Street running in Lowell

I have seen some old maps showing tracks and siding for buisinesses on Tanner street in Lowell. On certain parts of the street you can still see rail. Does anyone have any old pictures or does anybody have any info? Also there was a small section on Prince ave in Lowell for the old prince factory.

Prince is long gone. Head over to Lawrence for street running. I apologize but I can't re-call the name of the street and I'm not sure how often they service this customer.

I seem to remember as a kid in the 1970s that the B&M was still street running in Lawrence, serving some of the mills off Merrimack Street.

This is the way it used to be (circa 1850)

Some of the trolley lines today were old B&M tracks. And the Boston & Lowell terminal still stands in the middle of lowell. Old pictures of Lowell in some history books I've seen have pictures of trains running through the streets in Lowell.

CSX Conductor wrote:Prince is long gone. Head over to Lawrence for street running. I apologize but I can't re-call the name of the street and I'm not sure how often they service this customer.

On the Lowell Hill I.T. west of Beacon St., tracks run against the side of the street, IIRC; they don't actually run in the middle of it. Same thing during B&M days along the canal along Canal St. That would be the canal 2 blocks south of Essex St.

atsf sp wrote:Some of the trolley lines today were old B&M tracks.

True, most of the current NPS trolley operation uses former B&M freight spurs that were part of the downtown network. The "main line" to Boardinghouse Park survived for years as the B&M freight connection to the Lowell Sun and was active as a freight spur into the mid-1980s. The line that runs past the Tsongas Arena originally branched off just beyond Cobblestone's restaurant on now-gone B&M track when the trolley started up in the 1980s. The current wye junction and the track north of that were built by the NPS several years later and the original route was pulled up. There originally was track all the way to the current site of LeLacheur Park, but it was severed when the arena was built and the whole area was completely regraded.

The B&M Historical Society's display in the combine has an early 20th century map that shows the Lowell industrial trackage at its peak. It's quite amazing how much there once was. The combine will be open to visitors next weekend during the Lowell Folk Festival.

Wardmaps.com has a ton of old lowell maps, the 3 in this link are decent http://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=120

there is a nice sitehttp://www.wardmaps.com in this site they have numerous maps all over the country. the maps are very detailed including rail rows and street trolley lines, as well as water pipes, building outlines, these maps are all different years from the 1800's to preasent. the cool things about these maps are all the railroad lines, places like lawrence, lowell, salem... had alot of trackage in the area. now you look at the maps and there are 80 percent less tracks. if you look at the maps there were rows were you would never even amagine.

when i was little i remember seeing b&m box cars on the trackage on dutton st. but i dont know were they were serving. it was early 80's does anybody have any pictures of the lowell area during that time frame.

How about this one!

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?20031 ... ODE=&POYE=

All the way up to '87 at least here...

wow great picture. that looks like the arcand drive tracks. those tracks are now torn up like they were never there. any idea were the frieght was coming from.

here is a nice picture of the area. does anybody know were the cn boxcars are coming from http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?photo ... y=yovinnie

Great photos. Amazing how quickly things change. An interesting aside to those photos, and others from that time, and up into the early '90s, is the lack of graffiti on the cars. I am convinced that were in not for the proliferation of Home Depot, Lowes and WalMart and easy access to spray paint in the last 15 years, tagging of cars would be non-existent.

lcrprez wrote:here is a nice picture of the area. does anybody know were the cn boxcars are coming from

The Canadian National boxcars very strongly suggest paper for the Lowell Sun, which was the last active customer on the line. A lot of newsprint came down from Canada on the CN.