Rail service to Walnut Street started in 1852, but it was unreliable for commuters and did not immediately lead to any significant development. Most trains running through Newton Highlands did not stop; throughout the 1860s, trains passed through hauling gravel from Needham for the filling of Boston’s Back Bay, an immense project which carried on for over a decade.

James F. C. Hyde championed the introduction of improved rail service to Newton Highlands. With others he purchased the land for right-of-way for laying down the train tracks, and then persuaded the Boston and Albany Railroad to open a Highland branch running out to Riverside.

Henry Hobson Richardson, one of America’s foremost 19^th century architects, was awarded the commission to design a series of six train stations: Chestnut Hill, Newton Centre, Newton Highlands, Eliot, Waban and Woodland.  The Newton Highlands station, completed shortly after Richardson’s death, opened in June, 1887, with landscaping designed by the firm of Frederick L. Olmsted.  The depot, on the National Register of Historic Places, is remarkably intact and one of few that still survives in Newton.

By the end of the 19^th century, the Boston and Albany Railroad provided regular passenger service using steam locomotives on a route called the Circuit Railway. Trains ran from Boston’s South Station, along the current Green Line through Newton Highlands to Riverside, then around the loop in Auburndale, connecting to the present Worcester-Framingham commuter line, and then back to South Station. To provide local transport for residents, in 1892, a trolley opened running along Walnut Street.

In 1906, the railroad tracks were lowered. In 1958, the system changed ownership, and was taken over by the authority later called the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Newton Highlands became a stop on the Green Line to Riverside.