The Nashua Daily Telegraph commented, "While we welcome this reduction, we hope that it will lead to no ruinous competition between the Lowell and the Acton.

"[5] Soon after opening, the company obtained a charter for a four-mile-long (6.4 km) extension southward from Acton to Concord, where it connected with the Fitchburg Railroad.

[3] Ultimately, the company struggled to turn a profit due to long layover times at Concord, where passengers transferred to the Fitchburg Railroad to reach Boston.

[3] [Residents] wondered that any railroad should be so absurdly managed as to have complaint made by one or two hundred people on this line of road to the state authorities, representing their grievances.

They could not believe that any manager of a railroad could, in his sober senses, be so blind to the interest of his employers and so regardless of his own credit, as a business man, as to run a road so incommodiously and obviously hostile to the reasonable convenience of the legitimate patrons of his line of road... -An article in the Nashua Daily Telegraph, published February 19, 1879 The Nashua, Acton and Boston survived as an independent company only until 1876, when it was leased in its entirety by the Concord Railroad, which had been heavily involved in the NA&B from the beginning.

[8] In March 1921, the New Hampshire legislature authorized the Boston and Maine to purchase outright the Nashua and Acton, formally ending the company's existence.

[3][10] Despite objections from remaining shippers, the final trains ran in May 1925, with the entire line being abandoned apart from the first two miles (3.2 km) out of Nashua.