BERy ROW Along The Fellsway

jbvb wrote:As far as guys cruising, if you aren't the droid they're looking for, they have very little interest in you.

...but carry a blade.

The El and The Eastern Mass operated this as a joint operation. The 4300s were used for most service, with type 5s filling in on short turns to Salem St. or Elm St. The El's operators ran the car as far as the Sheepfold where an Eastern Mass. operator took over. Each company had its own fare box and collected its own fares. The 4300s were maintained by the El at Salem St. under contract to the Eastern Mass.. There were also occasional trips to Spot Pond only, which reversed at the end of double track.

Track was El owned/leased right up to Spot Pond at the Medford/Stoneham Line. From that point on, it was the Eastern Mass's. As Gerry stated, it was double tracked, and there were two crossovers just before the end of the El's rail.

I went out today and got some pictures with my folks, which I'll post when I get a chance. Still a sketchy area, although I saw some families nearer the trailheads. All three bridges are still standing but beginning to crumble a bit.

Anyone who is seriously interested in long-gone Boston Elevated Railway lines should acquire a copy of Streetcar Lines of the Hub by Bradley Clark, a 2003 BSRA publication. It is a 206-page hardcover book with hundreds of photos and detailed track maps of all lines, including the Fellsway route.

....If you were a BSRA regular member, you'd have gotten it for free !

The Fellsway/Stoneham line is the main feature of the BSRA RollSign Nov/Dec 1986 and May/Jun 1989 issues.

JoeD

Apologies for resurrecting such an old thread, but, while hiking the Middlesex Fells today, I had the opportunity today to walk on what I think is a remnant of the ROW on the east side of I-93. I've been on the much more discernible ROW on the west side many times before, but never thought to look east. It's in the sliver of land just south of the I-93 overpass and between the Fellsway and the highway, about 30 feet in, and about 15 feet higher than the current Fellsway. At first I assumed it was a pre-93 incarnation of the Fellsway, because the ROW was paved with macadam, and there was a good deal of it left, but I also saw half buried a probably 1.5" gauge woven steel cable (though I have no idea if it was a remnant of the line), but from looking at that area on Historic Aerials, it looks like today's Fellsway is in pretty much the same place it's been in since 1938, the I-93 crossing excepted, and site of the Brooks Road Viaduct pictured in the post card above. The ROW merged with the Fellsway just opposite the Half Mile Road hiking path. South of Half Mile Road, for a few hundred feet, there is what may be a ROW on the east side, but it was kind of difficult to tell whether it was an actual ROW or something to do with the roadway. Also, about fifty feet in the woods on Half Mile Road, there's a concrete abutment of some sort to the right, if one is walking east. At thought that may have been related to the line, but it seems a bit too far off. Finally, I made my way back to the Flynn Rink via the Pickerel Path and, just at the gate from the Fellsway, there was a large arched chunk of concrete rubble -perhaps an artifact of the old viaduct...

You're partially right. Per Streetcar Lines of the Hub, the trolley line remained on the west side of the Fellsway from Brooks Road south to a point roughly adjacent to the swampy area next to Wrights Pond, where the northbound and southbound lanes of the road split apart and the trolley tracks shifted into the wide median. From Brooks Road to where it went into the median, the trolley tracks were right next to the Fellsway, and after abandonment the trolley ROW was absorbed into the Fellsway when it was expanded to 4 lanes. It appears that when I-93 was built, the stretch of the Fellsway approaching the underpass from the south was moved into a shallow cut where the northbound side of the road had been, while the now-unneeded southbound lanes were abandoned (and apparently left in place). If you use the comparison mode in Historic Aerials, you can see how the present-day Fellsway weaves across the ROW of the earlier road. By my reckoning, if you're driving north on the Fellsway, where the guardrail ends is roughly where the road starts to shift to the east side of the original ROW, with the grade for the long-gone southbound lanes (and before them, the trolley line) becoming apparent along the west side of the road.

Nothing survives today of the stretch where the trolley line ran in the median of the Fellsway north of Elm St. Most of that stretch of the Fellsway was bulldozed for I-93, with the present road being a relocation to the east.

Where the Fellsway crosses under I-93, there was once a short road the branched off to the shore of Spot Pond. All of that was obliterated when I-93 was built and that section of Spot Pond was filled in, but it could account for the rubble along the Pickerel Path, which starts in the same place that road did.

Here's a cool photo of an MTA trolley along the Fellsway median by Frank Pfuhler. It was originally BERY, which became the MTA in 1947

Charliemta wrote: ↑Tue Jan 12, 2021 5:03 pm Here's a cool photo of BERY (or maybe MTA?) along the Fellsway median by Frank Pfuhler:

That is at the corner of the Fellsway and Riverside Ave. The house and gas station are still there.

This is another picture of a bridge from this line I believe. Just came across it trying to find more pictures of BERY / Boston Elevated Railroad.

That is the bridge up in the Middlesex Fells Reservation near the Sheepfold.

JoeD