Castle Hill – Marblehead Railway
| Castle Hill MA-Marblehead MA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 4.49 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Castle Hill – Marblehead railway was a railway line in Massachusetts ( United States ). The route is 4.49 kilometers long and tied the city of Marblehead to the main Boston – Portsmouth line . The line is closed and dismantled.
history
When the railway line from East Boston to Portsmouth was built in 1838, a branch line to Marblehead was built at the same time to open up the beach community. It opened just a year after the main line, on December 10, 1839. Since no transfer track was installed at the Castle Hill stop, all trains to and from Salem passed through. There were no continuous trains to Boston because the line branched off at an acute angle and no track triangle could be installed. It was not until 1873 that a second route to Marblehead was opened from the south, which significantly reduced traffic to Castle Hill. The route later got more competition from a tram line that ran from Salem to Marblehead, which again led to a decrease in train numbers. The Great Depression and many people switching to their own automobiles led to the suspension of passenger traffic on the route to Marblehead in 1959.
In freight transport, customers were served at both intermediate stations, Loring Avenue and Forest River. Since there were no more freight customers in Marblehead from 1962, the route between Forest River and Marblehead was closed. Around 1968, freight traffic between Loring Avenue and Forest River also ended, and finally in 1993 on the rest of the route. The route was dismantled and is now mostly used by the Marblehead Rail Trail , a bike and hiking trail.
Route description
The line branches off the main Boston – Salem line at the Castle Hill stop and freight yard and initially heads south-east. Bay State Street Railway tram lines crossed the route on Loring Avenue and immediately at Forest River Station on Lafayette Street. Shortly before the terminus at Marblehead, the line from Boston joins a triangle of tracks. The only significant engineering structure on the route is the short bridge over the Forest River, which was demolished after the closure and replaced by a smaller new structure and is now used for the Marblehead Rail Trail.
Sources and further information
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
- literature
- Ronald D. Karr: The Rail Lines of Southern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 1995. ISBN 0-942147-02-2 .
- Web links
- Station directory with route miles (English)