It was incorporated in 1848 to connect the Taunton Branch Railroad in Weir Village, Taunton with the Fall River Railroad and newly built Cape Cod Branch Railroad in Middleborough through the town of Raynham.
The merger caught the attention of the Boston, Clinton and Fitchburg Railroad, which had leased the Mansfield and Framingham Railroad that connected its terminus in Framingham with the northern end of the Taunton Branch Railroad just six months earlier on January 1, 1873.
[1] By the 1960s, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, like many railroads, was struggling to stay solvent in the face of increased competition from alternate modes of transportation, and so in 1961 it petitioned to be included in the newly formed Penn Central Transportation Company.
On December 31, 1968 all of its properties were purchased by Penn Central.
On August 22, 1998, the Surface Transportation Board approved the buyout of Conrail by CSX and Norfolk Southern, with the former assuming control of the former Taunton and Middleborough Railroad line and continuing operations along its tracks to this day.