Jeff Kaufman
US History
4/27/3

The Lowell Line: 175 Years of Preparation to Transport Jeff to School

	The Lowell line tracks were laid in 1830 and have been in continuous use ever since.  These past years of freight and passenger service have served to economically justify it.   Only in the past three years, however has it begun to morally justify itself.  In these years, it has been performing the duty it should have been truly built for: supplying Jeff with reliable and speedy commuting.  This moral justification could never even have begun if the line had not been built and then able to last from its creation to now, and so its history, especially the circumstances surrounding its building, will be the focal point of this paper.
	In the early 19th century, Mr. Lowell decided to build a model mill town in a Massachusetts town near Boston that was promptly reincorporated in 1822 as Lowell, Massachusetts in his honor.  This industrial town began to produce large amounts of textiles and other products which had to get to people so they could be used.  It also had to get raw materials such as cotton from which to build these products.  At the time, the best way for the factory owners to do this was to transport to and from Boston and let Boston merchants deal with the rest there.
	Before the Railroad, there were two main ways of moving goods between Boston and Lowell.  The first was the Middlesex Canal, built previously to bypass a circuitous coastal route from the Merrimack River.  The other consisted of stagecoaches running on the road between Boston and Lowell.  These sufficed for some time, but as Lowell grew and more industrialists built mills there, problems with both modes soon overwhelmed them.
	The Canal was a very efficient way of moving large amounts of heavy goods cheaply and with minimal labor.  It was slow, but no one had any delusions that it was suitable for perishables or other time-sensitive goods, passengers included.  Unfortunately, it would freeze in the winter and the towpath was muddy in spring and late fall.  This made it impractical for a burgeoning mill-town that needed year-round freight transportation.
	Stagecoaches provided the passenger aspect of the transporting, moving 100 to 120 passengers per day.  There were six stagecoaches in operation at the time of the building of the railroad, for a total of 39 fully loaded round trips per week.  This was sufficient passenger service for people who had to make an occasional trip but was much too expensive for daily use or what we would now call ‘commuters.’
	The first Railroad in the Americas was Quincy’s Granite Railroad in 1826.  It was a three-mile, horse-powered railroad, built to move large granite stones from the quarries in Quincy to the Neponset River.  As was believed to be the most sturdy – and convenient, in this case – method at the time, it was built on a deep foundation of granite, setting a precedent for all railroads that could afford it.   The Granite Railroad showed the mill owners that a railroad could be a practical method of freight transport.
	The owners of the Lowell mills decided that they needed to do something about their transportation problem.  They looked at the recently completed, nearby Granite Railroad and took inspiration.  A railroad would supply exactly what they wanted.  It could run year round, it was expandable with as many tracks as they might need, it could use the new locomotives that were being highly praised in England, and it, as a new mechanical invention, helped satisfy their need to feel like they were participating in ‘progress’.
	Once convinced that they wanted a railroad, they formed a group called the 'Boston Associates'.  This new group had the task of convincing the state legislature that a railroad was a good idea, and later building the railroad itself.  The former proved very difficult, as the investors of the Middlesex Canal were very much against them building a bypass that seemed designed to replace their canal and drive them out of business.
Because there was no provision in Massachusetts State law for chartering railroads prior to 1872, all railroads had to be chartered by special acts of legislature.  This made it slow and inefficient to charter a railroad because the politicians had to agree; the issue would become partisan.  This also meant that the legislature would not let the Boston Associates build the line unless they could show it was completely necessary.
The case of the Canal investors seemed reasonable and compelling at the time, though some aspects are humorous in hindsight.  Their argument was mainly:
1)  Their investors spent a lot of money on the Canal.
2)  The Canal currently deals with all freight between Boston and Lowell.
3)  There is a finite amount of freight to be moved.
4)  The railroad is being built with the main purpose of transporting freight between Boston and Lowell.
5)  All the railroad can do is take business away from the Canal.
6)  This will ruin the canal.
7)  The railroad should not be built, or it should be forced to pay compensation to the canal's investors.
8)  Failure of the court to force compensation would decrease investor confidence and make it much less likely that people would be willing to invest in major projects in the future. 
Their argument seems sound but the Boston Associates won because they convinced the legislature that the Canal was inherently incapable of providing what they needed: reliable, year round, freight transport.
	The Canal operators were also unable to foresee the future worth of canals.  Before the State Legislature of Massachusetts, the Canal spokesperson testified that, “It is believed that no safer or cheaper mode of conveyance can ever be established, nor any so well adapted for bulky articles” than the Canal. This does not really reflect negatively on them because it was a common attitude at the time, but we find it ironic and amusing.  
	The Boston Associates got their charter on June 5, 1830, with no provision for reparations to the Canal's investors.  It was a favorable charter because it allowed for, in addition to the right to build and operate a railroad between Boston and Lowell, a thirty-year monopoly on the right to have a railroad between the same.  The people along the road and in terminal end cities bought large amounts of stock, financing half the company.  These two ideas, monopoly rights to discourage competition and public interest in the company as shown by the large amount of publicly bought stock, were exactly what the argument over the Canal was about.  The legislators seem to have realized the growth value in giving a monopoly that they more or less stole from the Canal, but the Canal's investors seem to have been wrong with their final point; people were eager to purchase stock, showing no decrease in confidence at all.
	The Boston Associates, armed with their charter, now had before them the task of surveying and building the line.  They brought in Mr. James Baldwing to do the surveying, and charged him with finding a gently sloped path from Boston to Lowell, with few grade crossings and well away from town centers.  This latter point ended up being quite inconvenient later on.  The general popular view toward railroads in the late 1820’s, when Baldwing was preparing to do his surveying, was that railroads were smoky, noisy, dirty, fire-causing nuisances that should be kept as far away from people as possible. No one had any idea of the future possibility of railroads acting as public transportation, or if they did they were not paid any attention by the builders or financers of the road.
	The right-of-way that Baldwing surveyed did well in each of these characteristics. The path sloped up at a gentle ten feet per mile at the maximum and there were only three grade crossings over the entire 26 mile distance.  The path was close to the older Middlesex Canal path, but was straighter – as boats can turn sharper than trains.  To achieve this superior linearity it needed small amounts of grade elevation in places.  The route ignored Medford center entirely, going through West Medford instead, and totally bypassed Woburn.  These would have to be corrected later with various spurs but were always sources of annoyance to both the riders and the operators.
	The proposed route was accepted by the Boston Associates and work began the on building phase. The road was begun from both ends at once and some sources say that they both started on the right hand side of the right-of-way, missing in the middle and having to put in an embarrassing reverse curve to tide them over until they built the other side.  Irish laborers were brought in to do the building, which was made especially difficult and heavy because the Boston Associates wanted to make the road the best known way possible.  This, for them, meant laying imported British iron rails with a four foot deep wall of granite under each rail.  They did this because it was commonly believed that the train would sink into the ground if they neglected strong support. 
	The first track of the road was completed in 1835 and freight service began immediately.  The solid granite roadbed proved to be much to rigid, jolting the engine and cars nearly to pieces.  Repairs on the locomotives (there were two at the time) would sometimes take most of the night, trying to get them ready for the next day's service.  The much poorer Boston and Worcester railroad could not afford a granite bed and so was built with the modern wooden ties.  This turned out to be far superior so the owners of the Boston and Lowell decided they would upgrade their entire railbed to wood when they added a second track.
	The quantity of freight traffic on the Boston and Lowell was large from the first, as everyone expected it to be, with several large mills needing to be supplied with materials and to have someone take them away after processing.  Passenger traffic, however, was not anticipated.  People all over were fascinated with the trains, and loved that they could get from Boston to Lowell in twenty minutes.  Twenty minutes is, of course, over sixty miles per hour and on unwelded track on a granite roadbed, sixty must have been really bumpy.  Passenger complaints about bumpiness were another reason that the B&L ended up switching to wooden ties.
	The B&L was now faced with a problem; it had a reputation for passenger speed which made it very popular and highly competitive with stagecoaches.  Many people, however, did not want to go from Boston to Lowell but instead to and from places in between - as I do.  The B&L decided to order another locomotive and some cars for local passenger rail in 1842, and have them make six stops along the route. Passenger rail proved to be almost as profitable as Lowell freight was.
	Another railroad began about this time who's fortunes would be closely tied to those of the B&L.  This road was the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M).  This road  ran down from Portland Maine, through a bit of Southern New Hampshire, to Haverhill in Northeastern Massachusetts, connected to the B&L in Wilmington, and then took the B&L to Boston.  This route was conceptualized in 1834, but took a long time to be built, mostly because, unlike the B&L, it did not have a secure base of funding like the Lowell Mills.  It took two years to get to Andover, another to get to Haverhill, three more to get to Exeter, and did not get to Portland until 1852.
	This extra traffic on the B&L line, especially with the line still over granite, provided the extra impetus to double track and upgrade.  In 1838, the B&L began two years of extensive track improvements, first laying a second track on wood, and with that one built, going back and re-laying the old track on the more forgiving wood as well. B&L traffic continued to increase and even with double tracks, the schedule became tight enough that the B&M trains, as renters, began to be pushed around to annoying hours, often having to wait for an hour or two in Wilmington before being able to proceed on to Boston.
	The B&M soon tired of what they perceived as selfishness and decided to build its own track to Boston from Haverhill so that it would not have to rely on the B&L.  The B&L tried to fight the B&M in court but failed because the monopoly granted in its charter was only good for traffic between Boston and Lowell.  The shortcut, today's Haverhill line, was started in 1844 and was in use by 1848.  While the B&M was building it, they were still running their trains to Boston on the B&L.  This made for a lot of messiness, with the B&L trying to squeeze every last penny out of the B&M before it lost the opportunity.  The B&M tried to deal with this in court, and got the judge to forbid the B&L from raising rates until the case was done, but by the time they were close to an agreement, the Haverhill bypass was complete.
	The B&M turned out to have been providing the B&L with more of a source of income than the B&L was expecting.  Additionally, the Lowell mills began to decline somewhat and there was less freight traffic for the line to move.  Over the next four decades, the B&L declined until the more successful B&M bought it in 1887.
	Over the next 70 years or so, things were reasonably stable and constant for the Lowell line as a track in the B&M's Southern Division.  Passenger train round trips hovered in the low 20's and while freight from Lowell itself did not last too long, the Lowell line got some traffic from railroads that connected from the west.  In the early 20th century, however, and insidious new force arose: trucking.  Trucks began to increase in popularity, and they got the Eisenhower Interstate System to help them.  More and more companies began to send freight by trucks. This was a bad time for a decline to happen, as the B&M, like most other railroads, had just switched over to diesel, meaning that they had large debts.  By 1976 the B&M was bankrupt.
	This did not effect passenger service, just freight on the Lowell line, because in 1973 the MBTA bought the Lowell line, along with the Haverhill line and all other local Greater Boston passenger lines.  The B&M continued to run and fulfill its Commuter Rail contract under the protection of the Federal Bankruptcy court, in the hopes that a reorganization could make it profitable again. It emerged from the court’s protection when newly-formed Guilford Transportation Industries (GTI) bought it in 1983.
	Guilford is an interesting company, in that it developed in a modern manner, with a business plan quite unlike those of any of the early railroads.  GTI’s idea was that by buying up as many local railroads as it could, it would be able to have full horizontal integration over New England and the northern Mid-Atlantic states, gaining efficiencies of scale by not having to deal with any of the competitors squabbles that had plagued many railroads in the past, such as those between the B&L and the B&M. GTI began in 1980 as a holding company.  In 1981, it bought the Maine Central, the B&M's main competitor.  Not much changed for the MEC except that all engines in for repair got the new GTI colors.  Then in 1983 GTI bought the B&M.  This included the Lowell line.  GTI has been running since, but not very smoothly or profitably.  The decline in railroads has not stopped and in efforts to cut costs, GTI has totally alienated its workforce.  It has had several major strikes over wages and work rules, one of which happened while GTI was managing the MBTA (more on this in a bit), shutting down the whole MBTA system including the Lowell line, though a judge quickly ordered restored commuter rail service.
	When GTI bought the B&M, passenger service was a little bit confused.  The MBTA had owned the trains and the tracks since 1971 when it purchased them along with all the other local railroads, but it had outsourced the operation to the B&M.  When GTI bought the B&M in 1983, it had to honor the B&M contract, but GTI management was very much against passenger rail, and, in 1986, as soon as the contract expired they let the job go to AMTRAK.  
	AMTRAK has since run the trains for all of Boston’s commuter rail.  It has done a decent job, though not one bereft of strained relations with the MBTA.  Quibbles have centered on equipment failures, how many conductors should be on a train and who is responsible when trains are late.  Because of these bad relations and AMTRAK’s repeated announcing that the contract was unreasonable, few people were surprised at AMTRAK’s decision not to bid again for the Commuter Rail contract.
	Last year, the MBTA asked for new bids on the Commuter Rail operation contract.  AMTRAK did not bid, but Guilford did and so did the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co.  The MBCR ended up getting the contract.  The MBCR is due to begin operating the trains in a month and a half, but nothing should change for the commuters as it is the MBTA that owns the trains, tracks, and sets the schedules.
	Another recent change on the Lowell line is the addition of the Downeaster.  The Downeaster is an AMTRAK train running from North Station to Haverhill and up to Portland.  Due to scheduling conflicts with the MBTA, the Downeaster runs up the Lowell line to Wilmington and then out the old B&M wildcat crossover line to Haverhill.  This route allows the Downeaster to pass a commuter train on the Haverhill line without slowing anyone down.  The route is also historically significant because it is the same route that the original B&M took on its route up to Portland.  It has been very popular and profitable, running four round trips daily.
	There are reasons to use railroads and reasons to use trucks and they all depend on the situation.  To move a lot of goods over a route were traffic can be counted upon, trains are far superior, due to their fourfold fuel-efficiency superiority and the many fewer drivers needed per ton of goods.  Trucks are better for more irregular or local service that needs to be able to quickly adapt to new locations.  A local moving company is an excellent example of something that should definitely not use trains.  Many companies, however, use trucks in situations where trains would do much better.  The main reason for this is the already existing interstate highway system.  It is very difficult if not impossible to just build a new railroad nowadays, even if there is a good reason to have one.  A company that wants to do trucking just has to drive its trucks down its driveway and they have a full network of roads at their command.  This unbalanced government support of roads was inefficient and now there is little that can be done to fix the problem.  The general American ideas of freedom and liberty are also problematic here, because many people, especially truckers, view the 'freedom of the open road', in which one can drive however one wants to be an essential component of being American, even if it is less efficient.
	The Tracks from Boston to Lowell have provided much service and enjoyed many years of thorough use.  For most of their life they were happily stable under the B&M, though of late they have been subject to much uncertainty.  Their current core service is too useful to be dropped, however, as trains can comfortably move large numbers of commuters better than any other developed transit system.  We should be able to look forward to at least one more year of good transportation, that being the minimum moral justification time, and ideally there would be another 173+ years to its future.
Note on abbreviations used in the text:
B&L: 	Boston and Lowell Railroad Corporation
B&M:	Boston and Maine Railroad Corporation.
MEC: 	Maine Central Railroad Corporation.
MBCR:	Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Corporation.
MBTA:	Metropolitan Boston Transportation Authority.
GTI: 	Guilford Transportation Industries.

Bibliography:
Bradlee, Francis B. C., Boston and Lowell Railroad, Salem Mass: The Essex institute, ©1918.

Harlow, Alvin F., Steelways of New England, New York, NY: Creative Age Press, Inc., ©1946

Hartley, Scott, Guilford: five years of change, Piscataway, NJ: Railpace Company, Inc., ©1989.

Korr, Ronald D., The Rail Lines of Southern New England: a Handbook of Railroad History, Pepperell, MA: Branch Line Press, ©1995

Poole, Robert W. Jr. Boston Privatizes Commuter Rail Service, Reason Public Policy Institute: ©2003 http://www.rppi.org/bostonprivatizes.html

Thomas J. Humphrey and Norton D. Clark, Boston's Commuter Rail: Second Section, Cambridge, MA: Boston Street Railway Association Inc., ©1986

Websites of use or interest:
http://www.billericahistorical.org/page12.html

http://www.memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?gmd:1:./temp/~ammem_Sk6Z::@@@mdb=eaa,berl,cdn,cic,cola,coolbib,fsaall,papr,toddbib,afcwip,gmd,wtc

http://69.3.40.137:8080/bm1916map.html

Thanks to:
My parents for driving me around the Minuteman Library System,
The Minuteman Library System for so nicely lending me books,
The BPL for letting me write half my paper there and do research,
Micheline for wanting to do excessive research and so getting me to come along too and do research that I might well have put off or not done at all otherwise,
Alex George for calling a freeze on all Diplomacy negotiation at just the right time, and
OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 for providing me with a word processor.