The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W; ) is a Class II railroad operating 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. 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. This group also petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a charter to build in that state from the state line to Worcester.
The railroad was incorporated in Massachusetts as the Providence and Worcester Railway on March 12, 1844, and in Rhode Island as the Providence and Worcester Railroad in May 1844. Two aspects of the charter were unusual. One provision capped the company's maximum dividend at twelve percent; additional profit beyond that amount was to be invested in improving the railroad rather than rewarding shareholders. A second part of the charter heavily curtailed the voting power of larger shareholderseach shareholder got one vote per share for their first fifty shares, but additional shares granted just one vote per twenty shares. In effect, this made it impossible for any one shareholder to control the company, no matter how many shares they owned. Both provisions were designed to ensure the P&W provided effective rail service and remained in the hands of local shareholders.
As their first order of business, the company's founders commissioned engineer Thomas Willis Pratt to complete a survey of the proposed route, which was completed in the fall of that year. The two companies were merged November 25, 1845, as the Providence and Worcester Railroad. The company bought the Blackstone Canal and began construction, partly on its banks, in 1845. The canal was shut down in 1848, shortly after the railroad was completed.
Delays in construction Local enthusiasm was high for the new railroad, with one Providence resident quoted as saying "[it is] not so much what will the projected route add to the prosperity of Providence, as can we do without it?" The city's residents feared that without a railroad to connect their city to others, Providence would be reduced in importance compared to other cities in the region. Despite high local support, in July 1845, the railroad was still short $200,000 ($ in ) out of a needed sum of $1,000,000 ($ in ) per the company's charter, and had not begun construction. Residents began to doubt the railroad would ever be built, with one citizen writing in a letter to the editor to a local newspaper that "...any hope of its completion, founded upon the present condition of the corporation, is desperate indeed."
By September 1845, residents worried over rumors that investors from Boston were planning to build a new railroad between Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Dedham, Massachusetts, which would not serve Providence. Despite fears the company would fail, it announced on October 8, 1845, that thanks to additional funding, including a $100,000 ($ in ) investment by Jacob Little, the requisite $1,000,000 had been reached, plus a further $100,000 for the Massachusetts section of the line, and that construction would begin immediately. The funding was obtained entirely from private sources.
Construction and operations
Many immigrants helped build the Providence and Worcester Railroad, particularly from Ireland. The line opened in two sections: the part south of Millville on September 27, 1847, and the rest on October 20. The line from Providence to Central Falls was shared with the Boston and Providence Railroad, which at the same time built a connection from its old line (which ended at India Point via East Providence) over to the P&W. The companies shared the P&W-built Providence Union Station, which opened in 1848; the station was also served by New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (commonly known as the Stonington Line) trains. This station was originally planned to be placed over the Great Salt Cove, a large cove in the city; public opposition led by Zachariah Allen convinced the city to preserve the cove and change the station's location.
Construction was more expensive than anticipated, due to difficulties encountered in building earthworks and to the relatively high prices for iron and labor from 1845 to 1847. The company also spent much money on a large depot in Providence. Still, healthy traffic made the company profitable quickly and to the end of its independent operation. The opening of the P&W and other railroads spurred the region's commercial growth; Providence in particular developed textile, jewelry, and metals industries. The P&W, along with the Boston and Providence, were also credited with bringing the city of Pawtucket out of an economic downturn. Mills in the Blackstone Valley found that the railroads offered more reliable and cheaper transportation than canals. Affordable passenger trains also increased the mobility of residents along the railroad, whose line linked the communities along its route to the busy railroad junction in Worcester. To better reach the docks in Providence, tracks were constructed south towards the water along city streets between 1852 and 1853, eventually reaching Fox Point where steamships docked.
In May 1853, the owners of the Norfolk County Railroad (NCR) attempted a hostile takeover of the Providence and Worcester. They wanted to use the P&W to route more traffic along their NCR, which was bankrupt as a result of insufficient business, and so increase the value of NCR stock. They purchased a majority of the P&W stock, paying well above market value for shares, and moved to add ten members to the company's board of directors. But the P&W's president and clerk refused to recognize a vote to approve the new directors, defeating the attempt and leaving the stockholders from the "ricketty and bankrupt" NCR with nothing but $100,000 ($ in ) in debt to show for their efforts.
That same year, the worst accident in the company's history occurred in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Two trains collided head-on, killing 14 people. The incident helped convince the P&W to double-track its mainline. The work began shortly after the accident but proceeded slowly; the final section of single track was upgraded in 1885, 32 years later.
The P&W benefited from a general increase in economic activity and shipping during the American Civil War, though little of its freight was directly related to the war effort. The company paid off its debts and invested $20,000 ($ in ) on track improvements in 1864 alone.
Expansion and improvements The Providence and Worcester leased two other railroads: the Milford and Woonsocket Railroad in 1868, and the Hopkinton Railroad, a northward extension of the Milford and Woonsocket, in 1872. Neither company directly connected to any P&W line; the leases were motivated by a desire to prevent either company from competing with the P&W for traffic. Both leases expired in 1883, with the two railroads resuming independent operation that year; the Milford and Woonsocket took over the Hopkinton the following year.