Favorite Boston Abandoned Line Discussion

It was very interesting, Leo. I'm sorry that I never got to see it. If you were to stand in that same spot today, you'd be facing the Chinese Church, and up ahead, looking up Broadway, you'd be looking towards the Hancock Tower. Broadway became a non-street here, in my opinion - Marginal. If it had not become a Chinese enclave, it was headed to be a widening of the infamous Combat Zone. I'll bet you that at the time that this photo was taken, that you'd be as safe there as anywhere. After the Zone, not so after dark. Even now. Our car is about to cross the NH and B&A tracks in the corridor there on it's way to Southie. Great photo, Leo. Thanks for posting.

Wow, that looks really cool! Wish I was around those days.

Is that stretch of Broadway depicted in that pic the present day "Pine St"?

Close. Pine Street would be the next street on the right - just about a few feet from Broadway. Broadway here was where Marginal is now.

Here's my salute to my pals at Union Freight. Nice job, guys ! (Maybe if you had done some track work ?)

Teamdriver wrote:Anyway, dont know if this qualifies, but the old Hingham ammo dump, seen off rte 3a by the little bridge across from the old Nike missile site, had rail serving the many buildings there.Very interesting all round.

I remember spurs off of the Greenbush line was still in service in the 1970's, we moved out of the city to Hingham in 1967. One of my earliest train chasing events was a Penn Central local freight headed by a dingy black RS3 switching the track that ran down to the old shipyard where there was an industrial park of sorts with numbered buildings, one of them numbered 19 was the site of the original Building 19.

Another now abandoned line which I have recently taken an interest in is the Milton branch which branched off of the Old Colony main just before the Neponset River bridge and ran down to the Baker Chocolate factory. Not sure when that line was abandoned, I remember it being in service in the late 1960's, it is now a trail. I am planning on a model railroad combining the Milton Branch and the Mattapan trolley.

Jon

jonnhrr wrote:Another now abandoned line which I have recently taken an interest in is the Milton branch which branched off of the Old Colony main just before the Neponset River bridge and ran down to the Baker Chocolate factory. Not sure when that line was abandoned, I remember it being in service in the late 1960's, it is now a trail. I am planning on a model railroad combining the Milton Branch and the Mattapan trolley.
Jon

Jon - I believe that this is a card that came in many of Walter Bakers chocolate products. Pictured on it, the factory is to the right (Washington St. side), the offices to the left (Adams St. side). The New Haven brought freight cars to their loading dock in the rear, carrying powders and concentrated chocolate. They closed up production in Dorchester and moved to Dover, Delaware in 1969. My uncle, a life-long Baker employee, went with them to finish out his career. I have another memory with the factory there. It was one of the strangest events in my career that I would be happy to tell you about some day. I'd love to see pics of your Baker Factory diorama when completed.

Burke Distributing was in the front of Baker, their truck docks were off River street.I think they had a level underneath the River street grade, and perhaps they got rail cars of Miller and Schaeffer beer. They are now in Randolph and get rail cars too>

Another thought that I had regarding Jons layout is that I wondered if Baker ever received goods via electric freight ? There was the Neponset Freight House just 1-1/2 miles east.

3rdrail wrote:Here's my salute to my pals at Union Freight. Nice job, guys ! (Maybe if you had done some track work ?)

Hey paul were did you find this photo? The union freight railroad has always been one of my favorites although there doesn't seem to be too many photos of the railroad out there.

The union freight railroad must have been quite a site back in the day winding its way thru alleyways and such.

Hey Tracer ! Yup, the Union Freight was an interesting outfit. No doubt about it ! The thing that I always marvelled at was how they got trains to roll over their track without de-railing. There were gaps of about 10" between rail lengthwise and 5" vertically. I got this photo from the Boston Public Library's flickr photo-stream here that Rob found for us: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_pub ... 786875932/
This is an interesting shot. I don't know if there are others of the Union Freight, but there are a ton of railroad and transit pics. I know that there is a shot of this one cropped differently however. Looks like this was the result of the B&M boxcar "splitting a switch" as it was being shoved into Northern Ave. at Atlantic Ave.

Hey paul were did you find this photo? The union freight railroad has always been one of my favorites although there doesn't seem to be too many photos of the railroad out there.

The union freight railroad must have been quite a site back in the day winding its way thru alleyways and such.

There's a book about the Union Freight with pictures. I've seen it fairly recently in one of the local model railroad stores (don't recall which unfortunately), and amazon has it: http://www.amazon.com/Railroad-That-Cam ... 0828903182 It might actually be fun to model it.

Aerie wrote:

Hey paul were did you find this photo? The union freight railroad has always been one of my favorites although there doesn't seem to be too many photos of the railroad out there.

The union freight railroad must have been quite a site back in the day winding its way thru alleyways and such.

There's a book about the Union Freight with pictures. I've seen it fairly recently in one of the local model railroad stores (don't recall which unfortunately), and amazon has it: http://www.amazon.com/Railroad-That-Cam ... 0828903182 It might actually be fun to model it.

Back about 10 years ago there was a series of articles in Model Railroader by John Pryke where he modeled the Union Freight.

Jon

Reference to the magazine article here:

http://union-freight-railroad.epik.com/

They had a small yard right on Atlantic Ave. on the west side of the street (city side, not water side), under the shadow of the Central Artery, where they would have an engine or two idling. I recall an Alco smoking away with that familiar throbbing. The times that I recall, they would be shoving a small group - one or two - boxcars down Atlantic Ave. I'm sure that during the days of the Army Base, that they made that connection as well, as well as their other points of call. Most likely, when I saw them as a wee kiddo in the late 50's and early 60's, they were on their way out. I'm sure that they were busier prior to those decades. Anyone that is going to model that area, please include the Grape Yard (Fan Pier) ! That's where local Italians from the North End would purchase grapes off the New Haven boxcars for use in making their home-made wine. They would bring it home where it would go right into their tubs for mashing and fermenting. Bellissimo !