As stated above, the Fitchburg Railroad Company was authorized to build a road from Boston to Fitchburg, a distance of fifty miles, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the managers and attorneys of the Western Line. The intelligent legislator of 1866, who has passed over the Fitchburg Railroad, and observed the numerous trains of passenger and freight cars which daily follow each other over its double line of track, can but smile at the language of Mr Mills, a senator from Hampden, a little more than twenty years ago "Sir," said this zealous legislator, who, in his style and logic forcibly remind us of Mr. Bird, of Walpole, "a six horse stage coach and a few baggage wagons will draw all the freight from Fitchburg to Boston." It is hardly necessary to give details of the history of the Vermont and Massachusetts Road, and the struggles of its projectors against hostile legislation, and the intensified opposition of the Western line. Suffice it to say that this second section of the Tunnel Line, extending from Fitchburg to Greenfield, was commenced and finished, in spite of all opposition, without a dollar of that aid which Mr. Kinnicut said the State would have to furnish in order to be just and consistent. Its stock, which could be bought for $9 a share, ten years ago, now commands upwards of $40. Its gross receipts, last year, were $390,085.79, and its net income, $91,229.85. Its debt has been reduced from upwards of a million to one half that sum, and this year it has paid its first dividend. The Troy and Greenfield Road was chartered in 1848, the same old elements of opposition being combined against, and fighting it at every step. The managers of the Western road clamorously declared that if this competing line were chartered, it would greatly diminish the security of the Commonwealth, for its investment in their road, and that if the State should be compelled to sell its stock after the granting of such charter, she would lose a hundred and seventy thousand dollars; while, at the same time, they affected to deride the Vermont and Massachusetts as a "pauper road," and the region it traversed as a "God-forsaken country!"