The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W; ) is a Class II railroad operating 612 mi of tracks in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, as well as New York via trackage rights. The company was founded in 1844 to build a railroad between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, and ran its first trains in 1847. A successful railroad, the P&W subsequently expanded with a branch to East Providence, Rhode Island, and for a time leased two small Massachusetts railroads. Originally a single track, its busy mainline was double-tracked after a fatal 1853 collision in Valley Falls, Rhode Island.
The P&W operated independently until 1888, when the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) leased it; four years later, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad obtained the lease when it purchased the NYP&B. The P&W continued to exist as a company, as special rules protecting minority shareholders made it prohibitively expensive for the New Haven to purchase the company outright. The New Haven continued to lease the Providence and Worcester for 76 years, until the former was merged into Penn Central (PC) at the end of 1968. Penn Central demanded the shareholder rules keeping P&W alive be rewritten, and also threatened to abandon the company's tracks. In response, a group of P&W shareholders launched a fight with PC, asking the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to cancel the lease and let the P&W leave the New Haven's merger and go free. Against expectations, the ICC agreed, and after court battles, P&W prevailed and began operating independently again after 85 years. Upon regaining its independence, the railroad purchased railroad lines from the Boston and Maine Railroad and PC successor Conrail in the 1970s and 1980s. The company turned a profit operating lines bigger companies lost money on, and invested heavily in its infrastructure. P&W also absorbed a number of shortline railroads in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Entering the 1990s, P&W had expanded to several hundred miles of track. After several of the company's largest customers shut down or ended rail service during this decade, the railroad responded by expanding interchange with other railroads. P&W also signed an agreement to run unit trains of crushed stone from Connecticut quarries to Queens, New York, over the Northeast Corridor. In 2016, the Providence and Worcester was purchased by railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming, without significant changes to operations.
P&W is headquartered in Worcester, and maintains significant facilities there, in Valley Falls, in Plainfield, Connecticut, and in New Haven, Connecticut. It operates a variety of GE and EMD diesel locomotives. P&W serves major ports in New Haven, Providence, and Davisville, Rhode Island (the latter via a connection to switching-and-terminal railroad Seaview Transportation Company). In addition to the lines it directly owns and operates, P&W freight trains share tracks with Amtrak, Metro-North Railroad, and MBTA Commuter Rail passenger trains on the Northeast Corridor and two Metro-North branches in Connecticut. Key commodities carried by P&W include lumber, paper, chemicals, steel, construction materials and debris, crushed stone, automobiles, and plastics. While the company is primarily a freight railroad, it occasionally has operated passenger excursions since the 1980s, using refurbished passenger cars purchased from Amtrak.
Original Providence and Worcester Railroad
Background and founding
The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W) was preceded by the Blackstone Canal, which opened between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1828. While initially somewhat successful, the canal's business was severely harmed by the completion of the Boston and Worcester Railroad between its namesake cities in 1835, with shippers fleeing the slow and unreliable canal for rail transport. Providence therefore lost much of the business the canal had provided, and residents began to plan a response to the opening of the Boston and Providence. The canal company went bankrupt after its canal was severely damaged by flooding in 1841, and was forced to petition the state of Rhode Island for additional funds.[1] The canal also competed for water with the many mills along the Blackstone Valley, which used water power to operate their machinery. As plans for other railroads across New England began, in January 1844 a group of citizens, primarily from Providence, petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a charter to build a railroad from Providence to the Massachusetts state line.[2] This group also petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a charter to build in that state from the state line to Worcester.
End of independence
From the 1870s onward, several railroad companies in New England began a wave of consolidation, leasing or merging other lines to form large networks. The P&W ignored this trend, although it had opportunities to combine with several of its connections at Worcester. The first of the larger companies to approach the P&W was the Stonington Line (formally the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad), the Providence and Worcester's southern connection in Providence. In February 1888, the Stonington Line announced plans to lease the Providence and Worcester Railroad, effective May 1, 1888, subject to approval by shareholders of both companies. The Stonington Line agreed to pay $310,000 ($ in ) per year, plus up to $50,000 a year in stock-related payments, in exchange for the lease.[19] As part of the lease, the Stonington also agreed to maintain all P&W trackage and equipment to high standards. A member of the special committee appointed by the P&W board of directors, at the vote to ratify the lease, noted that "there were 372 women stockholders, representing 8,975 shares, equivalent at par to $897,500 – a peculiar holding which was not found in any other corporation in the country."[19] Both railroads' stockholders and boards of directors approved the lease, with P&W shareholders unanimously in favor, and in May 1888, the Providence and Worcester ceased to be an independent railroad.[19] As part of the Stonington Line, operations were changed little, apart from integration with the P&W's new lessee as the "Worcester Division".
Control by the Stonington Line lasted only a few years, as wealthy financer
The new Providence and Worcester Railroad
Separation from Penn Central
The New Haven had purchased a number of the P&W's shares in the three-quarters of a century it had held the lease, holding 28 percent of the company's total shares by the time Penn Central took over. While the New Haven had long tolerated the peculiar rules that kept the P&W alive as a company, the railroad's new lessor was not willing to tolerate them any longer and demanded the voting rules and clauses that heavily restricted its control be rewritten. The same rules that left the New Haven unable to take over the P&W also frustrated the Penn Central, which found itself with only three percent voting power, despite both leasing the company and inheriting the New Haven's portion of the company's shares.
As part of its order requiring Penn Central to take over the P&W under the terms of the lease, the ICC also required the P&W to change its voting clauses by June 30, 1969, or else Penn Central would be allowed to take direct control and be able to proceed with abandonment. Eder and the rest of the P&W leadership had considered seeking merger into another railroad, such as the Boston and Maine Railroad (B&M) or the Norfolk and Western Railway (though the latter company did not connect to the Providence and Worcester, at that time it was considering a purchase of the Delaware and Hudson Railway). Now, however, time was short and the previously half-hearted idea of returning the P&W to independence was the best path to saving the company.
Ignoring Penn Central's objections, in 1969 the P&W incorporated a new version of the company in Delaware and merged the existing company into the new one, while maintaining the voting rules from the company's original 1844 charter; this was done for "the simplification of the corporate structure" of the company.
Operations
The Providence and Worcester Railroad is headquartered in Worcester, an important interchange point with CSX Transportation. Other interchange points include:[42]
Through haulage agreements, the railroad also connects with Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway, and Norfolk Southern Railway.[42] As of 2016, P&W served 140 distinct customers on its lines, and had a workforce of 138 employees.
- Pan Am Southern in Gardner, Massachusetts
- New England Central Railroad in Willimantic, Connecticut
- New York and Atlantic Railway in Queens
- CSX in New Haven
Rolling stock
As of 2016, the Providence and Worcester Railroad operated the following locomotives: Following the Genesee & Wyoming acquisition, the railroad's motive power has primarily been a variety of EMD locomotives from G&W's fleet.[46] The P&W fleet also operates on connecting G&W shortlines Connecticut Southern Railroad and New England Central Railroad.[47]
Real estate
For many years, the Providence and Worcester Railroad held real estate in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. P&W retained ownership of parts of the Northeast Corridor upon gaining independence; following Amtrak's assumption of passenger service on the corridor in 1976, it signed an agreement with P&W in 1978 to take ownership of P&W-owned parts of the corridor in exchange for making P&W's freight rights on Amtrak lines permanent.
In 1976, the railroad began building the South Quay Marine Terminal in East Providence, next to the terminus of the East Providence Branch. P&W filled in a portion of the Providence River and planned to turn it into a major shipping facility, but failed to find a partner to develop the project.[48] The land went unused for decades, and P&W finally sold it in 2019 to RI Waterfront Enterprises, which in September 2022 began developing the site to support construction of wind turbines.[49]
Several P&W-built stations are preserved. In addition to the Woonsocket station, which still sees seasonal passenger service from P&W's Polar Express trains, freight or passenger stations also exist in Manville, Rhode Island; Uxbridge, Massachusetts (Uxbridge station); and Whitinsville, Massachusetts.
Station listing
The following stations all had passenger train service, unless noted. Passenger train service on the main line ended in 1957, apart from the non-stopping State of Maine Express; the East Providence Branch had passenger service only from 1893 to 1896.
See also
- List of New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad precursors
- Railroads in New England
External links
References
- To The Honorable General Assembly Manufacturers and Farmers Journal, June 3, 1841, retrieved October 22, 2021^
- To the Honorable General Assembly Manufacturers and Farmers Journal, February 22, 1844, retrieved October 22, 2021^
- PW history Providence and Worcester Railroad, retrieved December 19, 2016