B&M 1227 wrote:Guilford gave up on North Acton in the 80s I think. Bay Colony took over the operation for the last few years.Mystic Wharf Br. isn't abandoned. Guilford filed an initial abandonment claim late-90's, then Massport adverse-filed. They reached a settlement where Massport bought the branch outright but Guilford retained incumbent paper rights on right-of-first-refusal basis. If new biz comes along independently or by Massport's hand and they don't want to serve it, rights go out to competitive bid and CSX gets a crack at it. Which ends up being a de facto guarantee that PAR will never ever give up the rights or refuse to take on any new customer...because CSX is guaranteed to drive a wedge (even for small-potatoes revenue) as a competitive blocking move should they come within a sniff of an open bid. Everett + Southie + Quincy + Charlestown long-term port rights > Everett + Eastie under any calculation, so there's a lot competitive strategery involved in PAR keeping access parity around Port of Boston. NS would probably murder someone if the Billericadome ever farted this one away. This is highish-stakes chess positioning even when half those port industrial tracks are presently idle...because they probably will all be daily-active again at some point within the next 20 years serving a newly PanMax-dredged Port of Boston.
Also cross-quoted from an older thread-mick wrote:The local freight that served the Lexington Branch up until 1980 (yes it was 1980 not 1979) was down to two customers by the time operations ceased; New England Farms, a large produce warehouse in Arlington that got PFE reefers, and another buisness in Arlington whose name escapes me, they transloaded steel from flatcars at the small yard behind New England Farms on Water St. I never saw a car at Arlington Coal and Lumber after the Blizzard of '78, though they may have got some. Anyway, New England Farms moved it's operations to Readville, MA. in 1980, and the site is now condos. I remember seeing the last string of empty reefers go by with a GP-9 as I was at football practice at Spy Pond Field. The regular engine on this job for many years was B&M SW #1227.Also, did anyone mention Mystic Wharves Branch? Did that make it to Guilford? It's almost entirely intact I believe?
There's going to be decades' worth of public-investment projects riding that Harbor dredging's coattails and one-by-one making over every major port facility. Charlestown's well behind Southie-Marine Terminal at the top of Massport's multimodal priority pecking order, but they unequivocally want an eventual site master plan for Moran & Autoport expansion that includes revived rail traffic. It's a "when", not "if" question for its number getting drawn for public investment.
