by RailVet
Westover railroad to be torn up
Friday, June 09, 2006
By ETTA WALSH
[email protected]
CHICOPEE - One of the last remaining vestiges of the Cold War era at Westover Air Reserve Base will soon be removed.
The custom-sized railroad that hauled bombs from an ammunition bunker to the tarmac for loading aboard B-52 strategic heavy bombers is no longer needed and will be torn up.
The meandering railway runs a couple of miles through the sprawling base, according to Jean Fitzgerald, Conservation Commission chairwoman.
She said the tracks pass through a buffer area near wetlands, but their removal is not expected to disturb the delicate ecology, she said.
"We didn't really have any issues" with the railway's removal, she said yesterday.
Jack Moriarty, Westover's environmental engineer, took plans for removing the tracks to the city's Conservation Commission on Wednesday.
The tracks are considered an obstruction to the main base runway, he said. When they will be removed is uncertain, he said.
"It's a long-range project," said Moriarty.
Fitzgerald said the work will probably be carried out during drier weather, when it has a minimal impact on the buffer zone.
Moriarty presented such a detailed removal plan to the conservation panel that members voted immediately that they had no objections, he reported.
"All of our concerns were addressed," said Fitzgerald.
Westover was opened in 1940 as a training base, and then became a portal for Eighth Air Force personnel and planes leaving and re-entering the country during World War II. Later, it served as a staging point for the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift and a headquarters of the Military Air Transport Service.
In 1955, it became a major Strategic Air Command installation, and its 300-foot-wide, two-mile-long main runway was constructed to accommodate the big B-52s.
Several highly secret projects were undertaken at the base during the Cold War, according to a history of the base written by Frank Faulkner.
One was the construction of a nuclear-bomb-proof alternate command post for SAC, which served as a key installation during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Faulkner wrote in "Westover: Man, Base and Mission."
The base guarded its secrets so well, he said, that there is no public record of security breaches, and no evidence that national security was ever compromised there.
Friday, June 09, 2006
By ETTA WALSH
[email protected]
CHICOPEE - One of the last remaining vestiges of the Cold War era at Westover Air Reserve Base will soon be removed.
The custom-sized railroad that hauled bombs from an ammunition bunker to the tarmac for loading aboard B-52 strategic heavy bombers is no longer needed and will be torn up.
The meandering railway runs a couple of miles through the sprawling base, according to Jean Fitzgerald, Conservation Commission chairwoman.
She said the tracks pass through a buffer area near wetlands, but their removal is not expected to disturb the delicate ecology, she said.
"We didn't really have any issues" with the railway's removal, she said yesterday.
Jack Moriarty, Westover's environmental engineer, took plans for removing the tracks to the city's Conservation Commission on Wednesday.
The tracks are considered an obstruction to the main base runway, he said. When they will be removed is uncertain, he said.
"It's a long-range project," said Moriarty.
Fitzgerald said the work will probably be carried out during drier weather, when it has a minimal impact on the buffer zone.
Moriarty presented such a detailed removal plan to the conservation panel that members voted immediately that they had no objections, he reported.
"All of our concerns were addressed," said Fitzgerald.
Westover was opened in 1940 as a training base, and then became a portal for Eighth Air Force personnel and planes leaving and re-entering the country during World War II. Later, it served as a staging point for the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift and a headquarters of the Military Air Transport Service.
In 1955, it became a major Strategic Air Command installation, and its 300-foot-wide, two-mile-long main runway was constructed to accommodate the big B-52s.
Several highly secret projects were undertaken at the base during the Cold War, according to a history of the base written by Frank Faulkner.
One was the construction of a nuclear-bomb-proof alternate command post for SAC, which served as a key installation during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Faulkner wrote in "Westover: Man, Base and Mission."
The base guarded its secrets so well, he said, that there is no public record of security breaches, and no evidence that national security was ever compromised there.
