Sometimes one wonders why the railroad was ever built. As I’ve thought about it these factors have come to mind. The development of through highways in Central Massachusetts was greatly retarded. It wasn’t until the ear1y 20th Century and the advent of the automobile that any substantial program of highway construction was undertaken in Central Worcester County. The development of the granaries in the Middle West and the transportation of those crops to the East at reasonable prices made the growing of corn, rye, wheat, and other grains on New England’s limited and rather poor fields uneconomical for the dairy or poultry farmer. The development of ice boxes using natural ice and later of refrigerating railroad cars, made the construction of large storage ice houses on all of the ponds by- which the railroad passed one of the largest industries of Central Worcester County in the latter part of the 19th Century and the early part of the 20th Century. As a child, I remember so well the long strings of boxcars lined up by these ice houses in the summer, which were loaded every day and dispatched to nearby cities like Worcester, Boston, and Providence for distribution the next day by horse-drawn ice wagons in the respective city of destination. I also remember how, in winter, the morning train bound North early in the morning would stop at each of these houses to let off crews of ice harvesters and equipment. The milk train, which ran south every morning […]
