1858, freight trains carrying gravel from Needham quarries to fill the Back Bay for development made up most of the traffic on the line. By the early 1870s the Boston and Worcester had become the Boston and Albany Railroad (B&A), itself destined to become part of the New York Central Railroad system. The tracks beyond Brookline, which now reached Woonsocket, Rhode Island, belonged to the New York and New England Railroad, a forerunner of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. New York and New England trains used the B&A's route via Brookline to reach Boston. Suburban service The citizens of Newton were dissatisfied with their service to Boston and since the early 1870s and had pressured both the Boston and Albany and the New York and New England to improve service, without result. Among these proposals was for the NY&NE to sell part of its Woonsocket line to the B&A, which would then build west through Newton Highlands to Riverside, on its main line from Boston to Albany, New York. This would create a loop or "circuit" between Boston and Riverside. The founding of the Newton Circuit Railroad by a group of Newton citizens in 1882, with the stated goal of completing the circuit by building a line from Brookline to Riverside, prompted the two railroads to take action. In 1883 the New York and New England sold the line between Brookline and Newton Highlands to the B&A for $411,400. The B&A completed the missing and opened the new branch on May 16, 1886. To encourage commuter traffic the B&A offered reduced-fare commutation tickets. The introduction of frequent service to Boston led a population boom in Newton. Three new stations on the extension opened as they were completed: Waban on August 16, 1886; Woodland soon afterwards; and Eliot in December 1888. The level crossing at Aspinwall Avenue was replaced with a road bridge in 1892. Between 1905–1907 the Boston and Albany undertook a project to remove grade crossings along the branch, following a similar project a decade earlier on the main line through Newton. The line's elevation was lowered by as much as in some places in order to permit road traffic to cross overhead. Lower levels were added at Newton Highlands and Newton Centre to accommodate the depressed tracks. At this time service over the line was almost exclusively passenger, with just one scheduled freight train per