by Arborwayfan
Does anyone have pictures of commuter rail trains in/next to the Arboretum in the 1970s? Or just pictures of the railroad from the Arb side? When I was very little I lived at Fairview and Mendum Streets and my mother would take me into the park and down the hill to watch the trains in the afternoons. I would love to see what the place and the trains really looked like then. The landscape has changed -- the tracks are on an embankment most of the way along the Arb, and we used to look across a little valley at them. There was a granite wall with a culvert or drain in it about half way from Bussey Bridge to where the tracks leave the Arb towards Roslindale station. That's all gone or buried, because later they built a big fill alongside the track to hide it from the Arb side (or to keep out stolen cars, I remember someone saying, because while the line was torn up in the early 80s people would drive stolen cars up the ROW and into the park and (at least once) burn them. I remember trains of Budd cars, with and without locomotives; I was probably watching before and after the blizzard of 78 when most of the Budds stopped running on their own, right?
(Yes, before I was an Arborwayfan, I was a Needham Line fan. I was aware of the trolleys in those same years, because we'd see them when we went to pick up my Dad at Forest Hills, but I really got interested in them over years of school bus trips.
(Yes, before I was an Arborwayfan, I was a Needham Line fan. I was aware of the trolleys in those same years, because we'd see them when we went to pick up my Dad at Forest Hills, but I really got interested in them over years of school bus trips.