Take the train to the Game! (Pat's Train)

Yes, years ago the line was 25/25 but when the track starting going to crap they had too many sections that were Temporary 10/10 that a genius in Jax realized that if they make the entire 21 miles all 10/10 it was only one giant speed restriction on paper as opposed to 7 or 8, or however many there were. By doing this things looked better on paper from a management point of view. Later there was a General Bulletin issued making the entire Framingham Sub 10/10 permanently. That was probably in about 2007/2008.

well, maybe they should make it 15/30 and fix up the tracks

The problem is that you would have to justify the cost of upgrading tracks that only see 10 trains or so a year.

Patrick A. wrote:The problem is that you would have to justify the cost of upgrading tracks that only see 10 trains or so a year.

Isn't it used by freight every week? Or at least pretty regularly, not sure how often.

Patrick A. wrote:The problem is that you would have to justify the cost of upgrading tracks that only see 10 trains or so a year.

Well, they are doing a feasibility study for giving foxboro full time service.

Also, even without full time service, they could easily cover more events a year. Concerts, soccer games, lacrosse tournament....all can draw big crowds.

REVENUE....$$$$ I hear...but all comes at a price!!

What would it take to get the line to 25mph for passenger trains from Walpole-Mansfield?

The southern half of the Framingham Secondary has B725 (FR35) round-trip Sunday-Thursday nights and has B732 (RE-10) one way Walpole to Mansfield M-F. B735 used to run light engine round-trip between Walpole & Mansfield before Walpole was done away with as a sign-up location. Now the 2 jobs which used to work out of Walpole work out of Readville.

Hi all. It's been a while since I visited Railroad.net forums, so much so I had to re-register because I forgot my old username. Lol.

Anyhow, I live in Walpole near the station and was wondering what folks here thought of the recent study regarding possible weekday MBTA CR operations to Foxboro, but I see the story hasn't been posted yet, so allow me to post the story from the local Walpole paper.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/walpole/news ... te-Stadium

I also found the actual study cited by the Walpole Times:

http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About ... 20ONLY.pdf

Here is a story about the possible expansion to Gillette from the boston.com.
I'm not sure if the T can afford this, but at the very least there should be a train for all Patriots games, Revolution games, and concerts.
Maybe start it at that level and work up from there.
Also, the story mentions that one of the possible layover yards would be in South Walpole. I think if the Patriots and Bob Kraft are going to get everyday train service to their stadium and other properties, they should use some of their own land for the train yard.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... _gillette/

Due to changing of the jobs around in Readville and Framingham, rumor from the management says that they may be working on getting the Northern part (Walpole to Framingham) back to 25. Of course, like all other things, I will believe it when I see it.

If they do regular service, or if they start servicing the Revolution and concerts, they should require Kraft to spend X in advertising, require it to be on tickets for said events, market it on ads/commercials for said events, etc.

Every Pats ticket and Revs ticket should say at the bottom:

"
*T Logo on left* Take the Train to the Game! *MBCR Logo on right*
http://www.mbta.com/riding_the_t/patriots
"

There should be ads around Patriots Place and Gillete Stadium, at no charge, for the train service, and if it's regular service it should list the times.


Make Kraft work for it, don't let him say "Do this, do that".

Quick question; any reason why they couldn't run more than one train down there for Pats games from the north?
You would think they could run one in and just move it down the line and store it for the next one to go in...
Signaling? MBTA/FRA regs?

Don't the trains from Boston and Providence enter this track from opposite directions?

Because the first train would have to bactrack all the way to Walpole before the next train could come in. So in order to have enough seats for the way back to Boston, a second train would have to be run meaning that following the 30-45 min after the game the train already waits, plus the half hour it occupies on the tracks, then add another half hour for the next train to come back to Foxboro plus loading time, and we're talking 2 hours or so after the game ends that the next train would pull in. So yes in a nutshell, because of single tracking and the poor condition of the line, it would be prohibitive to run two trains.