Central Mass Branch

the old Central Mass. book put out by the B&M Historical Society, which has been reprinted, shows a good photo of one of those ammo trains heading to the Ft Devens, Sudbury site. Years ago that whole area was a secured area, they brought in ammo from Boston and other areas to store in bunkers at that site. Though rumors were about that it was matches for the boys overseas being kept there. There was a small Army yard at the once wye at Mirror lake or White Pond off the Central Mass. line. This spur went across Hudson road there at the Stow and Sudbury line into the Ft Devens site. The ROW can still be seen today. If you do travel that section and around hunting season be careful. The T back in the mid 80's came by and put up the guard rails on White Pond Road. For awhile that area at the old switch was becoming a junk yard. Years ago there was also barracks at the site where the Hudson housing is today off Hudson road. There was at one point also a radio tower and station far back into the woods, as a kid we would sneak through the fence and ride the dirt paths into the site. The site was later from local papers and rumors around the neighborhood that the state and army declared the area a hazard site, they went in cleaned up what ever it was. I do remember about 1/2dozen 1 1/2 ton army trucks coming out of there back in the late 80's. Does anyone know, did the Army have any facilities at that site for their motive power?

According to this Public Health Assessment by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/ftdeve ... ta_p3.html there was an "Inspection Pit"

Study Area A10: Railroad Pit/Underground Tank Area

This concrete pit, under a section of railroad track in the southern portion of the Annex, was presumably used for locomotive and equipment maintenance. Reportedly, the pit had been pumped out and refilled with water. This area was used for automobile oil changes by housing residents and the general public who discarded engine oil into the pit.

Area A10 is 600 feet east of the west gate and 1,000 feet south of White Pond, which is a surface water source of potable water for the town of Maynard.

if this is of any help to anybody. The "housing residents" referred to would probably be the residents of the still extant however rebuilt army housing off Bruen Rd.

I think a lot of stuff got removed just prior to the installation of the high pressure gas pipeline line that runs right along where the track used to cross Hudson Rd. and continues south to a facility just northeast of Hopkinton center. The pipeline enters by the Maynard - Sudbury line at rte 27 and is visible on Google Earth. I think (foggily) it was put in in the late 60's or early 70's.

thanks, never did know what they cleaned up.

Hi,

Changing topics a bit ( I remember the Blount steam special and RDCs on the Central Mass. -- even took one to Boston in `72 or so), does anyone have any snapshots of the Clinton trestle demolition???

Thanks,

Alan

Two photos by the late H. Bentley Crouch of one of the piers being pulled down in 1975 appear the epilogue of the B&MRRHS's The Central Mass. There may be additional photos at the B&MRRHS archives in Lowell. The B&MRRHS on-line forum may also be helpful.

There is a study underway to convert the Hudson - Waltham section to a combination Busway/Bike Trail,,
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/weston/a ... to_berlin/
http://www.sudbury.ma.us/news.asp?id=2983
http://www.stow-ma.gov/pages/StowMA_Pla ... FINAL_.pdf
http://www.mapc.org/subregions/magic/mcc

IMHO Though I'd prefer heavy or light rail, at least this (if done right) would be helpful with traffic

papabarn wrote:There is a study underway to convert the Hudson - Waltham section to a combination Busway/Bike Trail,,
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/weston/a ... to_berlin/
http://www.sudbury.ma.us/news.asp?id=2983
http://www.stow-ma.gov/pages/StowMA_Pla ... FINAL_.pdf
http://www.mapc.org/subregions/magic/mcc

IMHO Though I'd prefer heavy or light rail, at least this (if done right) would be helpful with traffic

There's another thread on this one somewhere...think maybe the MBTA forum.

The quick recap: dumbest money-sucking study ever. There's not nearly enough feeder buses to justify the expense of a busway that's going to go back and forth to 128 and requires transfer on Fitchburg line headways to even get to Boston. The type of service they're proposing is the type of back-and-forth single mode service commuter rail is best for. And this being an intact CR ROW, why the hell are they even considering a limited-seating rubber tire hybrid solution OVER a commuter rail line for what's functionally a commuter rail service. As noted, hardly any feeder bus lines and you have to make a mass transfer to get to downtown. Defeats the entire purpose of funneling buses one-seat on the busway when you have to transfer anyway to get anywhere but a 128 onramp. Transfer at the local CR stop instead. Where the trains run on rails. On a rail line that's existed for a century.


Not that the ridership's there anyway to plop anything expensive down on the Central Mass ROW yet (maybe in 20 years a different story...this is nowhere near a useless ROW and should be preserved intact for future reactivation). But this is overthinking at its worst. And people should be pissed off that there's a study costing money for this farcial plan when there's an exhaustive CR-to-Berlin restoration study on the books from 1993 that's cheaper to update with 2010s' ridership/cost projections than inventing a whole new plan that does exactly the same thing...only more retardedly.

As long as the NIMBY's in Weston have any say, this is a dead issue. A speeder highway would have a better chance...

NRGeep wrote:As long as the NIMBY's in Weston have any say, this is a dead issue. A speeder highway would have a better chance...

Weston doesn't like those suspicious speeder "types" running through their manicured backyards...plotting their robberies and getaways on their slow-speed fixed-track escape route. They'll tear the community asunder, those speeders.

Dunno where you guys live but along the 20/CMB Corridor, the pressure is on to "do something" about the traffic congestion. Politicians wishing reelection tend to respond to this, and what with the prospect of I-290 reaching it's originally planned terminus having met it's final demise at about the same time as the last passenger run on this branch, I suppose some "grabbing at straws" is no surprise. God I still can picture a Budd RDC crossing 20 at the Kaffestuga.

" ♫ Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone ♫"

Rush hour on 20 is horrendous --- and as I've said before, driving that road between 4 and 6 in the afternoon and seeing that abandoned railbed sitting there unused leaves me, as a person who advocates rail transportation, scratching my head. Seems to me that if the NIMBYs could be trumped in Hingham and Cohasset, they could be in Weston, Wayland and Sudbury as well. There's gotta be a way.

There's a chance the T's gone passive-aggressive. Yes, the South Shore extension did get built, to the years-long benefit of lawyers on both sides. The Great Hingham Tunnel/Trench continues as an example of rear-guard dilatory litigiousness. Maybe the T's new mode is to wait for the pitchfork-and-torch-equipped locals to be agitating for re-establishment of rail instead of reacting against it.

jaymac wrote:There's a chance the T's gone passive-aggressive. Yes, the South Shore extension did get built, to the years-long benefit of lawyers on both sides. The Great Hingham Tunnel/Trench continues as an example of rear-guard dilatory litigiousness. Maybe the T's new mode is to wait for the pitchfork-and-torch-equipped locals to be agitating for re-establishment of rail instead of reacting against it.

It wouldn't be bad at all to go to South Sudbury, especially if they could barter with CSX to trade their railbanked portion of the Framingham & Lowell to inexpensively re-lay track to Framingham. You could have circuit service with Worcester trains veering north at Framingham to express to North Station to expand capacity on the outer half of the Worcester line, and add more service on the inner half SS-Framingham plus on the inner Fitchburg NS-Waltham by long-looping through there. It could also serve as the North-South freight replacement for the Grand Junction to free that up for more Urban Ring-oriented service, since it dumps right at the CSX yards and there's not a lot of grade crossing or clearance issues that modest upgrades couldn't fix for running beefier freights to their northside holdings. That in particular could be key if the N-S link gets built, because the ability for the T to use electric switchers through the tunnel to move equipment will end their use of the Grand Junction and pretty much make freight's days numbered on it as it would become pretty much all-clear to turn that line into LRT or BRT for the Urban Ring. I'm sort of glad the trails aren't going on either of those stretches of mothballed track, because it's a good long-term strategic hold for the T. I'm less enthusiastic about S. Sudbury-Berlin. Just don't think the ridership's going to be there for at least a couple decades, and you can serve the Berlin/495 end just fine from the long-term proposal for Leominster commuter rail via Framingham on the Agricultural Branch.

F-line to Dudley via Park-
Given deeper pockets than it (read "the tax-paying public") currently has, the T might entertain a former Lowell Secondary to former CM ring for BOS-BON service, "entertain" meaning to hire a consultant to indicate that it "might" be a possibility. Assuming my Google surfing was accurate, there are just less than a dozen grade crossings between Framingham and South Sudbury. Between South Sudbury and Clematis Brook on the CM, there are more than a dozen. Even with the possible removal of some of the grade crossings, there are also large numbers of backyards abutting both former ROWs. Backyards are effective breeding grounds of NIMBYism.
Having witnessed a few Conrail locals do the rock-and-roll slow-dance between North Yard and South Sudbury, I feel it's likely a complete sub-base-up rebuild is necessary, more than ditto for the CM segment. The CM bridge over Rte. 128/I-95 may be adequate, but the Rte. 60 bridge near Waltham District Court is in probable need of replacement. All these concerns seem to serve as obstacles. There is one other, which anyone who has driven Rte. 20 west of East Sudbury for more than a few years is aware of -- the Sudbury River. Sometimes yearly, sometimes less frequently, the spring Sudbury expands its banks to the point that vehicular and, less frequently, even railroad traffic has been halted.
The cost, demographics, and geographics all seem to conspire against the proposal.

In the unlikely event of part of the CM being reactivated, it seems building a connection to the Fitchburg somewhere in the vicinity of the CM bridge over the Fitchburg near the Waltham Weston border might make sense given the numerous grade crossings in Waltham Highlands, Bacon st etc, the precarious rt 60 bridge and flimsy trestle near there and the general redundancy, given the 2 Waltham stops at Brandeis and Waltham Center already on the Fitchburg.