Officer Working Construction Detail Makes Surprise Find Under the Road

Photos Courtesy Wilmington Police Officer Paul Chalifour

For one Wilmington police officer, Wednesday was not your average day on the job, but rather one heck of a history lesson.

On Wednesday, Wilmington Police Sergeant Dave Sugrue was working a detail at a water main break on Shawsheen Avenue, when he noticed something strange beneath the pavement as the the repair crew excavated the road -- old trolley tracks.

According to a post on the Wilmington Police Department’s Facebook page, the tracks are from the former streetcar line that ran along Shawsheen Avenue into Billerica and eventually into Lowell. It is just a bit of the many miles of streetcar tracks that ran along Main Street, Lowell Street, Woburn Street, Wildwood Street, Middlesex Avenue, Church Street and Shawsheen Avenue.

In the early 1900s streetcar was the way to travel to and from nearly every city and town in eastern Massachusetts. However, by 1930 as the automobile became more popular, trolley service in Wilmington was discontinued. Most of these tracks were simply covered when they were eventually paved over becoming lost and forgotten, until Sgt. Sugrue stumbled upon them this week.