page_title: Wachusett station
section_title: Former service
hierarchical_section_title: Wachusett station / History / Former service
caption_attribution_description: English: Early divided back postcard of a 1914 freight wreck at Westminster station
context_page_description: Wachusett is a commuter rail station on the MBTA Commuter Rail Fitchburg Line. It is northwest of the intersection of Massachusetts Route 2 and Route 31 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. It serves as the northwestern terminus for Fitchburg Line trains. The opening of Wachusett extended service 4.5 miles west from Fitchburg on the Pan Am Southern main line, lengthening the Fitchburg Line to 54 miles. The station is expected to draw 400 daily riders.
  After years of planning and discussion, work on the station began with site preparation in December 2012. Construction began in mid-2013. The station opened for limited weekday service on September 30, 2016, to satisfy the terms of the federal grant that funded it; full service began on November 21, 2016. At 54 miles from North Station, Wachusett is the outermost MBTA station in Massachusetts; only Wickford Junction in Rhode Island is farther from Boston.
context_section_description: The station is the successor to a pair of former stations on the Fitchburg Railroad which were on the Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad line, opened in 1851.
  Westminster station, serving Westminster, Massachusetts, was located on Bartherick Road off State Road (MA 2A), about a mile west of the new station site. The station building burned in 1908. In April 1914, 17 cars of an eastbound freight derailed and damaged the replacement station building. Service to the station ended in 1932.
  Wachusett station was located south of Princeton Road (MA 31) in the Crockerville section of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, about half a mile east of the new station. A freight wreck at the station in July 1905 killed two men. Service to Wachusett station lasted until 1960, when all passenger service west of Fitchburg was terminated by the Boston and Maine Railroad. The derelict freight depot, located just south of the station, was demolished in 2005 or 2006.
  MBTA Commuter Rail service was extended west from Fitchburg to Gardner in January 1980, but trains did not make stops at Wachusett or other intermediate stations. Service was cut back to Fitchburg at the end of 1986.
caption: Freight wreck at Westminster station in 1914
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