452 ins TOR Y OF COHASSE T. 



on April 23, 1847, the Cohasset and Scituate Branch Rail- 

 road was incorporated to extend the road to Scituate 

 Harbor; but this scheme was abortive, and the old- 

 fashioned stage had to be used for twenty-two years after 

 the Cohasset road was opened. 



Then, in 1871, the Duxbury and Cohasset Railroad 

 Company got the way opened and operated as far as Dux- 

 bury. Three years later, 1874, this road extended to 

 Kingston, where it rejoined the Old Colony line to Plym- 

 outh, thus making two separate routes between Braintree 

 and Plymouth. 



The absorption of these smaller companies by the 

 larger ones at a price far below the cost of construction 

 was a phenomenon of the railroad business now grown 

 familiar. It has been repeated in countless communities, 

 but the losses sustained by the first stockholders have 

 been made up many times by the increase in local values 

 and in convenience of travel. The Old Colony Company 

 in its turn has been swallowed by the much larger system 

 called the New York, New Haven and Hartford. The lease 

 to that great concern occurred in February, 1893, and 

 when the two companies consolidated it took ten shares of 

 the Old Colony stock to equal nine of the New York, New 

 Haven and Hartford. 



The first wooden station was burned on Thanksgiving 

 night, 1857, and with it many of the railroad papers of 

 Laban Souther, the division superintendent, which might 

 have told interesting details of the road's early days. A 

 second wooden station, or "car house " as they called both 

 the early ones, was built upon the site of the old one. It 

 was a long shed spreading across the two tracks, affording 

 some room for offices in the second story. There was no 

 little business carried on in the offices, for in those days 

 much of the construction was carried on at Cohasset. The 

 cars were made and repaired here, and the engines also 

 were frequently patched up in our "round house," making 

 employment for machinists. 



