Yard 21 - Somerville

Mystic Wharf's also not got a lot of space between grade crossings for stuffing anything longish, and is a vulnerable place for security with open access just about everywhere and difficult monitoring because of the blind spots created by the I-93 decks. Yard 21 by contrast is in end-to-end constant view of Transit Police on the Orange Line and the maint crews milling around the rail/tie piles along the north leg of the freight wye. It's also blocked by a retaining wall + fence from allowing any too-easy trespasser access from the neighborhood side streets.


Massport's got all kinds of long-range plans in the hopper for the Mystic Wharf Branch, but they're all freight. That'll never be, even in reactivated state, any sort of useful or non-awkward place to store MOW equipment.

Looks like the Yard 21 lead is closed.

On the way home, northbound on the Orange Line, I noticed the old flats with old rail panels and so on were gone on the Yard 21 lead. Now three empty flats are there, a little further south than the old set and then a new barricade have been erected on both tracks.

Did anything happen to case the closing or have things just deteriorated to the point of no return?

JoeD

Wide gauge defects were found by the FRA today, possibly found as a result of an investigation of a prior incident not involving the wide gauge. With all the Boston traffic and lack of MOW space, I'm sure it'll be fixed ASAP.

I'd be worried when shoving/pulling 1789 marked tank cars down there.

What ever they do for fixing they first have to start with some serious weed killing. Someone is going to need an ocean of calamine lotion.

JoeD

BostonUrbEx wrote:Wide gauge defects were found by the FRA today, possibly found as a result of an investigation of a prior incident not involving the wide gauge. With all the Boston traffic and lack of MOW space, I'm sure it'll be fixed ASAP.

Would this incident have been last week? I meant to post but never got around to it - one morning last week, I think Friday, there were at least a dozen people in a mix of Pan Am and MBTA vests standing around a covered hopper at the beginning of the "yard".

I noticed the leads to the old Yard 21 in Somerville have been cleared of all trees and invasive vines. I am sure someone on that crew will need an ocean of calamine lotion!

There are several places where the retaining wall would need some repair and or replacement. Any guess if they will be replacing the tracks so they can gain some car storage or switching room?

Yes, this is work to make these two tracks more usable again. Will be desperately needed once
PAR loses Yard 8/Willey Track.

Hopefully this will put the bike people on notice its still an active railroad. There is a group that wants to
connect the bike/walkway path from the Mystic River to the Community Path being built concurrent with GLX.
It never ends...

D

Eh, it's perfectly reasonable to keep one track and convert the other. If the Northern Strand Trail is extended across the Mystic River as planned, the Mystic to Charles Connector will be a crucial link in what could be a *huge* connected network of multi-use paths.

Unless the railroad intends to utilize both tracks in light of the removal of (what's left of) yard 8.

PSA: they can now give you a shot of some steroid or other to clear up poison ivy. I got PI last spring and was itching away until someone at work asked me what they had given me for it. Given me for it, I asked? So I went down to our company health clinic and got a short and boom, a lot better in a few hours.

Not exactly a railroad topic, but also not irrelevant to railfans. (The best crop of poison ivy I ever saw was on the abandoned Dedham branch about 1991, before the trail was built, when my girlfriend and I were following the old rails and turned back because of massive PI blocking the whole cut, hanging off the granite retaining wall, etc.)

ceo wrote:Eh, it's perfectly reasonable to keep one track and convert the other. If the Northern Strand Trail is extended across the Mystic River as planned, the Mystic to Charles Connector will be a crucial link in what could be a *huge* connected network of multi-use paths.

No, it's more reasonable for the path to go somewhere else and the tracks used for what they were intended for.

Not to mention that two tracks are needed not only for capacity/storage requirements, but to runaround cars/trains.

D

Is there a map of some kind that identifies where these various yards are?

Were there really that many yards on the former B&M in the Boston area, or did they just like to use random numbers?

Jon

There were really that many.

Not labeled unfortunately, but these 1893, 1899, and 1902 maps show the turn-of-the-century changes.