Fairhaven Branch Railroad

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The Fairhaven Branch Railroad was a short-line railroad in Massachusetts. It ran from West Wareham on the Cape Cod main line of the Old Colony Railroad, southwest to Fairhaven, a town across the Acushnet River from New Bedford.

The Fairhaven Branch Railroad (FBR) was incorporated in 1849, chartered in 1851, and built from 1852 to 1854. The New Bedford and Taunton Railroad bought the line in 1861, including its ferry terminals at New Bedford and Fairhaven, which afforded connections to Woods Hole and Marthas Vineyard. The railroad was merged into the Old Colony Railroad in 1883, four years after the Old Colony leased the Boston, Clinton, Fitchburg and New Bedford Railroad, the successor to the New Bedford and Taunton.

Notable among the early employees of the FBR was Henry Huttleston Rogers. The son of a former ship's captain and grocer in Fairhaven, Rogers, after graduating from high school in 1857, hired on with the Fairhaven Branch Railroad as an expressman and brakeman. He worked for three or four years, carefully saving what he could from his meager earnings. In 1861, he pooled his $600 in savings with a partner's $600, borrowed another $600, and they used their stake to build a small oil refinery near Oil City in the newly-discovered oil fields of western Pennsylvania.

Eventually, Henry Rogers rose within the growing petroleum industry to become one of the three key men in John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. One of the wealthiest persons in the United States, the Fairhaven native planned and built the 450-mile long Virginian Railway, which was financed almost entirely form his personal fortune.

See also: Old Colony Railroad

See also: Virginian Railway