The Decline of the Resorts and Passenger Train

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But enough of these details, you had enough to impress upon you the impact of the railroad on Princeton as a resort. For nearly three quarters of a century it grew, reaching its peak at about the turn of the century.
Many factors contributed to the decline of the resort business in Princeton, and the final abandonment of passenger service on the Boston, Barre, and Gardner Railroad.

  1. The station was 2-3/4 miles from the center of town and many of the resort hotels were as much as two to three miles North of the town.
  2. The advent of the private automobile by 1910 had begun to change travel habits of people.
  3. The far West, with the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, not to mention the Canadian Northwest, was through their railroads, diverting many by “tourist” accommodations from the closer “resorts” to the more distant places.
  4. With faster and individual transportation by automobile, the popularity of the railroad waned, service was curtailed, and the final passenger train was removed on March 7th, 1953.
  5. The originating “ice” freight began to dwindle in the 1920’s with the coming of artificial ice plants and the electric and gas home refrigerating units.=
  6. The trees had been lumbered so no more freight came from that source.
  7. The small industries of the 19th Century, which existed largely because of the availability of intermittent waterpower, had moved to the city, where the labor market was more abundant.

The farmers’ grain and produce was largely handled by truck.

This story of Princeton as a resort town can be repeated many times in New England. Modern transportation has made beautiful Princeton another “bedroom” for people who work in Worcester, Gardner and Fitchburg.

Some of the thrill of the old Boston, Barre and Gardner Railroad came back to me this summer when floods forced the diversion of tremendous 90-car freight trains over that route from the Boston and Albany R. x R. Even so, much of the childhood thrill of a chuffing steam engine was missing for the three sleek diesel engines seem to lack the romance of the smoke and dirt of the locomotives which inaugurated service on the Boston, Barre and Gardner Railroad 79 years earlier.