csor2010 wrote:Going way back, the Eastern Railroad ran down this route to a terminal at the East Boston waterfront. The mainline was eventually rerouted through Chelsea and Everett to connect to the Somerville freight yards and North Station and is now used by the Rockburyport commuter rail. Not sure how much the Grand Junction and the original Eastern mainline coexisted, but I think the B&M kept the old route active as a freight spur for some time. Here's a photo from the Boston Public Library Flickr page showing the Eastie freight yards when they were still active. At the upper right of the picture you can see the junction between the B&A (which splits to the left) and the old Eastern route (continues straight).
B&A had 2 tracks on the Eastern, B&M had 2 tracks. What's now the active tracks are *mostly* the B&M tracks, with the Everett Terminal leads and that track buried in the pavement at Chelsea station being realigned remnants of the old B&A tracks. So they only co-ran across the old drawbridge and through the North Station terminal district. One of the reasons the grade crossings in Chelsea never got zapped like so many others that close to town is because the two RR's could never agree on how to split the costs. B&A wanted a smaller share because B&M used it way more for passenger service, B&M wanted B&A to pay more because it was technically the line owner. Hence, that awful crossing cluster persists to this day while the rest of the Eastern main to Beverly has near-total separation.
I think the B&A leg of the wye and Chelsea River bridge were abandoned early (1950's?), but B&A continued serving the waterfront for awhile by backing up onto the East Boston Branch on the B&M route. B&M definitely lasted much much longer there. I don't think Penn Central had anything in Eastie left to serve when they absorbed B&A in '67 and was just doing Everett Terminal and local customers in Chelsea by that point.
Route 1A is elevated instead of depressed like the ROW through Eastie because it was built on stilts over the cut of still-active railyard. May have lasted underneath to the early 70's before it was filled in to street level under the 1A decks and paved for the parking lots currently there. Whole works used to be way, way wider including the thru tracks. The embankments on the sides where they built the new Massport haul road were gradually filled in with new dumps of fill to support the crumbling retaining walls framing the ROW...a deferred maintenance move. Scoop out the old embankments and build new retaining walls at their old footprint and you've pretty much got a ROW width identical to South Boston where Track 61 fits right next to the Southie Haul Road.
East Boston Branch is still OOS to the Global Petroleum facility with Pan Am still having reactivation rights. Tracks buried in the weeks don't end until the self-storage facility just shy of Chelsea St., but there's no potential business past Global or the mini-yard right next to Global.