Dedham Branch
The Dedham Branch was a spur line of the Providence Railroad">Providence, Rhode Island">Providence Railroad, opened in 1835, which ran from the junction with the main line at through to central Dedham; it was the first railroad branch line in Massachusetts. In 1966, it became part of the MBTA Commuter Rail system, but was abandoned the next year.
History
Pre-MBTA
The Boston and Providence Railroad opened on June 4, 1834, from Boston to south of Readville, and from Readville to Canton on September 12 of that year. Initially, there were no branches off the B&P main line, but, on February 5, 1835, the Dedham Branch opened from Readville to Dedham ; the B&P had previously provided stagecoach shuttles along this route, starting July 28, 1834. For the first seven years of the Dedham Branch's existence, service along the branch frequently switched between Boston-Dedham through trains and horse-drawn cars cut out of Providence trains at Readville; from June 1842 onward, however, Boston-Dedham through trains were a permanent fixture of the B&P system. These trains were the first B&P trains reliably scheduled to depart Boston after 5:00 P.M., and, thus, the first B&P commuter rail service usable by those on a 9-to-5 schedule.Starting in May 1849, Norfolk County Railroad trains ran via the Dedham Branch, using it and the B&P main line as its entry to Boston; this ended when the Boston and New York Central Railroad opened its own route from Islington to Boston in January 1855, but resumed in August 1855 as the result of an injunction preventing the operation of the B&NYC's new Islington-Boston route, before ending again in March 1857.
In June 1850, the West Roxbury Branch opened from Tollgate station to Dedham via West Roxbury, and all B&P Boston-Dedham commuter service was shifted to this new route. Passenger service on the original Dedham Branch continued, but was switched to a combination of through trains and horse-drawn Readville-Dedham shuttles. Even after the resumption of Dedham commuter service via Readville in 1855, most Dedham trains still ran via West Roxbury instead of Readville, and some Readville-Dedham service still consisted of horse-drawn shuttles, which were only discontinued in 1875. In April 1888, the B&P was leased by the Old Colony Railroad, which was, in turn, leased by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in March 1893, but commuter service continued. In 1893, the River Street grade crossing was replaced with a railroad bridge.
Starting in 1926, service to Dedham was provided by trains running in a loop via the B&P mainline and Dedham Branch outbound and the West Roxbury branch inbound, or vice versa. This ended in 1938, and, at some point between then and April 1940, all service on the Dedham Branch was discontinued; however, service via the original Dedham Branch resumed later in 1940 when the portion of the former West Roxbury Branch between West Roxbury and Dedham was abandoned.
MBTA era
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was formed in 1964 out of Boston's Metropolitan Transit Authority, largely in order to save the rapidly declining commuter rail lines feeding into Boston. In April 1966, the MBTA began subsidising continued NYNH&H commuter rail service on four of the NYNH&H's six commuter rail lines entering Boston from the southwest; the NYNH&H received subsidies to pay for continued service on the Franklin Line, Needham Line, Dedham Branch, and Millis Branch, but not for service along the Shore Line or Stoughton Branch, both now part of the MBTA's Providence/Stoughton Line. Despite now being subsidized by the MBTA, commuter rail service on both the Dedham and Millis Branches was discontinued a year later, on April 21, 1967.Abandonment
In 1973, the MBTA purchased the Dedham Branch, along with several other commuter lines, following the bankruptcy of Penn Central in 1971; however, passenger services would not return to the Dedham Branch after the MBTA's acquisition. Conrail continued to serve freight customers in East Dedham on the first mile of the branch through the 1980s, while the remainder of the line was placed out of service. All rail operations on the Dedham Branch had ceased by 1991, and by the late 1990s, the MBTA had removed the remaining tracks and removed bridges including the East Street and River Street crossings.In 1999, the Town of Dedham acquired roughly 6.3 acres of former Dedham Branch right‑of‑way including the area at Dedham Junction and was redeveloped it into a public athletic field, now known as Gonzalez Field. A major segment of the corridor between Walnut Street and Mount Vernon Street was conveyed to the Dedham School Committee in 2008 and was redeveloped as an athletic field complex and a school access road, effectively eliminating any remaining rail infrastructure in that stretch.
In 2020, approximately 2,245 feet of the former rail corridor near Industrial Drive in Readville was reconstructed as a paved shared‑use pedestrian and bicycle path as part of the Readville Yard redevelopment. In 2021, Dedham town officials proposed converting the remaining 1.3 miles of the branch to a rail trail as an extension of the initial segment of the path, which would have connected downtown Dedham to the Readville MBTA station with a continuous pedestrian trail; however, Dedham voters rejected the rail trail proposal in June 2021, precluding the right-of-way for public path conversion.