Old & New Readville yard

What is the old underpass you've mentioned? Where exactly is it and what was it used for?

There were three passageways under the Midland at the Readville Shops. Starting from the east there was a two (later one) track skewed deck girder bridge which has been replaced by a fill. Next is a concrete "tunnel" for pedestrians and vehicles working at the shops. This is at about the middle of the locomotive shop. Last is a concrete underpass at the west end of the loco. shop. The passageways at the ends were to allow rail access between the two sides of the shops complex.

CSX Conductor wrote:Readville's 1 Yard is now handling cars for Franklin & Milford which used to be out of walpole. The Walpole locals (B735 & B736) are now out of Readville. Very soon B732 (aka RE10) will be moved from Readville to Framingham & the night job B731 (aka RE2) will be abolished altogether. Just another attempt by the new trainmaster from down south who is always changing things around to try to save $$.

I go to Readville yard on a daily basis since early PC days. Lived across the pond for about 10 of those years. That's a long time and have to say the yard hasn't looked better. Quite a bit of rail and tie replacement this year. So is there a brighter future awaiting it? Since some of the jobs are moving you would think the work is for nothing ....but who knows. The weekend of the hurricane there were 8 GP40-2s lined up...Haven't seen that since Conrail days when RESE/SERE used to run. Any ideas??
Ted

In the "old" readville yard there used to be a pair of red amtrak hoppers along the road in the south west corner of the yard. They have been in the same spot for years and today i noticed they were gone.

Anyone know what happened to them?

Tracer wrote:In the "old" readville yard there used to be a pair of red amtrak hoppers along the road in the south west corner of the yard. They have been in the same spot for years and today i noticed they were gone.

Anyone know what happened to them?

EPA cleanup. Was to commence early this summer (haven't heard any updates on it lately), funded by a tack-on grant to the Fairmount Line improvement project. They're doing full soil decontamination of the yard which will displace stored equipment when they move the work zones around. Whole center of the loop is going to be remediated and then planted with grass. I don't know if any tracks are going to be ripped out as part of the work, but the MBTA has stated that it'll continue to be zoned as rail yard and that they fully intend to use it in active capacity as a yard when they need expansion space.

Basically because it's never ever been cleaned since the NH engine shops were demolished 50+ years ago they can't build any new structures on it until the site is decontaminated. So it's necessary if they ever want to do something more substantial with it.

The locomotive shop is still standing. It is the very large building on the south side of the Midland RoW. The large buildings in the area of 5 yard were the freight car and passenger car shops, both long gone. The paint shop was demolished a few years ago while the powerhouse, part of the lumber kilns, the sawdust burner and the blacksmith shop (?) are still in place on the north side of the Midland.