Our History

The thought came to mind that many of you may be wondering “What’s a Street Railway?” I’ll give you a very brief history of our company. Plymouth & Brockton has been providing passenger service for over 120 years. Our history is most interesting in that you’ll hear some familiar names. Back on June 3, 1886 a group of approximately 30 men met at the Samoset Hotel in Plymouth and organized that area’s first trolley company, the Plymouth & Kingston Street Railway. The Old Colony Railroad (the first familiar name!) provided heavy rail service to the area but no one provided short runs along the streets, where people lived and worked.

Quoting from the Old Colony Memorial, “On Monday a trial car made its first round trip on the Plymouth & Kingston under the influence of electricity”. “On an evening trip the car was lighted by the same current which propelled the car and a considerable illumination took place beneath the wheels whenever any dirt was encountered on the rails.”

Charles Stone was one of the Bostonians visiting Plymouth in the gay ’90s. His business partner, Edwin Webster, also visited. They decided their engineering and management company, Stone & Webster, ought to get into the trolley business. In 1889 they organized the Brockton & Plymouth Street Railway. In Stone and Webster’s final plan the tracks from their newly acquired Plymouth & Kingston Street Railway would come off the streets and be placed on a series of unimproved dirt roads that would eventually become Route 27. Rather than buy electricity, Stone & Webster built their own power plant beside Plymouth Rock.

Workers used the trolleys during the work week. Because ridership fell on Sundays, the street railway companies invented the “Joy Ride”. They created destinations. On the Brockton & Plymouth the destination was Chandler’s Grove (in Pembroke), bought by Stone & Webster and renamed Mayflower Grove.

The Plymouth & Sandwich Street Railway was incorporated in April of 1888, and in 1914 a mile of track was added to connect Sagamore Beach to the Sagamore Depot on the other side of the canal. The rails crossed the water on a wooden bridge that was the predecessor of the Sagamore Bridge.

So far I’ve brought the Old Colony Railroad, Stone & Webster, Plymouth Rock and a joy ride to the Sagamore Bridge into this presentation! I guess there’s nothing new under the sun!

After World War I the company suffered its first losses. After reorganization, in 1923, the company applied to the state to operate buses, throughout the South Shore. Section by section the rails became abandoned until the only section in use was the original section from Jabez corner to Kingston. On June 28, 1928 the electric trolleys made their final run, replaced by Mack buses.

The current owners, the Anzuoni family have owned Plymouth & Brockton since 1948, the longest tenure of any of Plymouth & Brockton’s stewards.

Public transportation is often thought of as being provided exclusively by the public sector. As you now know, mass transit was born of the entrepreneurial spirit of private enterprise. Today transit is largely a public sector activity, but there is still a private sector that flourishes here in the Commonwealth.

Passenger transportation is a very unique field and often taken for granted. People do not consider what it takes to keep the Commonwealth’s transportation network operating. Quite possibly, that’s a measure of our success. When they need it they expect it to be there. As our history indicates we have been responsive to change and we see a changing but very bright future ahead and look forward to serving you, your families and your employees well into the next century.