Greenbush Line

GREENBUSH LINE
A train at Cohasset station in October 2007
Overview
Type	Commuter rail line
System	Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Status	Operating
Locale	Southeastern Massachusetts
Termini	Boston South Station Greenbush
Stations	10
Daily ridership	5,411 (2014 weekday average)
Operation
Opened	October 31, 2007
Closed	June 30, 1959 New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad
Operator(s)	Keolis North America
Technical
Line length	27.6 miles (44.4 km)
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Route map South Station Amtrak NEC and MBTA Worcester, Needham, Franklin and Providence Lines Fairmount Line JFK/UMass Quincy Center Old Colony Lines Fore River Railroad Weymouth Landing/East Braintree East Weymouth West Hingham Nantasket Beach Railroad Nantasket Junction Whitney Spur to Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex Cohasset North Scituate Greenbush Greenbush Yard Former route to Plymouth via Marshfield and Duxbury This diagram:

The Greenbush Line is a branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail system which serves the South Shore region of Massachusetts. The 27.6-mile (44.4 km) line (which shares 10 miles of trackage with the Old Colony Lines) runs from downtown Boston, Massachusetts through the towns of Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset, and Scituate to the Greenbush neighbourhood in southern Scituate. There are ten stations along the line: South Station, JFK/UMass, Quincy Center, Weymouth Landing/East Braintree, East Weymouth, West Hingham, Nantasket Junction, Cohasset, North Scituate, and Greenbush.

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.

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.