Customers of the Gloucester Branch

Looking to see if anyone knows the last customers on the Gloucester Branch? When did service on the branch end and what brought on its end?

BostonUrbEx wrote:Looking to see if anyone knows the last customers on the Gloucester Branch? When did service on the branch end and what brought on its end?

1984 Beverly Draw fire was the opportunity Guilford used to embargo freight north of Salem and break contracts with all its remaining customers up there. It's why those rights were outright-terminated instead of held in perpetuity like the rest of the northside. The customers weren't actually gone yet when they made their move. And I believe that included 1 or 2 tiny ones still left on the Gloucester Branch, though most of it had dried up by then. BO-1 was the name of the job that originated out of Salem to cover the branches.


Board search comes up with a couple 8-year-old threads. Was a lumber yard in Beverly served near beginning of the branch (Google Maps doesn't seem to turn up any surviving traces), and originating seafood freight at Gloucester Harbor that was transported inbound to other cold storage warehouses. Gloucester station immediate environs have a bunch of converted old industrial buildings and a couple surviving businesses like a welding company and a gas wholesaler, and at least until the 50's there was a freight house w/ tiny yard there. Downtown was a pretty busy stopover until it thinned out in B&M's last couple decades, so yard probably got a lot of pickups from the businesses in couple block radius of the tracks and various seafood wholesalers. Rockport station also had a freight house, but that was closed much earlier on when general-purpose staffed depots outside of major yards became obsolete practice.

That's all board search enumerates. Wasn't a comprehensive list, just a few folks naming stuff they remembered.

Cape Ann Steel was one of the last customers. Their cars went to Gloucester
Yard or Rockport for unloading.

The last customer was probably a cold storage warehouse across the track from
the station. I believe it was Gordon's.

The last customer on the Newburyport main was Owens-Corning.

D

If I'm not mistaken service into Gloucester was brought to an end in 1981 after the deadly Passenger/Freight collision at Prides Crossing..

Where was the Gloucester yard? It appears no traces left today?

mgdemarco wrote:Where was the Gloucester yard?

As I recall it was adjacent to the station, extending east. It wasn't very big, just a few tracks for local deliveries.

If you call up UNH or someone else's USGS topo collection and go to the northeast corner of the 1944 quad for Gloucester, you'll see the yard. As a matter of luck, that section also includes Rockport and the loop.
(Weird -- "Rockport" didn't pre-exist in the spell-check library of my not-that-old Mac.)

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:1984 Beverly Draw fire was the opportunity Guilford used to embargo freight north of Salem and break contracts with all its remaining customers up there. It's why those rights were outright-terminated instead of held in perpetuity like the rest of the northside.

Pretty sure legally Pan Am never outright terminated their rights, and that anything on the outbound side of the drawbridge is still technically embargoed.