New Hampshire Commuter Rail Discussion

newpylong wrote:First time I have ever heard of that - especially given varying block spacing on the freight main vs conn river and same MAS.

Weren't Lowell-Manchester signals done over brand new circa-'79 contiguous with the whole north-of-Wilmington signal replacement project of that era? I can't imagine Guilford laying a finger on them in the last 3 decades to change the braking distance from passenger to freight if the system was all set up the same way as prep-for-service for the 1980 Concord CR extension. That would be...like, actual money voluntarily spent by Tim Mellon for purposes other than keeping his trains physically upright or avoiding gov't fines. Unthinkable.

Not to go off topic but the reason I know this is the whole Fitchburg project. The signal placement is terrible for passenger trains! But it was all done to freight standards due to not having to petition on the STB on speed changes.

Slightly off-topic but related to NH commuter rail.

Does this mean the end of the Hampton Branch ever seeing trains again?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/1 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seacoast Greenway Trail looking to run from Kittery, ME to Salisbury.

Weird that NH will spend $$ on a bike trail but not for rail.

The tracks were removed between Portsmouth and Hampton in 2014 or before.
I had thought that the State of NH had already purchased the right of way.
One sticking point for the trail, is that the rail line went through the property
of the Seabrook Power Plant. I am not sure they will allow a trail through
there account of security concerns.

Choo Choo Coleman wrote:Slightly off-topic but related to NH commuter rail.

Does this mean the end of the Hampton Branch ever seeing trains again?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/1 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seacoast Greenway Trail looking to run from Kittery, ME to Salisbury.

Weird that NH will spend $$ on a bike trail but not for rail.

Well, at least they shut up that politician who wanted to build a road on it because Route 1A was too congested. FWIW, this would be one of the easiest ROW's in the region to rail-with-trail if they ever did reactivate for commuter rail. It's got huge expanses all around through salt marshes and forest.


I don't know how in the hell they're going to make this trail contiguous, though. ROW goes inside the gate of the nuke plant...like, well inside the gate. That's all restricted property ensnared in NRC bureaucracy. I can't picture the feds giving them permission to let pedestrians lollygag around 1500 ft. from the reactor core building, whether there's a fence by the path or not.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

Choo Choo Coleman wrote:Slightly off-topic but related to NH commuter rail.

Does this mean the end of the Hampton Branch ever seeing trains again?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/1 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seacoast Greenway Trail looking to run from Kittery, ME to Salisbury.

Weird that NH will spend $$ on a bike trail but not for rail.

Well, at least they shut up that politician who wanted to build a road on it because Route 1A was too congested. FWIW, this would be one of the easiest ROW's in the region to rail-with-trail if they ever did reactivate for commuter rail. It's got huge expanses all around through salt marshes and forest.


I don't know how in the hell they're going to make this trail contiguous, though. ROW goes inside the gate of the nuke plant...like, well inside the gate. That's all restricted property ensnared in NRC bureaucracy. I can't picture the feds giving them permission to let pedestrians lollygag around 1500 ft. from the reactor core building, whether there's a fence by the path or not.

They do need reliever roads, especially for evacuations if there is a nuclear event. Filling in salt marshes & wetlands would be quite a hurdle - doesn't matter whether it is inside the ROW.

I don't know the route, but I assume they could reroute a bike path outside the perimeter of the nuke plant fence. Unless there's that wetlands thing.

BandA wrote:

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

Choo Choo Coleman wrote:Slightly off-topic but related to NH commuter rail.

Does this mean the end of the Hampton Branch ever seeing trains again?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/1 ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Seacoast Greenway Trail looking to run from Kittery, ME to Salisbury.

Weird that NH will spend $$ on a bike trail but not for rail.

Well, at least they shut up that politician who wanted to build a road on it because Route 1A was too congested. FWIW, this would be one of the easiest ROW's in the region to rail-with-trail if they ever did reactivate for commuter rail. It's got huge expanses all around through salt marshes and forest.


I don't know how in the hell they're going to make this trail contiguous, though. ROW goes inside the gate of the nuke plant...like, well inside the gate. That's all restricted property ensnared in NRC bureaucracy. I can't picture the feds giving them permission to let pedestrians lollygag around 1500 ft. from the reactor core building, whether there's a fence by the path or not.

They do need reliever roads, especially for evacuations if there is a nuclear event. Filling in salt marshes & wetlands would be quite a hurdle - doesn't matter whether it is inside the ROW.

I don't know the route, but I assume they could reroute a bike path outside the perimeter of the nuke plant fence. Unless there's that wetlands thing.

The reliever road proposed was way up in Hampton on the recent PAR abandonment. This dim bulb thought if they grabbed it and paved it fast enough he could score a cheap reelection prize.


The fence is pretty wide-radius around the plant. To get around it going south-to-north they'd have to bank left after Depot Lane to snake behind Seabrook Commons shopping center and through the town transfer facility. Then hang a left on the outside-gate part of the plant access road and go behind the Market Basket, because continuing due north runs headfirst into a marsh and trailer park. Then stick along Route 1 to Brimmer Lane. Then all the way down Brimmer to the ROW. 2-1/4 miles to go 1-1/4 miles, and more than 10 private property owners to square easements with. Unless the detour is literally just a sidewalk on Route 1 where there currently is none.


Given that the NRC just flat-out doesn't care about anything outside its own bubble, I don't see a plausible means for a contiguous trail. There'll have to be a gap. But the East Coast Greenway is full of gaps. It never promised a contiguous ROW because that's physically impossible with the total universe of available or potentially available routes it has to work with. Their overarching goal--which has no timetable for completion--is to just minimize the gaps enough that the gaps which must exist are traversable on-foot...without needing a car...with accessibility and wayfinding through the gap...with gaps short enough that they can be traversed in reasonable time on-foot (i.e. few hours at most).

There's already hard-to-fill gaps between the MA legs of the EC Greenway: http://www.greenway.org/images/MA.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. The very much active Gardner Branch in Worcester and the Lynn/Saugus Branch<==>Swampscott/Marblehead Branch<==>Peabody/Danvers Branch gaps don't have any physical options because of urban downtowns and/or geography. Those are ones they'll have to work with what they can work with using streetscaping/Complete Streets and little chunks of "Harborwalk"-type paths to tie ends together. The ultimate goal isn't in achieving a bikeway superhighway, much less finding one along current or former rail lines; it's seeding a corridor's worth of a kitchen-sink best practices: rail trails, waterway trails, conservation land trails, Complete Streets, and all manner of interconnections between them. It's why they're the authoritative national organization on trails and get federal funding. They aren't one-trick ponies who just target rail conversions and are deaf/blind/dumb to public transit. They tend to be way more inclusive about modes and way more wary of NIMBY manipulation than the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy folks (who are very good at the national level but have structurally little to no control over individual projects or their intentions). Just browse the "About" section of the ECG's website...you won't see the word "rail trail" appear anywhere.

Trestle Hampton Harbor around the seaward side of the nuke? (Post inspired by the remains of the WW&F in Wiscasset).

There are two extensions of service into NH that I know about. One being the Lowell line to Nashua (and perhaps Manchester/Concord some day), and the other being the Haverhill line to Plaistow. Both are Rhode Island style extensions of MBTA service which would most likely be provided through some agreement with NHDOT similar to what the T has with RIDOT.

The "Knowledge Corridor" service (which I think has taken a serious back burner thanks to the current administration [that was a Patrick pet]) would be a MassDOT service separate from the MBTA. Who would actually run it and what equipment would be used I think is anyone's guess. I think the retired and mothballed MBTA equipment will be NFG by the time any such service commences, so perhaps a Downeaster style arrangement could be made with Amtrak wherein MassDOT plays the role of NNEPRA and leases Amtrak equipment and hires them to run it. Maybe then it would fit in with Amtrak? Maybe the MBTA forum could be broadened into a MassDOT forum? Or maybe a "Western MA Commuter Rail" thread in the NE Railfan forum would be most suitable. I don't know, I think there are too many unknowns with that topic.

I believe that any Plaistow stop for the MBTA is gone.
Plaistow voted not to allow a MBTA storage yard there.

CRail wrote:There are two extensions of service into NH that I know about. One being the Lowell line to Nashua (and perhaps Manchester/Concord some day), and the other being the Haverhill line to Plaistow. Both are Rhode Island style extensions of MBTA service which would most likely be provided through some agreement with NHDOT similar to what the T has with RIDOT.

The "Knowledge Corridor" service (which I think has taken a serious back burner thanks to the current administration [that was a Patrick pet]) would be a MassDOT service separate from the MBTA. Who would actually run it and what equipment would be used I think is anyone's guess. I think the retired and mothballed MBTA equipment will be NFG by the time any such service commences, so perhaps a Downeaster style arrangement could be made with Amtrak wherein MassDOT plays the role of NNEPRA and leases Amtrak equipment and hires them to run it. Maybe then it would fit in with Amtrak? Maybe the MBTA forum could be broadened into a MassDOT forum? Or maybe a "Western MA Commuter Rail" thread in the NE Railfan forum would be most suitable. I don't know, I think there are too many unknowns with that topic.

Maybe separate topics for each extension, but on the other hand since there is little to report at the moment that might be overkill

So, i saw this post A little while ago.

NOTE: I DID NOT WRITE THIS DOWN BELOW
"The MBTA last year got snookered by a nonprofit trail lobby peddling the Iron Horse Preservation scam into granting them a 99-year trail lease. The town's development plan cites lack of sidewalks and pedestrian accommodation as the #1 hindrance to growth in town, and the hardest problem to solve because of mileage of new sidewalks required to get any sort of functional walkability. And also recommends commuter rail study because there are so few other "ins" to sustainable development with how the sidewalk situation and lack of bus transit locks Methuen more exclusively into cars than neighboring towns at concerning diminishing returns. This was a pure, transparent NIMBY move at town-level factions to sabotage that recommendation.

The trail's an utter waste because it dead-ends north and leaves a several-mile gap with the trail in Salem north of Rockingham Park (no immediate plans to fill that), and the cited lack of in-town connectivity severely limits access and potential usage. The nonprofit is also very underfunded and almost didn't make the T's laughable minimum qualifications for securing the trail lease, so it's a ploy to get the rails ripped out and then stick the state with the maintenance bill when they can't afford it. If the Iron Horse scam plays out how it did in Chicopee and Danvers with the "FREE TRAIL FOR SCRAP! EVERYBODY WINS!" pitch then this is going to be a rough trail surface, divot- and washout-prone with the barest not-very-attractive minimum of trash pickup and brush control. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation doesn't even want this trail, but they have to bail the nonprofit out if they can't cover the basicmost maintenance needs. Terrible, terrible all-around plan. Maybe this could've been a useful trail if they had actual finances to make it well-done and had it integrated with a downtown sidewalk buildout. But every party approached this naive, deaf, or lazy and gets what their stupidity pays for.

This is why Mass. needs a toothier state rail plan, and possibly the EOT consolidating all ROW's in the state under common ownership as part of future structural reform at the MBTA. The T has been negligent at ROW preservation and has been taken for a ride by the Iron Horse scam 3 or 4 times already. It undermines the system preservation goals codified in the Rail Plan, and if they're this flippant about destroying their own network then they shouldn't be allowed to own any OOS routes any longer.

Can blame a whole lot of this sad end on factionalization at the Methuen town gov't level. The NIMBY's packed on various town boards enabled this shaky-resourced nonprofit to torpedo their own downtown plan. Total one hand not knowing what the other was doing scenario. A real shame since NH was pretty well organized at earmarking this as a future reactivation corridor at least as far as Rockingham Park, with ultra-long term goal for Derry and Manchester to relive I-93. Would've always been well behind Concord on the priority list, but much lower-hanging fruit to get to a massive Rockingham Park park-and-ride stub than the effort it would eventually take to restore the Eastern Route to Portsmouth. Not every rail line has to have a right-this-second use when the future rail considerations are that compelling. Leave it inactive for 25 years if the gears turn slowly...that's what they've been doing on the Stoughton Branch since 1990 for the interminable South Coast Rail plan, and nobody's complaining that that one doesn't have a trail right this second. Instead this interstate corridor got shot to hell by a bunch of infighting locals in one stinking town who caught their state sleeping on the job. Can't underestimate what a painful loss this is going to be in 15 years when 93 is dysfunctional as ever, no amount of new asphalt will save it, and there's no multimodal option ever because Mass. yet again capitulated to earth-salters."

Guys, dont get too excited by the MBTA decision. Heres some things i thought of while reading this:

1. Has anyone actually seen a formal document of the lease paper? some leases mention that the owner can snatch up the land at any given time.
2. A lease is where you give someone land for a continuous stream of money, right? Maybe they signed the lease so that when the time comes for resumption of rail, they can help fund it.
3. 99 years sounds reasonable, if they can snatch it back up. Its the longest a lease can go for, and nobody knows when the rail line will be in need of service again.
4. The Merrimack Valley Planning Active transportation plan (January 2015) Mentions the M&l, Stating it can be used as a rail with trail. Why would they even mention rail if it wont return? Answer: it will return. Not today, or tomorrow, but maybe in the next ten or 15 years, maybe earlier
PS: I would know this, because i actually live in Windham, and there is demand for rail here.

Jackinbox1

Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 4:03 pm

gokeefe wrote:

atlantis wrote:F-Line had pointed out how there is difficulty getting the commuter rail at least to Plaistow.
I'm wondering if at least in the case of Plaistow, maybe the Downeaster could make a stop there, as the train passes through Plaistow anyway on its run to Portland. At least until such a time that the commuter rail to Plaistow can be agreed upon. Not necessarily all Downeaster trains, but perhaps one or two "key" trains a day could stop there in each direction. This way, Plaistow gets some service, while not adding running time to all trains on the route. Such a service, IMHO, could serve to
"break the ice" for commuter rail, as it would be a placeholder for any subsequent commuter rail. Perhaps this has been discussed before, so please bear with me here.

I agree with all of the other previous posters and would simply add this.

"It's a New Hampshire problem" and solely a New Hampshire problem. Let them figure out what they think should be done. Plaistow adds nothing to the Downeaster of any benefit that I can see. I'm not even confident there would be additional riders, as most of them likely board at HHL.

If New Hampshire feels they have a problem with the commute to Boston then they should consider how to solve this problem. If commuter rail happens to be one of those solutions then they should take steps to implement a commuter rail solution. Until then as far as I'm concerned they can "take it or leave it". For the moment the answer seems to be that they are in fact very satisfied with the available options. In regards to the funding scheme there will be a day of reckoning eventually. When or how I don't know but it will come in due time.

Exactly. Its a New Hampshire problem. And heres a guy living in Windham, NH, telling you about it. Ive seen too many people here saying that the M&L should be rebuilt. What do you think all the higher population towns along the line are thinking?

The town of Salem and the state of NH were suckered into them as well. Iron horse left the ties behind and after numerous attempts to get Iron Horse to remove them, the town was left with no choice but to file suit against them. I haven't been through Salem in a while so I have no idea if they are still there.

b&m 1566 wrote:The town of Salem and the state of NH were suckered into them as well. Iron horse left the ties behind and after numerous attempts to get Iron Horse to remove them, the town was left with no choice but to file suit against them. I haven't been through Salem in a while so I have no idea if they are still there.

They are gone, But the trail hasn't paved yet. Also, weren't you in another forum about the M&L i commented on? You already know about the towns along the line and its views on the corridor if you are.