Ask a Hudson resident where the rail trail goes and you'll get a confident answer: down past the caboose, over the river, into Marlborough. That's the Assabet River Rail Trail, and it's been part of the town's daily rhythm for twenty years. What most people haven't clocked yet is that Hudson finished building a second trail this year, one that starts in a completely different part of town and links up with the first only at a single parking lot on Wilkins Street.
The Mass Central Rail Trail's Hudson segment had its grand opening in July 2026. If you've been walking the same familiar loop along the Assabet all summer, there's a decent chance you haven't noticed the new stretch exists, let alone where it drops you.
The trail you already know
The Assabet River Rail Trail runs along an old railroad corridor that once carried the Marlborough Branch of the Fitchburg line, and it stitches together five old mill towns: Marlborough, Hudson, Stow, Maynard, and Acton. The completed southwest section covers about 5.1 miles between Marlborough and Hudson, ending at a parking lot on Wilkins Street. A separate northeast section runs another 3.4 miles from the South Acton MBTA station toward the Maynard-Stow line. In between sits a roughly four mile gap, part dirt track through the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, part closed corridor on private land, that's kept the trail from ever being one continuous ride from end to end.
Walk the Hudson stretch and you already know the landmarks without needing a map. A restored 1921 Boston and Maine Railroad caboose, painted blue, sits near where the trail enters Hudson's commercial district. Not far past it, carved and welded sculptures line one side of the path, and a fish-shaped xylophone waits on the other, the kind of thing kids stop and bang on while parents wait. A mural depicting Hudson's shoe-manufacturing history covers a wall further along, a nod to the era when the town ran seventeen shoe factories along this same river. There's a parking lot near the caboose too, which is where most people who don't live within walking distance actually start.
What actually opened this July
The new piece is the Mass Central Rail Trail, sometimes called the MCRT-Wayside, and it's a different project with a much bigger ambition behind it. When the full corridor is finished, it's meant to run continuously from Boston to Northampton, a distance of roughly 104 miles, following a rail right-of-way the state leased from the MBTA back in 2010. Hudson's piece of that plan sat mostly on paper until construction began in October 2022 on a 7.6 mile stretch through Sudbury and Hudson.
The first three miles of that stretch were largely built by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation in fall 2025, laid on top of an existing underground Eversource high-voltage transmission line easement, and the grand opening followed this past July. It ties into the Assabet River Rail Trail at the Wilkins Street parking lot, the same lot where the older trail already ends. For about a mile the two trails run together before splitting again at Priest Street.
What that means on the ground: if you've only ever accessed the rail trail system from downtown or from the Wilkins Street lot heading toward Marlborough, there's now a whole new approach coming in from the Sudbury side that funnels into the exact same intersection. Riders can now link from the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail in Sudbury, through the new MCRT segment, onto the ARRT, and into downtown Hudson without ever touching a road for the bulk of the trip.
Reading the trail like someone who's ridden it
The route from the Sudbury connection into Hudson has enough texture that it's worth walking through mile by mile, because a few of the details aren't obvious until you're standing at them.
- Around the 2.7 mile mark, a sidewalk cuts right, perpendicular to Church Street, just past the Senior Center parking lot. That leads to the old MCRT railroad trestle over Bruces Pond. It's not part of the usable trail yet. The signage is clear on this: walk, don't ride, the bridge may be unsafe.
- At 3.0 miles, the route turns left onto the Assabet River Rail Trail itself. A right turn there instead takes you toward Marlborough, about two miles away, crossing the Assabet River with a nice overlook above the Fort Meadow Reservoir.
- By 3.2 miles you're passing the carved sculptures and the fish xylophone, with the old caboose and its parking lot just ahead.
- At 4.0 miles there's the mural of Hudson's history, then a bridge crossing the Assabet, then a signaled pedestrian crossing at Route 62.
- The 4.5 mile mark brings you back to the Wilkins Street lot, which now serves double duty as both the MCRT trailhead and the start of the Hudson-to-Marlborough leg of the older trail.
None of this is officially blazed yet. The trail markers you'd expect on a finished route aren't up, so local volunteers are currently working with the state to get signage and better access points in place. For now, knowing these mile markers yourself is the difference between a smooth ride and doubling back at Bruces Pond because you didn't realize that bridge wasn't meant for bikes.
The part that's still just a design contract
Hudson isn't done building. The town's next target is the segment between Priest Street and Felton Street, running through downtown along the north side of Main Street. Getting there took real money: a 2025 funding package combined $727,780 in federal transportation dollars with $181,940 from Hudson's Community Preservation Committee, adding up to $909,720 to fund full design work on that stretch, according to reporting in the Community Advocate. Planning and Community Development Director Kristina Johnson has been blunt about why the town is pushing this hard, calling the rail trail network a development tool as much as a recreational one, and pointing out that finishing the connection means people from Concord and Sudbury can reach downtown Hudson under their own power instead of by car.
Beyond that segment, Hudson has already secured a FY2026 Mass Trails Grant to fund 25 percent design work on the next piece after that, from Felton Street out to the Berlin town line. So the pipeline keeps moving. What opened this July isn't the finish line. It's the first fully built piece of a corridor the town has been assembling in stages since 2022, with the next two segments already in some phase of design.
What this changes for a Tuesday night
Here's the part that actually affects how you might spend an evening. The Riverwalk starts at Cellucci Park on South Street, two blocks from where the Assabet River Rail Trail meets Broad Street, and it's a genuinely different kind of walk: overlooks, benches, a nearby skate park, playground, and splash pad, all sitting right on the water. If your mental map of Hudson trails stopped at the caboose and the sculptures, this stretch is worth adding in, especially with kids in tow.
And if you're the type who ends a ride with a beer, the geography now works in your favor in a way it didn't a few years ago. Medusa Brewing Company on Main Street and Clover Road Brewing Company on Chapin Road both sit close enough to the trail network that a ride through downtown can end at either one without much extra pedaling. Neither is new to Hudson, but the trail connecting to them in a continuous, car-free way is.
There's also a boat launch at Main Street Landing, tucked right into the trail corridor, if paddling is more your speed than walking or riding. It's one of four launches along the Assabet River system, alongside spots in Stow and Maynard, and it's easy to miss if you're not specifically looking for a spot to put in a canoe.
The honest version of this story is that Hudson's trail network is mid-build, not finished, and the parts that are done don't yet have the signage to make that obvious. Knowing the mile markers, the funding timeline, and where the trail genuinely stops short is the difference between treating this as a curiosity and actually using it.
If you're weighing what a town like Hudson offers day to day, whether you already live here or you're thinking about it, that kind of on-the-ground detail tends to matter more than a listing photo ever will. If you'd like to talk through what's happening in Hudson or any of the surrounding towns, Kim McKean is always happy to connect.
