Category:West Thompson–Webster line

English: The Thompson Tramway was incorporated on April 30, 1901, and became the Worcester and Connecticut Eastern Railway (W&CE) on January 24, 1902. Controlled by the New Haven Railroad, it leased the Webster and Dudley Street Railway (including rights to the Worcester and Webster Street Railway) in 1902 and bought the People's Tramway (which had absorbed the Putnam and Thompson Street Railway in 1899) and the Danielson and Norwich Street Railway on September 29, 1902, forming a Worcester-Webster-Putnam-Danielson-Central Village line.

The W&CE (renamed the Consolidated Railway on May 18, 1904) was used to buy up most street railways in Connecticut. It was merged into the New Haven on May 31, 1907. In 1910, the New Haven distributed most of its street railway properties to nominally separate companies. The ex-W&CE lines north of the Massachusetts border became part of the Worcester Consolidated Street Railway (WCSR). The vast majority of the Connecticut lines became the Connecticut Company. The section between West Thompson and the Connecticut/Massachusetts border was retained by the New Haven, though it was operated by the WCSR.

The Connecticut Company lines in eastern Connecticut were leased by the Shore Line Electric Railway from 1913 to 1920. Service between Grosvenordale and West Thompson became intermittent in 1919 (as WCSR crews refused to make connections at West Thompson with strike-breaking crews on the Central Village–West Thompson line). Service between North Grosvenordale and Webster was abandoned due to a snowstorm in February 1920; service from the south was extended to North Grosvenordale then or soon afterwards. WCSR service resumed to North Grosvenordale in January 1922; it was the transfer point thereafter. Central Village–North Grosvenordale service ended in 1925; WCSR service to North Grosvenordale remained until 1927.