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PIECING TOGETHER AND BUILDING OUT
THE LONGEST RAIL TRAIL IN NEW ENGLAND
In the 1870s a new railroad was chartered. The Mass Central Railroad. Unfortunately, it was under capitalized and failed before it was finished. A bankruptcy court renamed it the Central Mass Railroad and with an infusion of fresh cash, it was finished. Unfortunately, again, it didn’t flourish and it ended up becoming a backwater branchline of the Boston & Maine Railroad. In the 1990s, as it was slowly being built out as a trail in the sections where there was interest in redeveloping it as a trail, the grand name, the original name, Mass Central came back. Not as a RR, but as a trail. This map was the first system map of the line in 1888, when hopes were high.

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