are available on the ARRT website. There are four boat launches providing canoe and kayak access to the Assabet River on the trail: one in Hudson at Main Street Landing. A map of locations of these boat launches is available on the ARRT website. Assabet River Rail Trail, Inc
North Leominster station
North Leominster is an MBTA Commuter Rail station in Leominster, Massachusetts. It serves the Fitchburg Line, it is located at 34 Nashua Street, east of Main Street. The station, handicapped accessible, has two side platforms to serve the line's two tracks. There is a small freight yard adjacent to the parking lot and mainline tracks on the south end of the inbound platform. A garage opened in 2014 to nearly triple parking capacity at the station, which serves as a park-and-ride stop for Route 2 and I-190, to a total of 436 spaces; the Fitchburg Railroad opened through North Leominster in 1845. A station was opened in North Leominister just north of the Main Street crossing, near the modern station location; the depot building remained intact until the 1970s. Trains ran to North Leominster for over a century under the Fitchburg Railroad and the Boston and Maine Railroad until the latter cut all service on the line past West Concord on January 18, 1965 due to insufficient subsidies from the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
On January 13, 1980, the MBTA restored service on 37 miles of the Fitchburg Line from West Concord to Gardner, including the stop at North Leominster. Short asphalt platforms were built behind a strip mall at the location of the former depot, with pedestrian access from Main Street but only 30 parking spaces. In July 2003, the MBTA Board approved spending $950,000 in MBTA funds for a $3 million new station. On October 4, 2004, the new station was opened about 600 feet southeast of the old station, it was built with short high-level platforms for handicapped accessibility, a 150-space parking lot was built off Nashua Street adjacent to the station. The former station platforms are still extant. However, the lot proved to be too small, as North Leominster serves park-and-ride commuters from as far as Orange and Athol. Beginning in 2007, the Montachusett Regional Transit Authority and Montachusett Regional Planning Commission began planning for an expansion of parking capacity. Construction began in March 2012 on a three-story garage.
The $7.7 million project, funded by the FTA through earmarks and formula funding, includes a covered busway and charging stations for electric cars. To be completed in August 2013, the garage was delayed due to high summer heat which prevented pouring concrete; the garage was dedicated on November 1, 2013. After five months of delays caused by the contractor's financial problems, the garage opened on May 20, 2014. Construction of full-length high-level accessible platforms was considered as part of the project, but the platforms would have cost an additional $18 million and created clearance issues with passing Pan Am freight trains; the freight trains, which are wider than standard passenger cars impact the mini-high platforms and would cause severe damage to full-length platforms. Besides the Fitchburg Line station, Leominster once had two other train stations; the Fitchburg and Worcester Railroad opened in 1850 between the eponymous cities, with a station stop in Leominster Center as well as West Leominster.
Through service from Worcester to Fitchburg ended in 1926, the last passenger service through Leominster Center ended in 1931. The line is now used for freight service from the south but is abandoned north of Mechanic Street in downtown Leominster; the 1878 Leominster Center station still stands at 24 Columbia Street. The station is served by two MART local bus routes, which follow the same route through Fitchburg and Leominster in opposite directions: 1 Intermodal Center - Kmart - Monument Square - The Mall at Whitney Field - Kings Corner 3 Intermodal Center - Kings Corner - Mall at Whitney Field - Monument Square - Kmart MBTA - North Leominster Aerial view of station on Bing Maps View of Leominister Center depot building on Google Maps Street View
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