Defunct lines in downtown Nashua

[MEC407]

I'm an amateur portrait photographer and would like to do a photo shoot on a railroad track, I've seen the tracks running along Amherst St. from Merrimack to Milford, can anyone recommend what to do? should I check a train schedule? if so where? should I do it near a street intersection so I become aware by a flager or lights if train is coming? I won't have any extra equipment with me besides my camera. Please advice...

Unless you have permission from the railroad company -- which they would not give you -- you would be trespassing, and subject to fines if caught. Your finished product would also be indirectly contributing to the problem of people trespassing on railroad property, but that's another discussion for another time. I would suggest that you find an alternative location for your photo shoot other than railroad tracks.

Check out this site for more information.

I realize that railroad tracks have become a popular setting for portraits, offering an edgy, rebellious, quasi-dangerous feel to the photo... but that doesn't diminish the fact that it's dangerous and illegal.

Good luck with your photography, and be careful.

[jaymac]

...plus it's probably not too good an idea to pose somebody in the gauge of the rails, whether it's on the property or at a grade crossing.

[trainsinmaine]

Where do embargoed / abandoned railroads fit into this picture, in instances where the rail is still extant? If, for example, our friend were to want to take photos on the long-dormant section of the Mountain Division, would he be just as liable to be arrested if discovered?

[MEC407]

In the case of the Mountain Division, the line is owned by the state and is still considered private property. Unless he was on a section of the line that the state has officially opened to the public as a trail, or unless he had permission from Maine DOT to be on a part of the line that is not open to the public, he would be trespassing.

[citystation1848]

Just to let everyone know that's interested in the history of Nashua's deep railroading past, the City Station freight house (Nashua & Lowell Railroad) at Railroad Square, which was condemned last summer, is being restored. From what I know of the downtown area, this may be one of the oldest buildings in the city (downtown at least - the oldest house in Nashua is out by Exit 4), having been built in 1860 puts it before the start of the Civil War and about 20 years after the first steam railroad began running in New Hampshire between Nashua and Lowell.

It's good to see this downtown landmark, which has taken a beating over the last few years, getting some TLC that will keep this old building around for years to come.

NASHUA – A former railroad station dating to 1860 will be returned to its original state as part of a yearlong project to save and restore the condemned building.

“For a small project, it’s been quite a challenge,” said John Stabile of Stabile Companies, construction manager for the work to restore the Canal Street building that once housed the Cattleman’s Sandwich Shop and Saloon and the Speed Queen Laundromat.

Read the full article at the Nashua Telegraph: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/784 ... track.html


For those interested, the other remaining railroad buildings in the city are:

Nashua & Lowell Railroad carhouse (Nashua, City Station)

• Today is the Peddlers Daughter restaurant. It was restored a few years ago to its 1920s appearance.

Nashua & Lowell Railroad freight house (Nashua, City Station)

• Subject building of above. Condemned July 2009, being restored.

Concord & Montreal Railroad freight house (Nashua, Union Station)

• Today is the Nashua Farmers Market and they have it well maintained.

Concord & Montreal Railroad roundhouse (Nashua, Union Station)

• One stall remains of the roundhouse. It’s used as a maintenance garage and storage for a local business.

Concord & Montreal Railroad freight house (Otterson Street)

• I’m still trying to figure out if the building I think is the freight house really was used by the railroad or if it just happens to be sitting in the right place at the proper angle next to the old roadbed.

Matt

[ferroequinarchaeologist]

from the newspaper article:

>>Brick and granite pigeon houses were built into the side of the old railroad building.

...and now we know how train orders were delivered, pre-telegraph.

PBM

[Gilbert B Norman]

https://www.cardcow.com/507040/union-st ... hampshire/

During July 1952, enroute to summer camp in Center Harbor (State of Maine to Concord, then bus), I noted the station sign "Nashua Union Station".

"Union between what roads" I ask 68 years later?

[edbear]

Nashua & Lowell (later Boston, Lowell & Nashua), Concord (later Concord & Montreal), Worcester & Nashua (later Worcester, Nashua & Rochester), Wilton, Nashua, Acton & Boston.

[edbear]

At an earlier time it was Nashua Junction.

[Gilbert B Norman]

By 1952, all those lines were either part of the B&M or abandoned?

[edbear]

The Nashua and Lowell and Concord comprised the Boston-Concord, NH mainline. The Worcester and Nashua ended a few miles out of town and was split from the remainder of that line by the Nashua highway bypass. The Acton Branch ended about a half mile out of town with a few industrial tracks and the Wilton was a continuation of the original Nashua and Lowell and was part of the B & M's Hillsboro Branch. There were at least four station locations in the downtown area. Union was on the Merrimack River where the Concord Railroad met the Nashua and Lowell. The junction point would look like a Vee from the air. On the side away from the river, the Nashua and Lowell went about a mile further and connected to the Wilton at a depot called Nashua City. Up until the late 1940s or maybe even a little later, at least one Boston commuter train left from City and returned in the evening. City also was the focus of the Boston & Maine Transportation Company's bus operations, Boston-Lowell-Nashua-Manchester-Concord and beyond and a couple of other routes to country towns. The Worcester and Nashua line had a station at Main Street and the Acton Branch had a station at Otterson Street.

[Gilbert B Norman]

The Nashua and Lowell and Concord comprised the Boston-Concord, NH mainline.....City also was the focus of the Boston & Maine Transportation Company's bus operations....

Of interest, for the return, the Camp boarded at Meredith; there was a regular Pullman line to Plymouth, so the Camp Cars were simply an addition to the normal consist. One of the four years I was "sent off", the cars were added to a Camp Special that operated down the Norwich & Worcester.

B&M TC was the outfit the camp chartered busses from for the Concord-to Camp transfer (Center Harbor PO; Moultonborough physical location) along Red Hill Road. It's still there today, but with a diversity mission and a different name. Needless to say, "back in my day", when it was Camp Red Hill, there was only one gender and ethnicity - that one acronymic with a rather venomous insect.

[NRGeep]

Did the Manchester & Keene line (abandoned after 1938 hurricane) run through downtown Nashua?

[edbear]

Well through trains ran from Nashua to Keene via the route of the Wilton RR, but the Manchester and Keene portion was quite a ways west of Nashua. The Wilton RR had a legal existence as a leased line of the B & M and was a problem for the B & M. B & M's legal experts determined that either in the charter or the bylaws of the Wilton, it had to provide passenger service. So after regular passenger trains were discontinued, the B & M offered passenger accommodations in a caboose on the local freight, Nashua-Wilton. B & M received ICC permission to buyout the stockholders and then made changes so it could end the service which was labelled as a mixed train. The B & M had been running B&M Trans. bus service along the same route for years.