The Greenbush Line is a branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail system which serves the South Shore region of Massachusetts. The line runs from downtown Boston, Massachusetts through the cities and towns of Quincy, Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset, and Scituate to the Greenbush neighborhood in southern Scituate. There are ten stations along the line. From South Station, to Quincy Center, service operates in conjunction with the Old Colony Lines commuter rail service via the Old Colony Main Line. From Weymouth Landing/East Braintree to Greenbush, trains utilize the Greenbush Branch, the former South Shore Railroad line that was later incorporated into the Old Colony Railroad.
Modern passenger service on the Greenbush Line began on October 31, 2007. This service restoration, put in place as environmental mitigation for the Big Dig project, was the first passenger service on the line since 1959.
History
South Shore Railroad and Old Colony Railroad
Before passenger train service stopped in 1959, commuter trains had been using parts of the Greenbush line for over 100 years. Train service was first started by the South Shore Railroad which was chartered in March 1846 to build a branch off the Old Colony Railroad at Braintree. It opened to Cohasset on January 1, 1849, running three round trips per day with Old Colony equipment. The South Shore separated from the Old Colony in 1854. The Old Colony-backed Duxbury and Cohasset Railroad, chartered in 1867, opened to South Duxbury in 1871 and to a junction with the Old Colony at Kingston in 1874. After an economic collapse in the 1870s, the Old Colony acquired the South Shore in 1877 and the Duxbury and Cohasset in 1878 and combined them as the South Shore Line.
The Nantasket Beach Railroad opened in 1880 from Nantasket Junction to the Pemberton section of Hull in 1880 and joined the Old Colony in 1881. After closing in 1886, it reopened in 1888. A second track was added to the South Shore Line in 1890 from Braintree to Nantasket Junction to support Nantasket Beach service.
In March 1893, the Old Colony Railroad and all its trackage, including the South Shore Line and the Nantasket Beach Branch, were taken over by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
The New Haven and service cuts
The New Haven had plans to electrify some southside commuter lines, and some infrastructure was built, including lower-level loop platforms at South Station. However, the only electrification that actually took place was on the South Shore and Nantasket Beach lines. The Nantasket Beach line was electrified in 1895, and trolley service ran on the line until 1932. Between 1896 and 1899, the South Shore was electrified from Braintree to Cohasset, with an unusual center-of-the-track third rail. However, the third rail was dangerous at grade crossings, and the South Shore returned to steam-only service in 1902.
The double track was extended to Greenbush station in Scituate by 1911, and the station was used as the terminus for many short turn commuter trains. In 1911, service on the line included 8 trains to Plymouth via Kingston, 5 Greenbush short-turns, and 9 Cohasset short-turns.
Under the control of the New Haven Railroad, the South Shore Line and others set all-time records for number of passengers. The popularity of the train was short-lived, however. Cutbacks in service due to World War I were not reversed afterwards, due to the increasing popularity of the automobile. The New Haven Railroad went bankrupt in 1935 and only kept a few passenger trains running because of a court order directing it to do so. Service south of Greenbush, limited to a single South Duxbury round trip since 1932, was discontinued in 1939, after the 1938 New England hurricane damaged the causeway over the North River to Marshfield.
The railroad enjoyed a brief uptick in traffic in World War II with the construction of the Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot and the Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex. The number of daily trips was increased from 4 to 8 after World War II under Frederick C. Dumaine, Jr., and modern diesel trains including Budd RDCs were introduced in the 1950s. However, the New Haven Railroad continued to lose money on the service, and after Dumaine was ousted the railroad announced all trains would cease running in 1958. Only an emergency subsidy by the state kept trains running until June 30, 1959 when the Southeast Expressway opened and all passenger train service ended. Freight trains continued to use the line as far south as the Hingham Lumber Yard located, where the Nantasket Junction station now exists, until 1979. All service was terminated in 1983.