Greenbush station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station in Scituate, Massachusetts. Located in the Greenbush section of Scituate, it is the terminus of the

Greenbush Line The Greenbush Line is a branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail system which serves the South Shore region of Massachusetts. The line runs from downtown Boston, Massachusetts through the cities and towns of Quincy, Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset, an ...

Station layout

The station consists of a single

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platform ...

serving the easternmost track. Adjacent to the platform, the Greenbush layover consists of four tracks, which are used to store trains overnight. Also adjacent to the platform, a massive parking lot accommodates commuters from nearby towns, such as Norwell and

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

. The parking lots total 1000 spaces - twice the capacity of the other stations on the line - to accommodate commuters driving in from

, Norwell, Marshfield, and

Duxbury Duxbury (alternative older spelling: "Duxborough") is a historic seaside town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. A suburb located on the South Shore approximately to the southeast of Boston, the population was 16,090 at the 20 ...

History

The modern

was originally built as the

South Shore Railroad The South Shore Railroad was a railroad in Massachusetts. It was incorporated in 1846 to provide rail service between Quincy and Duxbury, Massachusetts through the towns of Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate and Marshfield. History The 11.5 mile l ...

, which opened to Cohasset in 1849. The Old Colony-backed Duxbury and Cohasset Railroad, chartered in 1867, which opened from Cohasset to Duxbury in 1871, including a stop at South Scituate. The station was renamed Greenbush on October 1, 1877.} After financial troubles in the 1870s, the Duxbury and Cohasset was joined with the South Shore under the fold of the

Old Colony Railroad The Old Colony Railroad (OC) was a major railroad system, mainly covering southeastern Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island, which operated from 1845 to 1893. Old Colony trains ran from Boston to points such as Plymouth, Fall Ri ...

in 1877. The Old Colony was leased to the

New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad , commonly known as The Consolidated, or simply as the New Haven, was a railroad that operated in the New England region of the United States from 1872 to December 31, 1968. Founded by the merger of ...

in 1893.

Leaving the Greenbush MBTA station, Scituate MA

Greenbush became an important short-turn terminal on the South Shore Line, particularly as ridership began to wane. Service south of Greenbush, limited to a single South Duxbury round trip since 1932, was discontinued in 1939 after the

1938 New England hurricane The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The storm ...

damaged the causeway over the North River to Marshfield. The line enjoyed a brief uptick in traffic in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

with the construction of the

Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot The Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot, is a former United States Navy ammunition depot located in Hingham, Massachusetts. At its peak, it employed over 2,400 people. It also consisted of 90 buildings at that time. The Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot A ...

and the

Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex The Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex, sometimes called the “Cohasset Annex” or "Hingham Annex" by local residents, covered sections of the towns of Hingham, Massachusetts, Hingham, Cohasset, Massachusetts, Cohasset, Norwell, Massachusett ...

. The number of daily trips was increased from 4 to 8 after World War II under Frederick C. Dumaine, Jr., and modern diesel trains including

Budd RDC The Budd Rail Diesel Car, RDC, Budd car or Buddliner is a self-propelled diesel multiple unit (DMU) railcar. Between 1949 and 1962, 398 RDCs were built by the Budd Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The cars were primarily adop ...

s were introduced in the 1950s. However, the New Haven Railroad continued to lose money on the service, and after Dumaine was ousted the railroad announced all trains would cease running in 1958. Only an emergency subsidy by the state kept trains running until June 30, 1959 when the Southeast Expressway opened and all passenger train service ended. Calls for the former Old Colony lines to be reactivated began in the 1980s; the Plymouth/Kingston Line and Middleborough/Lakeville Line were reopened in 1997. After much controversy surrounding the $534 million project, construction was completed in 2007. The Greenbush line and Greenbush Station were opened for full service on October 31, 2007 after a ceremonial train the previous day.

References

External links

{{commons category inline
MBTA - Greenbush
Railway stations in the United States opened in 2007 Stations along Old Colony Railroad lines MBTA Commuter Rail stations in Plymouth County, Massachusetts 2007 establishments in Massachusetts