Southcoast Rail

[MBTA3247]

Was the South Shore also designed for this, with diesel passenger trains to points south connecting to Red Line at Quincy Center or Braintree instead of direct service to South Station?

No. The T had no plans whatsoever for restoring Old Colony service when the South Shore Extension of the Red Line was built. The third track was retained for serving the few remaining freight customers along the route.

[wicked]

Middleborough Line closure between Middleborough and Bridgewater next month, purportedly to work on items related to SCR.

[R36 Combine Coach]

No. The T had no plans whatsoever for restoring Old Colony service when the South Shore Extension of the Red Line was built. The third track was retained for serving the few remaining freight customers along the route.

That confirms the Quincy bottleneck is because the Old Colony was treated an afterthought for local freight
service.

At least when I-90 was built in 1964, the B&A main line wasn't rationalized to single track.

[jamoldover]

At least when I-90 was built in 1964, the B&A main line wasn't rationalized to single track.

No, it was rationalized to two bidirectional tracks from four one-way tracks. The NYC may have been willing to sell the land under the tracks to the Turnpike Authority, but they weren't about to give up what they needed for an active rail line. When the Red Line was built through Quincy, there was no active through rail line - the fire on the Neponset River bridge several years before that had prevented any through traffic (freight or passenger). All you had was a dead-end industrial lead that didn't need more than a single track to be useful. There was no reason (at the time) to consider anything more than that.

Hindsight may be 20/20 - but you have to remember what the conditions were when the MBTA was building the South Shore extention, and what kind of outrage there would have been if they proposed purchasing additional ROW that wouldn't be needed for another 30+ years.

[OldColonyRailfan]

They've needed an extra ROW for 30 years. I live on the Kingston line and I can personally tell you that the rush hour outbounds are 10 sometimes even 15+ minutes late because of the bottleneck. Something should've been done 30 years ago.

[Greg]

I had a quick question after reading through the thread which I found very interesting.

It appears that part of the ROW has private residences on it south of central Raynham. Will Phase II require eminent domain to restore the line?

[OldColony]

No. The T had no plans whatsoever for restoring Old Colony service when the South Shore Extension of the Red Line was built. The third track was retained for serving the few remaining freight customers along the route.

That confirms the Quincy bottleneck is because the Old Colony was treated an afterthought for local freight
service.

At least when I-90 was built in 1964, the B&A main line wasn't rationalized to single track.

Unlike the B&A, there was no freight service south of the Neponset River in Quincy when the Red Line extension was built. The MBTA chose to reserve room for a single track ROW for potential freight, despite the objections of at least one -- a Quincy state representative. In hindsight today, we wish it had been at least a two-track ROW, but it was a very different world in the late 1960s/early '70s, so kudos to the early MBTA and state leaders for their foresight.

[wicked]

I know there was much fanfare about restoring Old Colony service in the 1990s, but I’m not sure why planners of that restoration didn’t do a better job of foreseeing the effects of those bottlenecks.

[MBTA3247]

Who says they didn't? The problem is, eliminating those bottlenecks would be very expensive, and they couldn't justify that expense back in the '90s when the service had yet to prove itself.

[diburning]

I had a quick question after reading through the thread which I found very interesting.

It appears that part of the ROW has private residences on it south of central Raynham. Will Phase II require eminent domain to restore the line?

I don't think so, but some people might suddenly realize that their yard got smaller when they fence it off.

[Greg]

Interesting, when you use Google maps on the standard view you can see the tax map breakdown and it appears the ROW is no longer intact at two potential grade crossings and both sides are now private property. It could be a mistake, I was just curious.