Any active tracks in the vicinity of South Natick?

I have a friend that moved to Dover about 2 miles SSW of South Natick. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can hear the clickety-clack of a train. Where could the noise be coming from? The Framingham line in Natick is 2.8 miles away. Does sound carry that far at night? The line that runs from Needham to Millis is 1.7 miles away (is that active at all?). The tracks through Sherborn are 2.1 miles away. Are they active?

She does live right on the Natick-Dover line. She's not a train buff, so it's possible that she is hearing machinery from a nearby farm.

If your friend is close to Rtes. 27 and 16, then she's also close to the CSX Framingham Secondary which does a fair amount of business over jointed rail. Wind moving in the right direction, generally westerly around here, and a lack, this time of year, of sound-absorbing foliage can both combine to propagate sound.

Yellowspoon wrote:I have a friend that moved to Dover about 2 miles SSW of South Natick. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she can hear the clickety-clack of a train. Where could the noise be coming from? The Framingham line in Natick is 2.8 miles away. Does sound carry that far at night? The line that runs from Needham to Millis is 1.7 miles away (is that active at all?). The tracks through Sherborn are 2.1 miles away. Are they active?

That would be the return trip on the Framingham Sec. for the daily freight run to Middleboro. Leaves towards the end of evening rush, runs to Foxboro and Attleboro, then Middleboro, then Braintree, and returns very late at night. That's the one she's hearing. Millis Line is "technically" active, but Bay Colony RR lost all its customers up there and who knows what's going on with it. It was pretty much only the Medfield-Millis portion that's been used in the last 4 years; Needham-Medfield is "active"-ly rusting. You probably wouldn't hear anything moving on that line if there was a train...it crawls at sub-10 MPH and it would only be very intermittent light engine moves. CSX's daily is a pretty hefty consist, and the Framingham Sec. is jointed rail so it would definitely 'click'.


High pressure and wind direction make a big difference in how far sound carries. I'm a few blocks away from the Fitchburg Line in the Alewife area. Some days it's inaudible...some days I can even hear the Sherman St. crossing bells from inside the apartment. When I'm walking around Fresh Pond in the morning sometimes it's quiet, and some days I can hear the Worcester Line loud and clear in the distance.

Sound is an amazing thing, and environmental factors can make a HUGE difference. As an example, I live next to an airport. Depending on wind direction, wind speed, precipitation, humidity, and even temperature, a jetliner taking off can sound like a faint whisper or it can sound like a Space Shuttle launch.

The nearest train station is two miles away, separated from my neighborhood by the airport and a river. Some days I can go an entire day without hearing any train sounds; other days I'll hear the "toot toot" every time a train leaves the station.

When I've biked near the Millis-Needham line, it all looks fairly unusable, though I could be wrong. If the line through Sherborn, i.e. the Framingham Secondary, is 2.1 miles away, that's an awfully long way to hear the sound of jointed rail. I don't think the clicking is very loud, and even in favorable conditions, 2 miles seems far.

The PanAm main line is about 2 miles North of my house, and I can hear trains at night stopping at the North Leominster station and sounding horns. Have no problem hearing the unit coal trains coming through every week, the low intensity sound carries quite far.

J

ferroequinologist wrote:When I've biked near the Millis-Needham line, it all looks fairly unusable, though I could be wrong. If the line through Sherborn, i.e. the Framingham Secondary, is 2.1 miles away, that's an awfully long way to hear the sound of jointed rail. I don't think the clicking is very loud, and even in favorable conditions, 2 miles seems far.

The last known Bay Colony trip on the line from Medfield Jct. to Newton Upper Falls was June 16, 2006.

JAJ

jjoyce1 wrote:

ferroequinologist wrote:When I've biked near the Millis-Needham line, it all looks fairly unusable, though I could be wrong. If the line through Sherborn, i.e. the Framingham Secondary, is 2.1 miles away, that's an awfully long way to hear the sound of jointed rail. I don't think the clicking is very loud, and even in favorable conditions, 2 miles seems far.

The last known Bay Colony trip on the line from Medfield Jct. to Newton Upper Falls was June 16, 2006.

JAJ

That was the last freight trip. They ran a light engine in '08 to tow the abandoned ALCO in the woods down the Upper Falls freight spur where it was scrapped in the parking lot.

For reasons unknown BC renewed its trackage rights agreement after the last customer left, so the line is still "active" despite an aggressive trail lobby. Not really sure what they were thinking there. Millis could get new customers if somebody (G&U...G&U...G&U...) put some effort into it, but the industrial park in Newton has nil potential because it's nearly all flipping over to office space.


2 miles definitely isn't far if the wind is blowing right and the geography is favorable. Like I said, I can hear the Worcester Line (Mass Pike, too) from Fresh Pond in Cambridge right near the Fitchburg Line, and there are places in the Charles basin where on the right days you can hear the Red Line over the Longfellow, Green Line over the Lechmere Viaduct, and Orange Line over the Community College viaduct all from the same spot.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

jjoyce1 wrote:

ferroequinologist wrote:When I've biked near the Millis-Needham line, it all looks fairly unusable, though I could be wrong. If the line through Sherborn, i.e. the Framingham Secondary, is 2.1 miles away, that's an awfully long way to hear the sound of jointed rail. I don't think the clicking is very loud, and even in favorable conditions, 2 miles seems far.

The last known Bay Colony trip on the line from Medfield Jct. to Newton Upper Falls was June 16, 2006.

JAJ

That was the last freight trip. They ran a light engine in '08 to tow the abandoned ALCO in the woods down the Upper Falls freight spur where it was scrapped in the parking lot.

Are you sure? The #1061 was scrapped in March 2007...on the IVEX spur. And per a post to the BayColony list it was moved to that spot by a rubber-tired vehicle, as the branch had already been put out of service by then. All of this is well-documented on the BayColony email list. Thus, I do believe June 16, 2006 is the last confirmed and documented Bay Colony trip on the Newton Branch...but if you have evidence to the contrary I'd sure be interested in seeing it.

JAJ

2 Miles is quite possible, it is probably more dependent on the terrain of the area.
I live less than a mile from the P&W, in Millville but cannot hear the train until it is well over 5 miles away in Uxbridge, just the way the sound carries through the valley.

Steve_G

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

jjoyce1 wrote:

ferroequinologist wrote:When I've biked near the Millis-Needham line, it all looks fairly unusable, though I could be wrong. If the line through Sherborn, i.e. the Framingham Secondary, is 2.1 miles away, that's an awfully long way to hear the sound of jointed rail. I don't think the clicking is very loud, and even in favorable conditions, 2 miles seems far.

The last known Bay Colony trip on the line from Medfield Jct. to Newton Upper Falls was June 16, 2006.

JAJ

That was the last freight trip. They ran a light engine in '08 to tow the abandoned ALCO in the woods down the Upper Falls freight spur where it was scrapped in the parking lot.

For reasons unknown BC renewed its trackage rights agreement after the last customer left, so the line is still "active" despite an aggressive trail lobby. Not really sure what they were thinking there. Millis could get new customers if somebody (G&U...G&U...G&U...) put some effort into it, but the industrial park in Newton has nil potential because it's nearly all flipping over to office space.


2 miles definitely isn't far if the wind is blowing right and the geography is favorable. Like I said, I can hear the Worcester Line (Mass Pike, too) from Fresh Pond in Cambridge right near the Fitchburg Line, and there are places in the Charles basin where on the right days you can hear the Red Line over the Longfellow, Green Line over the Lechmere Viaduct, and Orange Line over the Community College viaduct all from the same spot.

Gotta love the office NIMBYs! They took over an industrial park in Andover and threw out a bunch of businesses, including one that actually used an active rail siding there.

I agree the wind can really carry the sound of trains going by. I live quite a distance from the tracks now up in Haverhill near the Groveland Bridge. The nearest rail line to me is Plaistow, NH. In the early hours of the day, I can usually hear engines rumbling and blowing horns at the crossings. Sometimes there's the rattle of freight cars as well. This is quite different from where I grew up in Andover, which was about a mile from the tracks. Back then I could hear the engines throttle up or down as they negotiated the slight grade from Shawsheen to Andover.

John

Is there anything left of the saxonville branch? Is the switch torn up?

Tracer wrote:Is there anything left of the saxonville branch? Is the switch torn up?

I think the switch came out somewhere in the '08 timeframe, about 2-1/2 years after service ended. CSX is still at loggerheads with the town over purchasing parts of the line for the trail; they've been filing one 180-day negotiating extension after another with the STB to resolve the ownership transfer for 5 years now, to no avail. It's gotten testy over the delays: http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/x1 ... some-towns.

The bridge over 9 is still extant, as far as I know.

The EGE wrote:The bridge over 9 is still extant, as far as I know.

Yep: http://g.co/maps/xj8qt.

That's on the portion still CSX-owned that's ensnarled in the dispute. Only the portion from Boston Scientific/Natick Mall north that was abandoned eons ago has its ownership squared, so the south terminus of the trail has to be at Route 30 until they resolve the dispute. Don't think construction's started on the northern leg yet, but they've been designing it long enough that it should be ready to begin pretty soon.

It'll be a nice one. Straight from Natick station to Framingham Ctr., only 2 grade crossings south of 30, Mall access, the existing Route 9 bridge and Pike underpass, goes straight through Cochituate State Park, and absolutely no other viable transit use. I just don't know why the state is sitting on its hands and letting the towns wing it alone and get all pissy with them in the process when there's so much riding on having a good public-private relationship in this state with CSX. Let the adults handle this.