Harvard Branch Railroad

The Harvard Branch Railroad was a short-lived branch from the Fitchburg Railroad to Harvard Square and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Part of the former right-of-way is now used by Museum Street.

The company was incorporated April 24, 1849, and soon built a line 0.70 miles long from just west of Somerville station on the Fitchburg Railroad (at Park Street) southwest to Harvard. On April 19, 1854 it was authorized to abandon the line, and did so in 1855. The Cambridge Railroad started running to Harvard from Boston in 1856 as a street railway, via a different route.

Fitchburg Railroad branches
Boston–Fitchburg
  • Watertown
  • Marlboro
  • Greenville
  • Milford
Fitchburg–Greenfield
  • Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad: Ashburnham
  • Cheshire
  • Peterboro
  • Boston, Barre and Gardner
  • Turners Falls
west from Greenfield
  • Southern Vermont
  • Troy and Boston
  • Bennington
  • Boston, Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railway: Saratoga Springs/Schuylerville
temporary branches
  • Harvard
  • Lexington

Famous quotes containing the words harvard, branch and/or railroad:

    “Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises very well, considering we never controlled him much.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    “When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
    —Marc Chagall (1889–1985)

    “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
    —Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)