Boston area MBTA and Amtrak action

[JCitron]

https://youtu.be/H_RGYuTUYi4

This is quite a show of both old and new equipment running in the Boston area out of North and South Station and down in Forest Hills.

 

[euromodeller]

That was an interesting video, it makes a change from the usual loco plus long freight trains that usually get shown, and that Boston Library, Wow!
Thanks for sharing John.

 

[Forester1]

Great video. We had a wonderful time in Boston a few years ago, staying at a place out in WInthrop and commuting in MBTA from Orient Heights. Figured out the different levels to get over to Cambridge and everywhere else we wanted to go. Lots better than trying to drive!

 

[JCitron]

Boston, believe it or not is a walkable city. You can walk from North Station all the way to Copley Square and beyond if you have the gumption to do so and the walk isn't that bad except for in the winter. I used to do that daily when I worked there back in the early to mid 1990s. The walk was actually faster sometimes than waiting for the subway. For me the walk was straight out of North Station then up Causeway Street to Congress and right up Congress all the way to where I worked on High Street. During my evening commute, if I was taking a later train, I would stop at the Fanuel Hall and Quincy Market marketplace and pick up a bite to eat. Quincy Market is similar to the area around Covent Gardens in London and looks much the same with the same kind of shops and food.

But anyway, that library and Trinity Church are beautiful. My dad used to bring me there when I was a kid. He worked right down the street in the Prudential tower back then. That alone was an experience because I would get a school vacation day with dad in the office. I think this was for mom to have a break. I used to spend a good part of my day with binoculars looking out the window from the 23rd floor. I could see as far out as the hills in Andover, up here in the Merrimack Valley, and all the way up north toward Gloucester. Looking south was difficult because I had to lean against the glass. Sometimes we would go up to the Skywalk and I could look out around the city. Seeing the old New Haven and Penn Central trains pulling in and out of South Station was a treat.

The library was designed by the famous design firm McKean, Meed, and White. The same firm that designed lots of buildings in Chicago and other cities. The Trinity Church was designed by Henry Richardson who did many other buildings in the area including many stations for the Boston and Albany (NYC), and Boston and Maine as well as the Trinity Church in Andover, MA. The church in Andover has the same dark and light sandstone design as does the church in Boston.

Forester,

Winthrop, named after John Winthrop, one of the Bay Colony founders is an interesting city. Its street layout was determined by the "Narrow Gauge" The 3-foot Boston and Revere Beach and Lynn. Pleasant Street was laid out as part of their branch line in and around Winthrop in the 1880s.

The Blue line, which currently runs as far as Suffolk Downs on the north, follows the former ROW of the Narrow Gauge and was opened in the early 1950s as far as Logan Airport. There's been talk off and on to extend the service back up to Lynn by swinging over to the nearby MBTA commuter line that runs parallel to the blue line. They could have used the old ROW, but some condos were built right on the ROW about 30 years go removing that option then and there.

 

[JCitron]

That was an interesting video, it makes a change from the usual loco plus long freight trains that usually get shown, and that Boston Library, Wow!
Thanks for sharing John.

Indeed. We don't have the long freights up my way anyway and seeing this many trains at once was a really amazing treat. I never knew the "T" ran that many during the day because I live way out on the end of the Haverhill line and far from the tracks. The northside gets all the old equipment because we're on the forgotten routes. The southside is all about serving the rich commuters on the Southshore. Not kidding! There's been a lot of push back on that by the commuters.

 

[Forester1]

Thanks for the info John. We had a great time. We walked the historical walk backwards (?) as far as Fanuel Hall one day, and then backtracked to the church where we actually got into a box for a service! Another day we met my wife's cousin and his wife at a pub in Cambridge for dinner. We also went on one of the Harbor tours. Great fun!

 

[JCitron]

Thanks for the info John. We had a great time. We walked the historical walk backwards (?) as far as Fanuel Hall one day, and then backtracked to the church where we actually got into a box for a service! Another day we met my wife's cousin and his wife at a pub in Cambridge for dinner. We also went on one of the Harbor tours. Great fun!

That sounds like a lot of fun. When I worked in Boston, the company had an outing on the harbor. It was in the evening and the city was lit up like a model railroad.

There are some nice places in Cambridge. The city has changed substantially over the years.

Outside of Harvard Square, the rest of the city was working class and poor with many factories nearest the Charles River where MIT is located today. My mom grew up in the area and we used to visit my grandparents when they lived there. When I was a kid, you could smell the chocolate from NECCO and Fanny Farmer before they moved outside the city. Where the factories were is now expensive loft apartments and condos. Polaroid is gone and so is the great array of railroad tracks that filled in the alleys in between.

I miss going into Boston, but as you said it's a lot easier to take the "T". Driving is the pits there and the parking is crazy-expensive. A couple of years ago I attended some concerts with my neighbor who insisted on driving all the way in. The tickets were free, but the parking cost $50 for the evening. Yikes!

 

[JCitron]

Here's a shot of the Church of Christ in Andover and is located at the corner of Central Street and School Street, or about 1.5 miles from where I used to live.

https://goo.gl/maps/szQKg4PnDquhr3eLA

Notice the similarities between this and the Trinity Church in Boston. This church is as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.

 

[Forester1]

Very nice. I like visiting the older churches in New England. In Chatham we were able to look around the Congregational church there. They were having a pumpkin and Halloween sale outside at the time, which tells you we were back there for the leaf-peeping! I thought maybe the church down the road in your shot might be Congregational, but I see it is United Church of Christ. Hopefully we will find more to visit on a future trip. we had so much fun in New England we can't wait to get back!

 

[JCitron]

Very nice. I like visiting the older churches in New England. In Chatham we were able to look around the Congregational church there. They were having a pumpkin and Halloween sale outside at the time, which tells you we were back there for the leaf-peeping! I thought maybe the church down the road in your shot might be Congregational, but I see it is United Church of Christ. Hopefully we will find more to visit on a future trip. we had so much fun in New England we can't wait to get back!

The United Church of Christ used to be a Congregational Church when I lived there over 20 years ago. There are plenty around and many have open houses, community events and other fund-raising events as you found out. West Andover, the westside of Andover, has the West Parish Church. This is a unique building built from stone blocks and dates back to 1826.

https://goo.gl/maps/RmiwmwZot4CLfZgcA

If you ever want to peep at leaves, come up and visit me in the fall. We have plenty of leaves that we rake up and put in our compost in the back. Where I live there are oak, choke cherry, maple, both the sugar and swamp varieties, birch, walnut, and shag bark hickory. This is all in my yard and woods and produce a variety of colors with the swamp maples turning bright red and orange.

 

[Forester1]

Beautiful church! We found a great B&B in New Hampshire, but they warned us that Boston would be emptying to get up to Conway that weekend and the traffic would be horrible. So we did some back road wandering and actually had a real good time and saw some great scenery!

 

[JCitron]

Beautiful church! We found a great B&B in New Hampshire, but they warned us that Boston would be emptying to get up to Conway that weekend and the traffic would be horrible. So we did some back road wandering and actually had a real good time and saw some great scenery!

Yup it gets pretty bad on the roads heading north. I'm right on the New Hampshire border and it used to take me 3+ hours to get home on Fridays during the summer and fall due to the tourists coming in for the beaches, mountains, and leaves. The main N-S highway I-93 would be stopped solid from the NH border all the way down to I-95. With the backups like that, along with the awful accidents, and always the road construction, I learned the backroads very quickly.

As you found out, there's plenty to see outside of the New Hampshire White Mountains. If you were to head west from Boston to Worcester County, you'll have the foothills of the Monadnock Mountain Range cutting down into Central Mass. That region, with Mt. Wachusett, and other areas is really beautiful year-round. If you head west along Route 2 not I-90, you'll see the Deerfield Valley, the Hoosac Mountains, and the Berkshires. Route 2 follows right along the Cold River and the Deerfield River as it climbs up into the Berkshire range. East Deerfield itself has a huge rail yard that you can view from a famous bridge. Along the way there are various towns and places to see such as the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls. This bridge once belonged to a trolley line but was turned into a garden path early on when the line was closed. As you approach North Adams, you'll traverse the famous Hairpin turn as the road winds its way down the side of a mountain (I can't remember the name) into North Adams proper. Then there's the Housatonic Valley with Pittsfield, Lenox, and West Stockbridge.