Essex Railroad
The Essex Railroad was a small independent railroad in the United States that connected Salem, Massachusetts to North Andover, Massachusetts and was named for Essex County as the line traversed the county.
The railroad received its charter in 1846, with some backing from the Eastern Railroad, and by the beginning of 1847, the first two miles of track was completed from Salem to Peabody (then called South Danvers) and was operated by the Eastern while the remaining line to North Andover was constructed. In 1850, two new lines, the South Reading Branch Railroad and the Salem and Lowell Railroad rented this stretch to give the Essex badly needed revenue.
By September 1848, the Essex was completed to the Boston and Maine Railroad's main line in North Andover and was given trackage rights to Lawrence and South Lawrence over the B&M.
From the beginning, the Essex operation was under-capitalized and was soon in financial trouble. Operations were suspended three times and the line shut down. The first shut down was in April 1849 and the line remained closed for a year. The line reopened in the spring of 1850, but the financial woes of the company halted operations again by the fall. In October 1851, the Essex entered into a lease agreement with the Eastern and the line was reopened and run as the Eastern's Lawrence Branch.
When the Eastern was absorbed by the B&M in 1884, Essex Country was a dense network of rail lines through sparsely populated areas. The B&M could not justify keeping all these branch lines open. Freight service on the Essex had all but disappeared by 1925 and passenger service has lost riders to the trolley lines running through Danvers and Middleton. The only parts of the line where service was still strong were the factory workers in Lawrence who rode the line to and from work as far as the Stevens Station in North Andover, along with freight service between Salem and Danvers Jct when the Essex crossed the Newburyport Branch.
In 1927, the B&M abandoned the line between Stevens Station and Danvers Jct. The line continued to operate until the Stevens Mills closed in 1960s and freight service to the North Andover Machine Shop ended in 1981, the line was formally abandoned later that year. Commuter service between Danvers Jct and Salem picked up and remained strong until 1958, when passenger service stopped. In 1985, the Waters River Bridge caught fire and took the line out of service. Customers north of the bridge were serviced via the Newburyport branch until all service on that line was suspended around 2000. The line south of the bridge remains open for freight today and the MBTA has preliminary plans to reopen passenger service between Salem and Danvers Jct, replacing the old bridge to gain access to Danvers.[1]
References
- Karr, Ronald D. (1995). The Rail Lines of Southern New England - A Handbook of Railroad History. Branch Line Press. ISBN 0-942147-02-2. http://www.branchlinepress.com
- Karr, Ronald D. (1994). Lost Railroads New England. Branch Line Press. ISBN 0-942147-04-9. http://www.branchlinepress.com