Old lines on Hanscom AFB

I work on Hanscom and today while at the thrift store I walked out to my car and noticed a good size piece of metal in the woods right near the fence that keeps people off the the landing strip. While trying to figure out what it was I completely didn't notice the old rail lines right in front of this piece of metal. So I am guessing this piece of metal has to do with the line or a train that was on it at one time. Does anyone know what these lines were for? I will try to get pictures but the airforce doesn't like people sneaking around with cameras.

The base used to have a spur that diverged from an old B&M route that's now the Minute Man Rail Trail. I read a post on another board about tank cars of Jet-A being delivered.

If you look for it, it's possible to find the right of way outside the base's perimeter.

Not being of the authorized sort, I didn't follow the RoW all that far ... though it looked passible as far as I could see.

* JB *

Yeah it branches off of the minute man and is a path you can follow to the fence/border or the afb. I've never followed it past the fence and you really can't follow it into the base very far on google maps. In fact is really hard to find at all on google maps.

search 'hanscom spur' on Nerail. I posted a few pics of this spur on that site.

walk (or bike) the minuteman trail sometime too. I just walked some of it for the first time friday from the bedford terminus, I was caught about 500 feet from my car when that nasty wind and hail storm blew through, what a mad dash!

l008com wrote:Yeah it branches off of the minute man and is a path you can follow to the fence/border or the afb. I've never followed it past the fence and you really can't follow it into the base very far on google maps. In fact is really hard to find at all on google maps.

Took a quick look at the Boston area nav chart and it shows the rail line there as far west as Hanscom but not the spur to the airport. A lot of the charts keep the rail lines on them as the look of the trail is similar for navigation purposes. They don't always use a dashed line on the chart unless confirmed abandoned by a on-site survey so they can remain as if tracks there for years.

Hanscom is now a public use airport, open to anybody, so I've added it to places to go and/or flyover to follow the trail if visilble.

I was a New England Telephone Installer - Repairman in that area back in the 60s and 70s and had repair calls on Hansom AFB occasionally - also I had lunch there about once a week and I recall the spur in question, but there was no evidence of it ever having served the base. What I do remember was that it served a propane gas company just outside the base off of Hartwell Road.

I happened to be in the area yesterday and since I am a retiree, went on the base to explore a little. I drove the access road next to the main runway and around some of the older buildings still used by the Air Force and could not find any evidence that the railroad ever went that far.

My suspicion is that the spur may have been built to serve the base, but never extended that far.

To CGRLCDR. I was in charge of the phone system at Lincoln Lab from 1964-1968, when Roy Hodgson and Phil Pond were the in-house NET installer repairmen and Bill Hanley was the switchman. Are any of these names familiar? To keep to the topic, I too remember the Hanscom spur, but I never saw any traffic on it. However, I usually came to the Lab from Wood Street rather than Hartwell Avenue.

-John Mc

The name Bill Hanley is familiar. I think he was a friend of my father's - my dad was the Outside Plant Service Manager in Arlington for the North Division. It's good to hear from an old telephone guy - I was beginning to think I was the last one.

I now work at Lincoln Labs. The spur I was talking about is over behind the thrift store. There is a fence and just on the other side of the fence is tracks. Let me know when anyone is going and I can meet you and show you were they are.