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Boston's life-size model-train layout
By adamg on Mon, 07/20/2015 - 5:56pm
With so many rail lines converging and all these old-fashioned trestles, Readville's the best place in Boston to see all manner of commuter-rail and Amtrak trains. And with what could be the last rail yard in the city limits (Ed. note: Somebody correct me if I'm wrong), it's also the best place to see freight trains. This afternoon, these two locomotives pushed a series of freight cars into the Readville yard, just past Readville station on the Fairmount Line.
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Comments
That's great you explored that place.
I told you about it last year. It's the only gravity switching yard in the US where the entire yard plane tilts.
It looks like you were over by the old stone underpass at the top of the yard .
https://goo.gl/maps/NqtH3
That area at morning rush hour is like some grand complex theater piece with all the various lines and freight things happening at once.
The CSX stuff comes up from Mansfield and on rare occasions, they'll use a bit of the Amtrak line pending dispatch approval. Other consists will run the Franklin line out to Walpole.
Great train photo.
Thanks!
I was in Parking Lot C off Hyde Park Ave. (the one for the Fairmount Line). Hadn't planned to go up there, but when I was coming back from Meadow Road (wanted to photograph the clouds building up behind the Great Blue Hill), I looked up in Walcott Square and saw a bunch of cars on the bridge ...
The Keolis crew are pretty congenial with photo people there.
It's a very kinetic place at morning rush hour. Almost like some grand time mechanism with this elaborate mesh of events flowing reasonably well.
Allston
Is that Allston rail yard still active? I didn't even know there was one in readville, pretty cool
No
No. CSX sends one train through it each day on the way to the Grand Junction and over to Everett. That's it.
MBTA has designs on turning the area into a passenger train railyard, alongside the Pike relocation project. But I'm guessing that's not what Adam had in mind (else Southampton Street would count as well).
Long gone
Allston is dead as far as rail activity is concerned. The land is now owned by Harvard, with plans to realign (straighten) the Mass. Pike in a land swap deal, putting the highway where the vacant tracks are now, and letting Harvard develop the land where the road is now. You get the Worcester Line commuter trains, one Amtrak train a day each way, and the few freights that go to the Chelsea produce terminal. I think that's it.
A little bit more than that
A little bit more than that on the freight front. Houghton Chemical at Beacon Park still gets cars, and CSX runs through to Everett carrying reefers of produce, along with scrap metal and the occasional other random shipment.
As for other freight yards in the city, Adam, that is indeed the last! Technically Pan Am still has a "yard" in Somerville just across the city line near BET though, and there are still some freight customers and some freight-only trackage in Boston.
Didn't MassPort briefly toy
Didn't MassPort briefly toy with the idea of extending the running track as part of the Conley Terminal expansion? I just assumed it failed the cost/benefit and ops reviews and that's why Conley's getting the new haul road, but that could easily be just an assumption and not fact. Do you know more?
Beyond that...
...the only real freight yards around are pretty far out. CSXT in Framingham (carload freight) and Worcester (intermodal), and Pan Am's yards in Ayer (carload and intermodal) and Lawrence (basically a yard for the local freights that work the Merrimack Valley and the remaining customers on the northside commuter rail lines).
I'm not very familiar with that side of the area. I know that there's a surprising number (for a non-industrial city) of rail customers remaining in Chelsea/Everett (served by both Pan Am and CSXT), but it looks like there's not much left around Readville. Lots of industrial sites, but doesn't look like many with rail access until you get down below the 128 station.
A few years ago...
...I was in Wolcott Sq at the lights facing HP Ave when I saw a train with the old New Haven McGinnis livery.
The only thing that kept me grounded was the fact that it was a modern passenger diesel, like an F40 or something.
I looked it up later online and apparently Conn DOT did a bunch of them up that way. Really cool looking.
Readville is a great place if you like trains.
Oh, I like the link, back when the MBTA could kick up snow instead of dying in it...
(No subject)
Nice photos
Old Readville station at top and below is the former car shops where trains were repaired and maintained. I was there the night that burned down with a first responder crew. Long night.
1923 derailment at Readville
Photo - in front of the old Sturtevant plant.
More Readville photos, including other train problems, crashes at the Readville racetrack and ne'er-do-wells being brought to justice by way of Readville station.