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It took them 10 years to do most of the "shovel ready" Great Recession recovery project from Wilmington Jct. to Andover St. in Lawrence. And then motion only really started when the 10-year deadline of the "shovel ready" funds was looming. Unless something changes profoundly at t...

Go ride SF Muni's battery/overhead trolleybus network to see what the MBTA could have done. We rode a number of lines in 2021, but what impressed me most was 30 Stockton. North terminal outside a big-box sporting goods store in sight of the Golden Gate, maybe a mile beyond the end of the wire. I did...

L Taraval has a loop terminal using Vicente, 47th Ave., Wawona and 46th, a block north of the Zoo. I don't recall the stub west on Taraval from my 1976 visit, you'd have to ask a local or check a reference book to know how long it's existed. I expect it's a way to short turn one car that's following...

You might find you'd save the cost of a cab ride by staying in South Burlington, near I-89. I see two not-very-large parking lots beside the tracks north of the station, but I could imagine them full at 10 AM on a weekday. I have walked around the downtown a couple of times, but it's been decades si...

BandA, I can only suggest you look around at the bills filed by those 400 randos. I've been watching for years to see what's going to ding local towns and cities. It also means only semi-retired business owners and rich hobbyists can afford to be in the NH legislature. This has a bunch of side effec...

Interesting; the Irish Times combines Reuters with the Guardian, which I'd already read, for a fuller understanding. I've little experience with the "Stationmaster as block operator and interlocking operator" system, but it does require all the stationmasters to be in good communication an...

The current NH House is Republican controlled but only by one vote. So it might get through there, but the Senate and Governor's Council still have safe Republican majorities.

Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (Maine paying for the Downeaster) built a 2 mile stretch of double track mostly RR west of the new Wells, ME station. Work is in progress to extend it west to the edge of North Berwick. I think they also built or extended a siding in Scarborough, ME. Ove...

Take a closer look at the Needham line in aerial photos. Gardner St., the Charles River bridge and the bridge over the stream west of the Charles River all have abutments for two tracks. It's hard to tell about Greendale Ave. Great Plain Ave. has room for two also, but they built the passenger platf...

The drone photos suggest the passenger train was on the wrong track. All the European passenger services I've ridden (none in Greece) kept right on double track. One report said both crew on each locomotive died.

Then-Governor Ed King was very much a limousine rider, and when the MBTA needed money he said "cut instead". In a perfect (to me) world, Woburn would have been a good place to terminate the Green Line Extension, with the big commuter parking lot at Cross St. But there would have been a fig...

IIRC Congress also changed the rules for Amtrak, requiring state support for shorter-distance services about the same time, and Mass didn't pony up to continue the Inland Route. At least once I rode that way returning from business down the Corridor, but the sun set somewhere around Hartford...

In the last year or two of the Woburn branch I sometimes commuted out to Cross St. Usually an F-10 or GP-7 pulling a couple of RDCs. Part of the reason Winchester still had a manned tower at the time.

BTW, the proper name of that route was "Hill Crossing Freight Cutoff". It was originally built by the Central Mass. RR to reach Boston & Lowell tracks to use their station in Boston. It was revived in the 1920s to give access to the most efficient hump yard layout at Cobble Hill in Som...

A route from the Orange Line at Community College - Sullivan Sq. to either branch of the GLX needs a complicated and expensive bridge over the eastern and NH routes. Diverting 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 trains to another route would significantly reduce capacity to Sullivan Sq, Wellington and Malden Center, t...