farewell to a bit more B&M history

This past week a contractor began dismantling the last of the two wood pile trestles that once carried the abandoned B&M Bemis (nee Watertown) Branch over the Charles River in Waltham. The one behind Waltham Tower and the Charles River Museum of Industry was torn down a few years ago, and now the one behind the River Street Shaw's Market is meeting the same fate. I shot the attached photo one evening in June 1984 as BO-1 was heading back to the mainline after switching the cold storage warehouse that was the last customer on the branch; this was a rare visit of a B&M GP40-2 to this location. Hard to believe it's been 32 years. The line was officially abandoned in 1991 and the rails were torn up a few years later. The soon-to-be-ex-trestle is now paralleled by a footbridge that carries the Riverwalk recreational path.

Sad, but inevitable. Thanks for the info, Tom.

The branch when fully intact witnessed some epic detours when the Fitch had derailments etc between Waltham and West Cambridge.

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It is too bad that they had to dismantle both of those old wooden trestles as the were very unique, but they had become a huge liability issue in the more recent years I'm sure. The Bemis branch is interesting because even though it was abandoned in relatively recent years, some parts of it are already hard to trace, as several developments have been built on the right of way.