Sometimes one wonders why the railroad was ever built. As I’ve thought about it these factors have come to mind.
- The development of through highways in Central Massachusetts was greatly retarded. It wasn’t until the ear1y 20th Century and the advent of the automobile that any substantial program of highway construction was undertaken in Central Worcester County.
- The development of the granaries in the Middle West and the transportation of those crops to the East at reasonable prices made the growing of corn, rye, wheat, and other grains on New England’s limited and rather poor fields uneconomical for the dairy or poultry farmer.
- The development of ice boxes using natural ice and later of refrigerating railroad cars, made the construction of large storage ice houses on all of the ponds by- which the railroad passed one of the largest industries of Central Worcester County in the latter part of the 19th Century and the early part of the 20th Century.
As a child, I remember so well the long strings of boxcars lined up by these ice houses in the summer, which were loaded every day and dispatched to nearby cities like Worcester, Boston, and Providence for distribution the next day by horse-drawn ice wagons in the respective city of destination.
I also remember how, in winter, the morning train bound North early in the morning would stop at each of these houses to let off crews of ice harvesters and equipment.
- The milk train, which ran south every morning at 4:30 a.m., served as the means of transport of the farmers’ milk to distributing centers in the larger cities of New England.
- There was still a quantity of pine lumber, and spruce, which was transported to the cities by this railroad.
- Small shoddy mills, small furniture factories, tack mills, all had to use the railroad as the only means for transportation
- The development of summer resorts and colonies in small towns along the route of the Boston, Barre and Gardner, such as Jefferson, Princeton, and later in Peterboro, when the line was extended through Winchendon, via Jaffrey and Rindge.
- The railroad served as the rapid means of transporting blueberries, which in season, numbered hundreds of cases – hence the familiar name of the “Blueberry Special”. Others will claim that this name came from the fact that when the train broke down, the passengers would disembark and eat their fill of blueberries, which grew in profusion all along the route.
- Importance as link between Massachusetts and Vermont at Gardner; Cheshire at Winchendon; and Central Massachusetts at Jefferson.