Consolidated Railway (Connecticut)

Connecticut Company

Connecticut Company (blue) and other New Haven electric railway subsidiaries
Locale	New England, United States
Dates of operation	1907 (1907)–1976 (1976)

The Connecticut Company was the primary electric street railway company in the U.S. state of Connecticut, operating both city and rural trolleys and freight service. It was controlled by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (New Haven), which also controlled most steam railroads in the state. After 1936, when one of its major leases was dissolved, it continued operating streetcars and, increasingly, buses in certain Connecticut cities until 1976, when its assets were purchased by the state government.

In 1895, after it acquired control of the New York and New England Railroad, the New Haven controlled almost 90% of the steam railroad mileage in Connecticut. That same year, it gained control of its first street railway, the Stamford Street Railroad, on about April 1. That company, which operated local lines in the city of Stamford, was in bad shape financially, and the owners of a majority of its stocks and bonds, wishing to get rid of their investments, found a willing buyer in the New Haven. The second acquisition was also a local system, the Meriden Electric Railroad in Meriden, which the New Haven bought on October 18, 1895, from its president.

However, the next electric railway the New Haven gained control of was a long rural trolley line in eastern Connecticut. Sanderson & Porter, construction contractors, were building the People's Tramway between Danielson and Putnam, parallel to the New Haven-controlled Norwich and Worcester Railroad, and on September 18, 1899 the New Haven signed a contract with Sanderson & Porter to control the line. This agreement was modified on July 18, 1901, by which time Sanderson & Porter had gained control of the Worcester and Webster Street Railway and Webster and Dudley Street Railway in Massachusetts, and subscribed to the stock of the Thompson Tramway, which planned to connect the two segments, thus forming a continuous line between Danielson and Worcester, Massachusetts. Under the terms of this new agreement, the Thompson Tramway was renamed Worcester and Connecticut Eastern Railway on January 24, 1902, and later that year received the stocks of the three other companies, as well as the newly incorporated Danielson and Norwich Street Railway, which was to continue the line south to Norwich. The arrangement was completed on September 29, 1902, when the Worcester and Connecticut Eastern leased the two Massachusetts companies and acquired the property of the two Connecticut companies. Almost simultaneously the New Haven gained control of the line, which, after the completion of several segments in 1903, extended from Worcester south to Central Village, with branches in Connecticut from Elmville to East Killingly (where it connected with the Providence and Danielson Railway to Providence, Rhode Island) and Central Village to Moosup.