Wildcat Branch

WILDCAT BRANCH
The Wildcat Branch on a circa-2007 MBTA map at Back Bay
Route map Wildcat Branch Haverhill Line to Haverhill Wilmington Junction Haverhill Line to North Station Salem Street Salem Street (1959-1967) Glen Road Clark Street Main Street MA-38/MA-129 Lowell Line to Lowell Wilmington Lowell Line to North Station  Wilmington Junction detail  Haverhill Line to Haverhill Wilmington Junction Salem & Lowell Branch Haverhill Line to North Station to Wilmington

The Wildcat Branch is a single track railroad branch line which connects the MBTA Lowell Line in Wilmington, Massachusetts to the MBTA Haverhill Line at Wilmington Junction. The total length of the branch line from the connection with the Lowell Line to the merge with the Haverhill Line is 2.88 miles. It was operated from 1836 to 1848, then rebuilt in 1874, and has been used since.

It is not known where the name "Wildcat" came from, but the entire length of the current branch line is within the town of Wilmington.

The Boston and Lowell Railroad was chartered on June 5, 1830 and opened between its namesake cities on June 24, 1835. On March 15, 1833, while the B&L was under construction, the Andover and Wilmington Railroad was incorporated to build a branch line from Wilmington to Andover. The A&W opened on August 8, 1836; it became the Andover & Haverhill Railroad which was quickly merged into the nascent Boston and Maine Railroad. By 1843 the B&M ran from Wilmington to Portland, Maine; however, it was still dependent on the B&L to reach Boston. The B&M opened a new route (the Western Route) from Wilmington Junction (three miles north of Wilmington) to Boston via Reading in July 1845, thus negating the need for the original line between Wilmington and Wilmington Junction. The B&L operated the line for three years; its abandonment in 1848 was the first railroad abandonment in New England.

In 1874, the B&L rebuilt the line; some sections are on the original grade, while others are slightly west. Rather than connecting to the B&M mainline, this Wilmington Branch paralleled the Western Route to a new Wilmington Junction station at the junction with the Salem and Lowell Branch. This gave the B&L a route to Lowell via the S&L and the Lowell and Lawrence Railroad. The B&L was merged into the B&M at the end of the 19th century. Passenger service on the S&L was abandoned west of Wilmington Junction in 1924 and east of it in 1932, but the branch was used to run some service to Haverhill and beyond as it avoided slow grade crossings in Malden and Wakefield. It still connects to the Western Route at Wilmington Junction and runs parallel to it for half a mile.