Grade crossing towers in New England

[Cosmo]

I seem to remember one in downtown Framingham just in front of the RR station where Rt. 126 crosses.
I think it survived into the 1970's.

Steve

I remember the gates being hand cranked and an operators shanty on the ground back in the late 70's/ early 80's.

[stvigi]

Actually, it survived from what I read until 1986.

Here are two links I found on the web

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30860410@N ... hotostream" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wikipedia listed the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham ... ad_Station" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Concord Street crossing was one of the last in the state with a crossing guard; he was replaced by an automated system in 1986.

Steve

[R Harrington]

I remember the tower in Wallingford, It was directly across from the station and controlled the gates for Quinnipiac street and Hall avenue. My dad used to deliver the newspaper to it when he was a kid, He had to climb a vertical ladder to get up there.
Bob

[TomNelligan]

I seem to remember one in downtown Framingham just in front of the RR station where Rt. 126 crosses.
I think it survived into the 1970's.

That was just a small gateman's shanty, not the larger two-story crossing towers that were the original subject of this thread. There were a lot of shanties, including the one that's still manned in use in West Medford on the B&M/MBTA. Isn't there still a manned crossing in Chelsea too?

[Komarovsky]

Actually, it survived from what I read until 1986.

Here are two links I found on the web

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30860410@N ... hotostream" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wikipedia listed the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham ... ad_Station" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Concord Street crossing was one of the last in the state with a crossing guard; he was replaced by an automated system in 1986.

Steve

There's a building that looks remarkably like the one in the first link in a used car lot on Howard st just west of the Bishop st crossing. Looks to be in the wrong location to be crossing related, but the resemblance is a bit striking.

[Cosmo]

I am also pretty sure that there was one at Willimantic, Connecticut at one time but not at Bridge Street but rather at a location east of the station on the Putnam Route.
Noel Weaver

I found a photo that confirms this, but unfortunately it's in a calendar put out by CERM in Willimantic, so unless I successfully attempt to resurrect my scanner/printer I can't post it.

[edbear]

Concord, Mass. station. The gable overlooking the platform and tracks was fitted out as a cabin for a crossing watchman when the Sudbury Road and Belknap Street crossings got automatic gates in the early 1950s. The watchman could manually control the gates while trains worked the Concord station. When railoads were going from manual gates to automatics in the early 1950s there were all kinds of fears, mostly imagined, of what could happen at crossings with automatic gates and no attendant. One was that a vehicle could be caught between the gates with a train approaching or that pedestrians or drivers would become impatient after seeing a train pass and gates staying down and not looking or couldn't see a train approaching from the other direction on the other track. The Concord watchman was on duty during the weekday hours of heaviest pedestrian traffic and auto traffic. This too got a write up in B & M Employee Magazine. This operation lasted for a few years.

[jaymac]

There was a 2-story black corrugated-metal-sheathed structure on the SW corner of the Grand Junction crossing of Mass. Ave. in Cambridge by MIT, and back in he late 60s on a Sunday, I did see someone exit and lower the gates for a movement.
Also, wasn't there a crossing tender's cabin that was part of the Erector-Set-like structure that long ago used to be over the tracks at Ayer?

On the subject of the Concord Street, Framingham, crossing, I can post with some knowledge, both of Arthur "Mac" McKenney and the shanty since I took the Middlesex News photo linked by stivigi (Thanks!). Arthur started off as a freight handler in the freight house which was where the present Track 2 T platform is. When that job was abolished, he bid on the crossing tender's job, and when that job was abolished, he was assigned to go on foot patrol and pick up scrap. Instead, he picked up a pen and put in his papers. He was one of those who took working for the Central, even the Penn Central, and Conrail as a solemn duty. The shanty was barely big enough for him, the phones, and the approachbell equipment, but it would also occasionally get turned into a block station with a resident operator. The last time I recall was when welded rail was being installed east of CP-22 and the dayside operator was an ex-LV trainmaster trying to hang on for his RRA. I wasn't there when the shanty was removed, but I don't think it would have survived being transplanted.

[BandA]

Waltham had a small wooden shed on the NW corner of the Moody St crossing. The crossing guard was female, which surprised me as all the conductors were male. This was 1987 or 1988 as she told me Amtrak had taken over CR operations but not dispatch and the pissed off B&M was dispatching freight trains ahead of passenger. Which explained the 1/2 hour + delays. She said the City of Waltham required the crossing guard. She controlled the Moody St gates, and I assume Elm St. [OT] cars were (depowered) RDCs and apparently Pullmans, with comfy 2+2 green flip seats and tired engines that occasionally had to be restarted when pulling out of the station. A conductor told me they segregated the equipment on the northside that Conrail banned from the southside.

[TomNelligan]

That was another crossing shanty, not a crossing tower. As one who worked in downtown Waltham I drove by it twice a day for years. One reason Moody Street lasted so long as a manual crossing was because of both inbound and outbound trains stopping at the location of the current inbound platform just east of the crossing. Gates could be raised once an inbound had cleared the crossing and stopped with the rear end just east of Moody Street, but had to stay down when the train was an outbound that was about to restart and cross. I believe that the tower operator rather than the gateperson controlled Elm Street but since I believe we have a former Waltham op on this board he can correct me.

[GP40MC1118]

Elm Street in Waltham activated under normal conditions and not directly
controlled by the tower. We did have a small box with cutouts for both
Elm and Moody Street crossings. Rarely used them...

D

[Jeeperez]

Re: Grade crossing towers in New England
Postby GP40MC1118 » Sun Feb 02, 2014 9:30 am

Tremont St (RT 140) in Taunton (south end of the yard at Danforth St) on the NH.
Wood tower...

D


Can you confirm this? I drove by here on my way home yesterday and did not see a tower.

[GP40MC1118]

Yes, it was torn down long ago, probably around the great CR plant rationalization
sweep that occurred every Spring. I have B&W prints of it, but no ability to scan it for
the forum

D