Draw 7 Mystic River

I noticed this image on NERail (one of many excellent photos posted by the same gentleman this past week);

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... bydate%3A7

I did not realize that the bridge near the dam on the Mystic River had been a draw bridge. I attempted an internet search but was unable to find when it had been replaced by the current concrete structure. Does anyone know if it burned or was replaced on a schedule? Or when? I noticed that the MDC still referred to the park nearby as Draw 7 but no one seemed to know the origin of the name when I inquired several years ago.

Heading north toward Chelsea, as you begin the climb on the new bridge note the service yard on the right...usually has ties, rail etc, stored. Watch the yard track closest to the bottom of the embankment as you go up the new bridge. That track in the yard used to be the main line track that ran directly onto Draw 7. It ends before the river, but note that if it extended to the river you can see the remnants of the bridge abutment.

I think that the draw was replaced about 10-15 years ago. It was an unusual draw bridge...I think it was called a scissor draw for the unusual way that it opened. There was some talk at the time of trying to preserve it as it was one of only a few around, but the condition was terrible.

Steve

Having once worked Draw 7, that picture on NERAIL brought back a lot of memories. There used to be three tracks across the bridge: double track B&M mainline and a single B&A main (the Grand Jct Branch).

By time I got there, the B&M was down to one track and the B&A. Some years later, the B&A main was abandoned and everything ran on the single track. Due to its age and condition, the bridge could be tricky to
open and close.

Conrail's passage (when the B&A main was still in use) was interesting since their track was next to the operator's shanty (east side). An open plug door or door handles could snap themselves on the support cables of the span. More than a few doors ended up in the river. At low tide you could see at least one in the channel. A few others used to be stacked on the shoreline.

I did get to see this event once when WABP-10 came out of NEP with a long drag of cars. One car's plug door mechanisms was sticking out,
hit the cable and sent some sparks flying. I ran out the shanty and to the
extreme end of the pier. Luckily the door stayed on and there was no damage to the bridge.

The operator at Draw 7, in addition to bridge openings, handled train orders for the Boston East TD and recorded equipment and times.

Dave

Shortly before the bridge was closed, a group of us from the Boston & Maine RR Historical Society drove in and spent a morning photographing and filming/videotaping Draw 7. We had a nice chat with the female draw tender, who was very kind to us and opened and closed the bridge so we could film it in operation. Inside her little shanty was a chair from the solarium lounge of the "Flying Yankee" articulated streamlined train. How it found its way there, nobody knew. (wonder where it is now?) It was a great day and we got a terrific film record of the bridge, which at one time was one of several similar bridges in the Boston area. Many of the images are on file at the Lowell archives of the B&MRRHS, and some are also at the Walker Transportation Collection at the Beverly Historical Society & Museum at Beverly.

Does anyone have any photos (or video!) of the bridge itself?

rb, did you read my prior post?

Mr. Hutchinson posted another photo with a better view of the bridge itself;

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... 826557.jpg

Yikes....more pix...maybe somebody could clean this link up...tia...



http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?co ... ib,sgproto

Those detail pictures are the best we've seen of Draw 7. They are exactly as we saw and photographed/videoed it on our visit before it was demolished. There once were several examples of this sort of bridge in the Boston area.

There's a nice shot of an MBTA commuter train on that bridge in the Morning Sun B&M in Color Volume 1.


Full disclosure: It's my pic, so my opinion may be somewhat tainted. It was taken in 1989, just as the replacement bridge was being completed. I wa able to walk up onto the new bridge and shoot down onto the old one--an angle I'd never seen before. It was an unusual commuter train, in that it was the only time I ever saw an MBTA push-pull consist with the engine on the south end. Normally, only the dead Budd cars had the locomotive facing south.

Also, about 5 minutes later, a Conrail SW1500 showed up with a bunch of empty reefers from up in Revere somewhere. I was told that operation dated from a trackage rights agreement that allowed the original B&A access to Revere.