Boston and Albany Railroad: Map & History

Last revised: September 15, 2026

The Boston & Albany was Boston’s railroad to the west: Worcester, Springfield, the Berkshires, Albany, and a connection into the New York Central that the Pennsylvania never matched with a Boston main of its own. Its oldest piece, the Boston & Worcester, was chartered June 23, 1831. Regular steam to Newton began April 16, 1834—the first scheduled passenger railroad in New England. Worcester opened July 4, 1835. George Washington Whistler took the Western Railroad over Washington Hill without inclined planes. Two mergers, September 4, 1867 and December 28, 1870, made one company from Boston to Albany. The Central signed a 99-year lease effective July 1, 1900. Massachusetts kept the name on the cars. Lima proved Super Power on this grade in 1925. Penn Central took the paper on February 1, 1968. The main line is still a railroad: CSX west of Worcester, MBTA’s Framingham/Worcester Line into Boston, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited on the same iron.

Boston and Albany 2-8-4 1421 steaming through East Brookfield Massachusetts fall 1949 David Bartlett

Boston & Albany 2-8-4 #1421 steams through East Brookfield, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1949. David Bartlett photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Boston & Worcester · Whistler and the Western · Albany & West Stockbridge · 1867 and 1870 · Branches · Richardson, South Station, the Circuit · Vanderbilt to the 1900 lease · The 1910 map · Berkshires, 1925 · Boston trains · Diesel, Penn Central, Conrail · What still runs

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal name	Boston and Albany Railroad Company
Headquarters	Boston while independent. Springfield had been the Western’s office. After the 1900 lease, New York Central ran the property from New York; the Massachusetts corporation remained
States served	Massachusetts, New York
Genesis	Boston & Worcester Railroad, chartered June 23, 1831. President Nathan Hale. Engineer William Gibbs McNeill
First trains	Boston–Newton regular passenger service April 16, 1834. Through to Worcester July 4, 1835
Western Railroad	Chartered February 15, 1833; incorporated March 15. Springfield October 1, 1839. Through the Berkshires October 4, 1841. George Washington Whistler, chief engineer
Boston & Albany formed	Boston & Worcester and Western merged September 4, 1867. Albany & West Stockbridge and Hudson & Boston merged in December 28, 1870
Route miles (1910)	393. The 1910 map on this page
Principal lines (1910)	Boston–Albany (main line); Milford Branch; Hudson Branch (Chatham–Hudson); Athol Branch (Springfield–Athol); Ware River Branch (Palmer–Winchendon); Pittsfield–North Adams
Other 1910 lines	Highland Branch, Spencer Branch, North Brookfield Branch, Millbury Branch, Newton Lower Falls Branch, Webster Branch
NYC lease	99 years from July 1, 1900 (New York Central & Hudson River). Passed to the second New York Central, December 22, 1914. B&A name kept on equipment
Dates of operation	April 16, 1834–January 31, 1968
Successor	Penn Central February 1, 1968. Conrail April 1, 1976. CSX Boston Line west of Worcester after June 1, 1999; MBTA Framingham/Worcester Line into Boston

Charter and opening dates follow Kirkland and the Harvard Baker Library B&A records. The 1910 mileage is this page’s long-standing figure for the map below. Information compiled September 15, 2026.

The Boston & Albany Railroad logo. Author’s work.

Boston & Worcester, 1831

The Erie Canal opened in 1825 and gave New York City a water road to Buffalo. Boston answered with iron. The legislature chartered the Boston & Worcester Railroad Corporation on June 23, 1831—the first Massachusetts steam charter that expressly let a company haul people and freight with its own locomotives. Nathan Hale, publisher of the Boston Daily Advertiser, was president from 1831 to 1850. Captain William Gibbs McNeill, already known from the Baltimore & Ohio, was the engineer. He had been to Liverpool and Manchester. He wanted an elastic roadbed, not a stone-block copy of England that would pound itself to pieces.

Stockholders authorized location in May 1832. The first shovel went in on August 14, 1832. The line left Boston across Back Bay on a trestle and fill. A locomotive went to work on a gravel train in early April 1834. Regular passenger service, three round trips a day except Sunday, opened Boston to Newton on April 16, 1834—about eight miles, the first scheduled steam railroad in New England. Westborough came that November. On July 4, 1835 four locomotives worked the whole 44 miles to Worcester; some 1,500 passengers rode. Worcester celebrated on the 6th. Boston & Providence and Boston & Lowell opened their through lines the same summer. Those three roads are the start of the Massachusetts system. The Lowell and the Providence are other companies. This page is the one that kept going west.

Population along the Boston–Worcester neck paid the bills. The company double-tracked Boston to Framingham in 1839 and on to Worcester by 1843. That same year it sold season tickets to West Newton, an early American commuter tariff. Short branches followed: Saxonville, Newton Lower Falls, Millbury, Brookline Village. Hale’s railroad was a Boston institution before it had a mountain to climb.

Whistler and the Western

The Western Rail-Road Corporation was chartered February 15, 1833, and incorporated March 15, to take the Boston & Worcester from Worcester to the New York line and a meeting with the Hudson & Berkshire. Construction did not start until 1837. The Panic of that year nearly killed it. Massachusetts bought stock. The Eastern Division reached the Connecticut River at Springfield on October 1, 1839.

West of Springfield the Berkshires stood in the way. Inclined planes were the 1830s answer on other roads. Major George Washington Whistler, chief engineer, would not have them. He had already worked the B&O, the Boston & Lowell, and the New York, Providence & Boston. He laid adhesion grades, granite-arch bridges, and a right-of-way wide enough for a second track. The summit is Washington Hill, 1,459 feet, a few miles east of Pittsfield. Westbound trains climb on the order of ten miles at about 1.5 to 1.67 percent; the western flank is shorter and a little easier, about 1.38 to 1.4 percent. Those are Whistler’s numbers in later retellings. The point is the method: a mountain railroad you could pull with locomotives, not ropes.

The Western Division opened in pieces in 1841: state line to Pittsfield May 4; West Springfield to Chester May 24; Springfield across the Connecticut July 4; Pittsfield to the summit August 9; Chester to the summit September 13. The first train over the full Worcester–state line route ran October 4, 1841. For a few months the Western still used fifteen miles of the Hudson & Berkshire to reach the river. That New York road had not been built to Whistler’s standard.

Albany & West Stockbridge

New York chartered the Castleton & West Stockbridge in 1834 and renamed it the Albany & West Stockbridge on May 5, 1836—the Western’s arm to the Hudson at Greenbush, opposite Albany. It was leased to the Western for fifty years from November 11, 1841. Greenbush to Chatham opened December 21, 1841. The state line closed September 12, 1842. The only true tunnel on the later Boston & Albany is State Line Tunnel at Canaan, New York, about two miles west of the Massachusetts line, a 600-foot bore later doubled by a second alignment in 1912.

With Albany in hand, the Hudson & Berkshire east of Chatham was surplus. That company became the Hudson & Boston in 1855. Its parallel main between Chatham and the state line was abandoned in 1860. The Chatham–Hudson stub survived well into the New York Central years as a cutoff between the B&A and the Water Level Route. It ceased to be a through artery in the 1950s.

Boston to Albany, when the last gap closed, was the longest and most expensive point-to-point railroad yet built in the United States. Three corporations still owned it.

1867 and 1870

Massachusetts authorized consolidation in 1867. The Boston & Worcester and the Western became the Boston and Albany Railroad Company on September 4, 1867. The Albany & West Stockbridge and the Hudson & Boston came in on December 28, 1870. One name, Boston to Albany, with a leftover Hudson branch. The Worcester directors said goodbye to their own company in the 1867 minutes. The new road paid. Edward Chase Kirkland, in Men, Cities and Transportation, put the later independent B&A among New England’s first-rank properties: 8 percent dividends through the 1880s and 1890s, stock quoted around 260, a real improvement fund.

Branches

The B&A was an end-to-end trunk with a handful of feeders, not a web. East of Worcester the Boston & Worcester had already built the short suburban branches. West of Worcester the later company added:

Pittsfield & North Adams. Chartered March 3, 1842, to reach the Troy & Greenfield (later Boston & Maine) at North Adams. Opened December 1, 1846. Leased to the Western before the first train.
Ware River. Palmer to a Boston & Maine connection at Winchendon, completed 1873 and acquired that year.
Springfield, Athol & Northeastern. Athol & Enfield and Springfield & North-Eastern, both 1869, merged 1872, Springfield to Athol 1873, about 48 miles. The B&A bought it in 1880. Crews called it the Rabbit Road. Passenger service died in 1934; Bondsville–Athol came up in 1935 for the Quabbin Reservoir. Winsor Dam sits on the old grade.
Webster Branch. Built as the Providence, Webster & Springfield, Webster Junction to Webster, 1884.
Spencer and North Brookfield, short laterals just west of Worcester.

Those are dates on this page.

Boston and Albany 2-8-4 steaming eastbound upgrade at Auburn Massachusetts Webster Junction March 1947 David Bartlett

A Boston & Albany 2-8-4 steams eastbound upgrade at Auburn, Massachusetts (Webster Junction), March 1947. David Bartlett photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Richardson, South Station, the Circuit

In 1881 the B&A hired Henry Hobson Richardson to design suburban stations. Over the next five years he did nine: Auburndale, Chestnut Hill, Eliot, Waban, and Woodland in Newton; Wellesley Hills; Brighton; South Framingham; Palmer—plus a dairy building and car sketches. Heavy stone, round arches, the Romanesque that later carried his name. The station style sits on the stations hub. The railroad that paid for it is this one.

Boston terminals moved east. The first house sat between Kneeland, Beach, Albany, and Lincoln. A later Kneeland Street depot and trainshed served until South Station opened in 1899, a few blocks northeast, as a union station with the New Haven. Mileposts on the B&A still count from that 1899 opening, about two-tenths of a mile beyond the old bumper. The terminal is a date here and on the stations hub.

Newton and Brookline already had a commuter railroad. In the 1880s the B&A and connecting track made “the Circuit,” a loop of suburban trains. By 1889 as many as 35 Circuit trains a day were on the card. The Highland Branch, Boston to Riverside, is the piece later generations know as the MBTA Green Line D. That conversion is a transit story. The iron was B&A.

Vanderbilt to the 1900 lease

Cornelius Vanderbilt wanted Boston. The B&A wanted a western partner that was not the Erie Canal’s railroad in name only. On March 3, 1880 the Boston & Albany and the New York Central & Hudson River signed a traffic contract that treated each road as the other’s main line. Alvin Harlow, in The Road of the Century, called it remarkable. It was the first step. It was not yet a lease.

By 1899 the Central was talking terms. The first draft was a 999-year lease at 8 percent, tax free, on the stock, with $4 million of B&A property reserved. Massachusetts howled. Stockholders noted that 1899 net had been about $2.31 million against a $2 million rent. The compromise, signed for July 1, 1900, cut the term to 99 years, sold the reserved property to the Central for $5.5 million, kept the corporation under Massachusetts law, and required reports to the legislature. Kirkland’s verdict stands: New England’s first great east–west railroad ceased to have a history of its own.

When “New York Central” began replacing “Boston & Albany” on the cars, the state howled again. The Central put the old name back. B&A lettering was still on equipment in the diesel years. On December 22, 1914 the New York Central & Hudson River merged the Lake Shore and most other properties into the second New York Central Railroad. The Boston & Albany, the Michigan Central, and the Big Four were the three great names left standing as leased companies. The Lake Shore merger had been a bondholders’ fight. Management did not care to repeat it. Sentiment in Massachusetts did the rest.

The Central then spent money on the property. Parts of the Boston main were triple- and quadruple-tracked. In 1924 the Hudson River Connecting Railroad opened the Castleton Cut-Off and Selkirk Yard so freight could avoid West Albany Hill. The B&A piece from Post Road Crossing to Schodack Junction became the Post Road Branch. Selkirk, not the old Greenbush ferry-side yard, is where Boston freight still meets the Water Level Route.

New York Central E8A 4050 at Springfield MA in 1956

Running over subsidiary Boston & Albany, New York Central E8A #4050 is boarding at Springfield, Massachusetts on July 22, 1956.

The 1910 map

1910 system map of the Boston and Albany Railroad with B and A lines highlighted in blue

A 1910 system map of the Boston & Albany Railroad. The B&A lines are highlighted in blue. American-Rails.com collection.

The 1910 sheet is the independent company as the Central actually ran it: a Boston–Albany main, the Hudson stub at Chatham, North Adams, the Ware River, Athol, Milford, and the Newton suburban net. About 393 route miles. The New Haven owned the south and east of Massachusetts. The Boston & Maine owned the north. The B&A was the west door. That is why the Central paid 8 percent for 99 years.

Berkshires, 1925

The 2-8-4 was born on this railroad. Lima, under William E. Woodard, took New York Central H-7e Mikado #8000 (1922) and gave it a firebox on the order of 100 square feet. That grate needed a four-wheel trailing truck. The demonstrator, classed A-1, went to the B&A’s Washington Hill in the spring of 1925 and made steam at speed on a grade that had always wanted more boiler. Super Power is a locomotive idea. The type encyclopedia is Berkshires. The mountains that named the wheel arrangement are here. Production B&A 2-8-4s wore NYC class A-1a and numbers in the 1400s. David Bartlett photographed #1421 at East Brookfield in 1949, the engine at the top of this page.

Boston and Albany New York Central 2-8-0 1040 local freight Webster Junction Auburn Massachusetts February 1949 David Bartlett

Boston & Albany (New York Central) 2-8-0 #1040 works local service at Webster Junction, Massachusetts (Auburn), February 1949. David Bartlett photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Boston trains

Through varnish used the B&A as the Central’s Boston door. The train that carried the name was the New England States, Chicago–Boston, trains 27 and 28 in later years. That story is its own page. The 1952 Official Guide also carded other Boston trains over this railroad:

Train (1952 Guide)	Number	Route as listed
New England States	28 / 27	Chicago–Detroit–Buffalo–Boston and reverse
New York Special	44	Chicago–Detroit–Buffalo–Boston
Interstate Express	46	Chicago–Detroit–Buffalo–Boston
The Easterner	52	Buffalo–Boston
Unnamed	42	Buffalo–Boston
The Paul Revere	78	Cleveland–Boston
The Iroquois	35	Boston–Toledo–Chicago
New England Wolverine	33	Boston–Detroit

Local and commuter trains filled the Boston–Worcester–Springfield card around those long-distance numbers. After Amtrak, the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited is what still uses the B&A at night. The 2026 riding notes are on the Lake Shore Limited guide.

Diesel, Penn Central, Conrail

The B&A was fully dieselized by 1951. Steam’s last years are the Bartlett photographs on this page: 2-8-4s on the main, a 2-8-0 on the Webster local. The New York Central itself disappeared into the Penn Central Transportation Company at 12:01 a.m. on February 1, 1968. The B&A lease went with it. Penn Central filed on June 21, 1970. Conrail took the Boston Line on April 1, 1976.

Conrail still called the Albany Division the B&A. Gary Dolzall, writing in the October 1993 Trains, found 190.7 miles from Boston to Selkirk, only 86 of them still double track, CTC on the rest. Demand had fallen. The signal system could put more tonnage on one iron than Whistler’s second track had been laid for. Employees still said “the B&A.”

What still runs

On June 1, 1999 Conrail was split. CSX took the old New York Central Boston Line. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority owns Boston to Worcester and runs the Framingham/Worcester Line into South Station; CSX keeps freight rights. West of Worcester the main is CSX through Springfield, Pittsfield, and the State Line to Selkirk. Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited Boston section uses the whole corridor at night. The Highland Branch is Green Line D. Mass Central and Pioneer Valley work fragments of the Ware River and other feeders. The Athol Branch is under the reservoir.

Sources

Kirkland, Edward Chase. Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900, vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948. B&W construction; April 16, 1834 Newton service; 1900 lease politics and 8 percent
Harlow, Alvin F. The Road of the Century: The Story of the New York Central. New York: Creative Age Press, 1947. Chapter 17: 1880 traffic contract; 99-year lease (cut from 999); restoration of B&A lettering
Bliss, George. Historical Memoir of the Western Railroad. Springfield, Mass., 1863. Western chronology; Whistler
Harvard Business School, Baker Library. Boston and Albany Railroad Company records, 1829–1916 (Mss: 724). B&W June 1831 / July 1835; Western February 1833; A&WS 1836 and 1842 lease; September 4, 1867, and December 28, 1870, mergers
Dolzall, Gary W. “Conrail’s Steel Artery To Boston: They Still Call This Busy Mainline To Boston The B&A.” Trains 53, no. 10 (October 1993): 40–49. 190.7 miles Boston–Selkirk; 86 miles double track in 1993
Morgan, David P. “NYC’s New England Portal.” Trains 9, no. 9 (July 1949): 28–30
Solomon, Brian, and Mike Schafer. New York Central Railroad. St. Paul: MBI / Andover Junction, 2007
Doughty, Geoffrey H. New York Central’s Great Steel Fleet, 1948–1967. Revised ed. Lynchburg: TLC Publishing, 1999. Boston through trains
Official Guide of the Railways, 1952. Boston long-distance trains listed on this page
Churella, Albert J. The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume I. Context for a Boston main the PRR did not own
American-Rails.com: New York Central encyclopedia; Berkshire 2-8-4s; New England States; 1820s/1830s decade

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