The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W; ) is a Class II railroad operating of tracks in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, as well as New York via trackage rights. The company was founded in 1844 to build a railroad between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, and ran its first trains in 1847. A successful railroad, the P&W subsequently expanded with a branch to East Providence, Rhode Island, and for a time leased two small Massachusetts railroads. Originally a single track, its busy mainline was double-tracked after a fatal 1853 collision in Valley Falls, Rhode Island.
The P&W operated independently until 1888, when the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) leased it; four years later, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad obtained the lease when it purchased the NYP&B. The P&W continued to exist as a company, as special rules protecting minority shareholders made it prohibitively expensive for the New Haven to purchase the company outright. The New Haven continued to lease the Providence and Worcester for 76 years, until the former was merged into Penn Central (PC) at the end of 1968. Penn Central demanded the shareholder rules keeping P&W alive be rewritten, and also threatened to abandon the company's tracks. In response, a group of P&W shareholders launched a fight with PC, asking the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to cancel the lease and let the P&W leave the New Haven's merger and go free. Against expectations, the ICC agreed, and after court battles, P&W prevailed and began operating independently again after 85 years. Upon regaining its independence, the railroad purchased railroad lines from the Boston and Maine Railroad and PC successor Conrail in the 1970s and 1980s. The company turned a profit operating lines bigger companies lost money on, and invested heavily in its infrastructure. P&W also absorbed a number of shortline railroads in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Entering the 1990s, P&W had expanded to several hundred miles of track. After several of the company's largest customers shut down or ended rail service during this decade, the railroad responded by expanding interchange with other railroads. P&W also signed an agreement to run unit trains of crushed stone from Connecticut quarries to Queens, New York, over the Northeast Corridor. In 2016, the Providence and Worcester was purchased by railroad holding company Genesee & Wyoming, without significant changes to operations.
P&W is headquartered in Worcester, and maintains significant facilities there, in Valley Falls, in Plainfield, Connecticut, and in New Haven, Connecticut. It operates a variety of GE and EMD diesel locomotives. P&W serves major ports in New Haven, Providence, and Davisville, Rhode Island (the latter via a connection to switching-and-terminal railroad Seaview Transportation Company). In addition to the lines it directly owns and operates, P&W freight trains share tracks with Amtrak, Metro-North Railroad, and MBTA Commuter Rail passenger trains on the Northeast Corridor and two Metro-North branches in Connecticut. Key commodities carried by P&W include lumber, paper, chemicals, steel, construction materials and debris, crushed stone, automobiles, and plastics. While the company is primarily a freight railroad, it occasionally has operated passenger excursions since the 1980s, using refurbished passenger cars purchased from Amtrak.
Original Providence and Worcester Railroad
Background and founding
thumb|alt=A stock note of the Providence and Worcester Railroad. It states it was issued August 12, 1909, and has been stamped with the word CANCELLED.|Share of the Providence and Worcester Railroad Company, issued on August 12, 1909
The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W) was preceded by the Blackstone Canal, which opened between Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1828. While initially somewhat successful, the canal's business was severely harmed by the completion of the Boston and Worcester Railroad between its namesake cities in 1835, with shippers fleeing the slow and unreliable canal for rail transport. Providence therefore lost much of the business the canal had provided, and residents began to plan a response to the opening of the Boston and Providence. The canal company went bankrupt after its canal was severely damaged by flooding in 1841, and was forced to petition the state of Rhode Island for additional funds. The canal also competed for water with the many mills along the Blackstone Valley, which used water power to operate their machinery. As plans for other railroads across New England began, in January 1844 a group of citizens, primarily from Providence, petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a charter to build a railroad from Providence to the Massachusetts state line. This group also petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a charter to build in that state from the state line to Worcester. The canal was shut down in 1848, shortly after the railroad was completed.
Delays in construction
Local enthusiasm was high for the new railroad, with one Providence resident quoted as saying "[it is] not so much what will the projected route add to the prosperity of Providence, as can we do without it?" The city's residents feared that without a railroad to connect their city to others, Providence would be reduced in importance compared to other cities in the region.