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Hollis
Railroads
Located on the Worcester & Nashua Railroad and named for the neighboring town only a few hundred feet away, Hollis station was in Nashua on West Groton Road. The Worcester & Nashua opened in 1848. The first decade of the 1900s was a boom for the line, which saw the main line expanded to a second track. However, in 1911 the Boston & Maine Railroad (B&M) began rerouting trains off this portion of line. With the reduction of traffic, the double track was removed in 1929 and the station was closed on April 18, 1936.
In 1941 the B&M requested to abandon the rail line between Nashua and Pepperell. However, local shippers at Hollis convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to only allow abandonment between Hollis and a point west of Nashua's Union Station. The tracks that now terminated at Hollis were in use until 1982 when the line was abandoned from Ayer to Hollis.
Today, the railbed past Hollis has been redeveloped into the Nashua River Rail Trail, a paved trail from downtown Ayer to Gilson Road in Nashua.
Crouch, H. Bentley. "The "Phantom" Division" B&M Bulletin, Summer 1979.
Karr, Ronald Dale. "The Saga of Lost Railroads." In Lost Railroads of New England. 2nd ed. Pepperell, MA. Branch Line Press, 1996. 41-63.