YamaOfParadise wrote:It helps that a good deal of the line south of Stoughton is still actually extant: you wouldn't completely be starting from scratch like with the Greenbush Branch in that respect. Rebuilding that track though is definitely one of the biggest parts of the project, though... asides from the whole electrification thing, it's easily one of the least modest parts of the project as far as major construction work. But, at least running to Taunton first would allow some breathing room to works kinks out on that portion first before extending all the way out to NB and FR. Getting commuter rail service out to the South Shore is definitely is something that should be pursued... but in due time.
Now, a question: was the line south of Stoughton to the current end of track in South Easton ever formally abandoned? Or is it more akin to the long out-of-service Central Mass. Branch up on the B&M half of the CR system, and the line between Fall River and the former Sakonnet River Bridge?
And to try and piece the information about that portion of the line together (from the discussion of it about a page back), the ETT I have dated 10-31-1965 still has it as "Stoughton and Whittenton Junction"; so the line through the swamp was abandoned by then, but it still was at least a through route via the Whittenton Branch in 1965. By the ETT in 05-12-1968, it was just "Stoughton and Easton", just 6.01 miles, less than half of what it was beforehand (12.35 to Raynham, 15.80 total from Stoughton to Whittenton Junction).
I'm having trouble finding it, but a few pages back the abandonment dates were traced out. Dean St. to Whittendon Jct. went first and re-routed thru traffic over the Whittendon Branch. Whittendon to Easton Depot (Route 106) went second. Then some freight in Stoughton and North Easton lingered last into the Penn Central and *maybe* very very early Conrail era before it dried up. Most of the remaining intact trackage was OOS at the time of the state's purchase of it in 1973, but it was "non-abandoned" at least as far as Easton Depot/Route 106 (where tracks are mostly intact to this day).
It was only because the formal abandonment paperwork on so many NYNH&H branchlines was backed up several years and a mile high at the ICC by the merger into Penn Central and immediate bankruptcy that these were still available for purchase in "non-abandoned" status despite traffic ceasing years, if not a decade, earlier. The paperwork backlog and urgency for the bankruptcy courts and ICC to settle it all up got the states granted a sort of proto- landbanking status on all the lines they bought out of the bankruptcy into public ownership. All of the 1973-purchase southside lines they plucked from Penn Central and 1976-purchase northside lines they purchased when B&M bankruptcy-restructured are considered fully chartered transportation corridors, despite the fact that those sales preceded the federal landbanking law by 10+ years. That was one of the primary motivators for MA, RI, CT, NY, etc. to splurge on so many rail lines even if majority of them (still) have no reactivation potential: they could scrape up a bunch of RR charters that would appreciate in value instead of just linear strips of land, and the feds bent the normal rules on that for expediency's sake.
Therefore, it's only in the places that were abandoned-abandoned before all ICC abandonment transactions got impounded by the bankruptcies that are considered "all-new" corridors because of the lapsed RR charters. For Stoughton that means state only has control of the Whittendon Branch as a transportation corridor; the mainline gap down to Dean St. lapsed into private ownership and still has to be settled up (no biggie...it's nothing but barren unused sand pit). And that was all the trouble they had on Greenbush because east of the Cohasset military spur (which was freight-active until '84) out to Greenbush was an earlier NYNH&H abandonment with fully lapsed charter...and thus considered new-new construction subject to all kinds of NIMBY Operation Chaos. They've got a much easier time of it in Raynham-Taunton because the ownership gap is small, unpopulated, and not where the wetlands are. If it weren't for the Army Corps playing politics with the stinking wires and swamp the mainline restoration would be more straightforward than the branchlines, where the SCR Task Force is running up the costs lining its pol pals' pockets. At least Taunton-north is entirely within the MBTA district and doesn't have to layer the extra Task Force bureaucracy on it like the branchlines.