Southern New England Railway

The Southern New England Railway was a never-finished plan by the Grand Trunk Railway (GT) to build a railroad from the GT-owned Central Vermont Railway at Palmer, Massachusetts south and east to the all-weather port of Providence, Rhode Island. Despite never being finished, large amounts of grading and construction were done, including many large concrete supports.

The railroad, conceived by GTR president Charles Melville Hays to break the near-monopoly of the New Haven Railroad in southern New England, was chartered in April 1910, and was to be built as a completely grade-separated air line, having low grades and long high bridges over valleys.

Hays went down with the RMS Titanic in April 1912; nevertheless, construction on the SNE commenced at full speed in May. However, all work stopped in November 1912, ostensibly due to an inability of worldwide bond markets to finance further GT expansion, although pressure from the New Haven, at the time closely allied with financier J. Pierpont Morgan, was widely suspected. Construction soon resumed in Massachusetts so that contractor John Marsch, who threatened litigation against the GT for breach of contract, could be paid for the work. However, construction in Rhode Island, being the responsibility of a different contractor, did not restart. Thus, by 1916, almost all the grading and concrete work in Massachusetts was completed, although no steelwork other than on highway overpasses was ever erected. World War I was seen as only a temporary financial setback to construction, which, however, never resumed.

Several reasons have been given for the abandonment of the SNE project in addition to the war: bankruptcy of the GT due to overexpansion by subsidiary Grand Trunk Pacific; a desire by the reorganized railroad (Canadian National Railways) to concentrate on serving Canadian ports with existing lines rather than building new ones in the U.S.; the existence of an all-weather port in southern New England (New London) already served by the Central Vermont; the Federal control of American railroads between 1917 and 1920 and its disruptive aftermath; and the increasing influence of the motor truck and automobile (passenger service on the SNE had been contemplated along with freight).

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