Glimpses of Railroad Remnants near Cromwell, CT

I was in transit on Interstate 91 between New Haven and Hartford but I stopped to take a few photos of the abandoned ROW near Cromwell.

Details >
http://www.vizettes.com/kt/cromwell/
^ Not much personal info but lots of link outs to other sites....
ENJOY

Rich:
I was in this area just yesterday and spotted the ROW.
How timely to see your post here to answers my questions!
Thanks,
Russ

On second thought - I think the main embankment I noted is just a dike for flood control. All historical maps show the ROW on the south side of the river here. I have updated the page accordingly. Does anyone have any info on this?

Look how you can make out the abandoned on a diagonal on the 1952 topo:

RichCoffey wrote:On second thought - I think the main embankment I noted is just a dike for flood control. All historical maps show the ROW on the south side of the river here. I have updated the page accordingly. Does anyone have any info on this?

Look how you can make out the abandoned on a diagonal on the 1952 topo:

Berlin Branch. Still active in Middletown to a siding at that blue warehouse off in the distance across the street from the high school driveway. ROW property lines are intact up to Tuttle Rd. (guessing Brandon Forge Co. was the last surviving customer on the next segment). Then some property breaks. Then property lines resume intact, ride atop the flood dike on the south side of the river, crosses Miner Brook on what's now the footbridge, and crosses the river on a still-existing trestle: http://www.trbimg.com/img-5179a1cf/turb ... 00/600x338" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Then it's obliterated by I-91 right at the CT 372 overpass. Apparently this portion on the Middletown side of 91 lingered into the mid-60's, which is why that bridge is intact. Other side of 91 to Berlin station was a mid-40's abandonment. Sebethe Dr. is pretty much the ROW, and this sewer pipeline the second crossing of the river in Cromwell. Then turns into a power line ROW where it crosses Berlin St. to Route 9. Then diverges from the power line ROW into the power line access road sticking closer to the river. Then becomes somebody's front driveway, crosses Wethersfield Rd., becomes the front lawn of the businesses on White Oak Dr., crosses the river a third time on another pipeline, crosses the Berlin Turnpike, curves + crosses Deming Rd. (ROW property line resumes here on Google), winds up at the Corbin plant.

...and, then: it resumes! Seriously long-disused spur off the Springfield Line last served during Penn Central, but Corbin still considers itself a 'dormant' rail customer and every once in awhile there's a momentary tease of new service. ROW is overgrown but intact except for Christian Lane grade crossing which got torn up for utility work. Other side of Christian is an active CSOR customer and the active switch to the Springfield Line. This is a 'new' alignment. Originally the branch hit directly at Berlin station on what's now the CSOR freight siding to Depot Rd./Old Brickyard Lane, and there was a diamond for continuing straight on to downtown New Britain on the active "Berlin Secondary" fork of the Highland (as opposed to the New Britain Secondary, which is now the Gov. Malloy Memorial Busway). That was reconfigured when Route 9 (ex-Route 72) was first built.


Remarkably intact thanks to the Corbin spur, pipeline + power lines, and preservation land. You've *almost* got the makings of a fully intact ROW were it not for some well-manicured office park front lawns on Sebethe Dr. and White Oak Dr. ruining all the foamer fun.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

RichCoffey wrote:On second thought - I think the main embankment I noted is just a dike for flood control. All historical maps show the ROW on the south side of the river here. I have updated the page accordingly. Does anyone have any info on this?

Look how you can make out the abandoned on a diagonal on the 1952 topo:

Berlin Branch. Still active in Middletown to a siding at that blue warehouse off in the distance across the street from the high school driveway. ROW property lines are intact up to Tuttle Rd. (guessing Brandon Forge Co. was the last surviving customer on the next segment). Then some property breaks. Then property lines resume intact, ride atop the flood dike on the south side of the river, crosses Miner Brook on what's now the footbridge, and crosses the river on a still-existing trestle: http://www.trbimg.com/img-5179a1cf/turb ... 00/600x338" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Then it's obliterated by I-91 right at the CT 372 overpass. Apparently this portion on the Middletown side of 91 lingered into the mid-60's, which is why that bridge is intact. Other side of 91 to Berlin station was a mid-40's abandonment. Sebethe Dr. is pretty much the ROW, and this sewer pipeline the second crossing of the river in Cromwell. Then turns into a power line ROW where it crosses Berlin St. to Route 9. Then diverges from the power line ROW into the power line access road sticking closer to the river. Then becomes somebody's front driveway, crosses Wethersfield Rd., becomes the front lawn of the businesses on White Oak Dr., crosses the river a third time on another pipeline, crosses the Berlin Turnpike, curves + crosses Deming Rd. (ROW property line resumes here on Google), winds up at the Corbin plant.

...and, then: it resumes! Seriously long-disused spur off the Springfield Line last served during Penn Central, but Corbin still considers itself a 'dormant' rail customer and every once in awhile there's a momentary tease of new service. ROW is overgrown but intact except for Christian Lane grade crossing which got torn up for utility work. Other side of Christian is an active CSOR customer and the active switch to the Springfield Line. This is a 'new' alignment. Originally the branch hit directly at Berlin station on what's now the CSOR freight siding to Depot Rd./Old Brickyard Lane, and there was a diamond for continuing straight on to downtown New Britain on the active "Berlin Secondary" fork of the Highland (as opposed to the New Britain Secondary, which is now the Gov. Malloy Memorial Busway). That was reconfigured when Route 9 (ex-Route 72) was first built.


Remarkably intact thanks to the Corbin spur, pipeline + power lines, and preservation land. You've *almost* got the makings of a fully intact ROW were it not for some well-manicured office park front lawns on Sebethe Dr. and White Oak Dr. ruining all the foamer fun.

Just a clarification, Historical Maps rule out that this branch was ever connected to the Corbin Spur. If you look at a 1940's topo,

http://historical.mytopo.com/getImage.a ... g&state=CT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

you will see the branch ending in East Berlin, CT, around what was/is today shown as StanChem on Google Maps,

https://goo.gl/maps/Pqmb7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And this was well before Corbin was ever built. Also, the maps show that the eastbound connection from the Diamond in Berlin was severed in the late 1940's.

Finally this map doesn't indicate any type of connection. and on this google map below you can make out the old ROW that is preserved in the property lines.

https://goo.gl/maps/2WNth" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.itoworld.com/map/26?lon=-72. ... 21&zoom=13" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- BWP

Good detective work, Brooks!
The ex Middletown branch from the Berlin station to the former Rohm & Haas / Arkema plant has been disused for the past couple of years as Arkema closed the plant down.
Try the Bing Maps view of the area if you haven't already - they tend to take their aerial photos without foliage to block the view of the rights of way. You can trace the r o w through the wet areas past the Arkema plant (it was open when these were taken) and over route 9 and past the clay pit ponds. It's obliterated past Christian Lane through an industrial area, ran just north of Willow Brook Drive, then it reappears as it approaches Deming Rd. On the south side of Deming an auto body shop sits on the r o w, right next to the stream. The sewer line comes in just east of the stream and follows the right of way to where the r o w intersected the Meriden and Cromwell line and it follows the M&C to near the Mattabassett Sewage Treatment Plant.

Not to take anybody's fun away, but it's already in OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2273570" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Waterbury-Cheshire Trolley Line runs parallel Meriden, Waterbury & Connecticut River Railway for a ways.

RussNelson wrote:Not to take anybody's fun away, but it's already in OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2273570" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Waterbury-Cheshire Trolley Line runs parallel Meriden, Waterbury & Connecticut River Railway for a ways.

Russ, I don't see the branch, the Berlin branch, that we were discussing on this map. This is the main line between Waterbury and Middletown.

This map shows the Berlin-Middletown branch (abandoned 1965), which has been the topic of more recent discussion. The link Russ posted related to the MW&CR (abandoned 1924), which is the ROW in Rich's photos and crossed the Berlin Branch in the area the photos were taken.

Great stuff! I added more links on the bottom of the page. Keep 'em comin"

Since we're looking at remnants, on Notch Road in Cheshire, CT, is a railroad bridge.
Trolley, specifically: Waterbury-Cheshire Trolley Line
Bing Bird's Eye: http://binged.it/1M7C9no" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bing aerial: http://binged.it/1B4Od6X" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/199582836" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

500' west of there is the MW&CR that Rich noticed, but much west of where he noticed it.

That Notch Rd. arch is frequently mis-identified as an MW&CR structure, but it is in fact from the trolley line. The MW&CR crossed the valley on a wooden trestle; scroll down to "East Summit" on this link for a photo. There are also several other arches on the trolley line crossing small brooks between Mixville and Summit, as well as piers for the crossing over the Canal Line in downtown Cheshire.

Anyway, that's straying a bit far from Cromwell. From what I've been told (haven't seen it myself), in addition to the extant Berlin Branch bridge over the Mattabesset River in the area of Rich's photos, there is a fragment of an abutment for the MW&CR crossing just east of the Berlin Branch diamond. I'm pretty sure this is the only structure left on the Westfield-Cromwell segment of the MW&CR that was abandoned in 1904. On the Berlin Branch, there are also a few small bridges west of the Route 3 crossing that are visible across a field from the road. The pipeline bridge between Cromwell and East Berlin at the end of Sebethe Dr. may also be a retrofitted RR bridge as opposed to new construction for the sewer pipeline; it is on the segment abandoned in 1965 and doesn't resemble the other pipeline bridges (it's all the same pipeline; runs from New Britain/Berlin to the treatment plant along Route 9).