East Boston – Portsmouth railway line
The East Boston – Portsmouth railway is a railway line in Massachusetts and New Hampshire ( United States ). It is around 87 kilometers long and connects the cities of Boston , Lynn , Salem , Newburyport and Portsmouth , among others .
The standard-gauge line is operated today with the exception of the closed sections East Boston - Revere and Newburyport - Hampton by the Pan Am Railways in the freight traffic and between Revere and Newburyport by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in the passenger traffic.
history
The history of the railway begins as early as the 1830s. The Eastern Railroad , founded in 1836, planned a railway line from Boston to Portland (Maine) . In a contemporary manner, the company built its own terminus in Boston, initially without a track connection to other railways ending in Boston. The train station was in East Boston, across the Inner Harbor from downtown . On August 27, 1838, the first 21-kilometer section to Salem went into operation. Freight traffic on the route began in 1839. Ipswich was reached on December 18, 1839, Newburyport on August 28, 1840, and finally Portsmouth on November 9, 1840. From 1842, the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad to Portland joined them there.
The transport volume developed as expected, so that several branches were soon built. With the opening of the Grand Junction Railroad , the Boston connecting railway, which connected the various railway lines ending in Boston, the passenger trains of the Eastern were led to Boston North Station from April 1854. Passenger traffic between East Boston and Revere was not resumed until 1872 with suburban trains to meet the threatening congruence of the Boston, Revere Beach and Lynn Railroad . This section was closed in 1905, but reopened for freight traffic in 1918 between Revere and the connecting track to the Grand Junction Railroad on Curtis Street.
After a serious train accident on August 26, 1871 in Revere , in which 29 passengers were killed, the Eastern Railroad was forced to invest in the safety technology of the routes and the vehicles. This eventually led to financial problems, so that the Boston and Maine Railroad , the major competitor of the Eastern on the way to Maine, leased the train. The final merger took place in 1890, whereby the East Boston – Portsmouth line became the property of Boston & Maine. In 1912, the route was changed by Lynn. Until then, the trains drove at ground level over numerous level crossings through the city. The route was lowered and the traffic obstructions caused by the countless trains that ran on the route were removed. The same problem existed in downtown Salem. In 1954 the old train station with its distinctive station building from 1847 was demolished and the route was also lowered here. Since then she has been driving under the city center in a tunnel.
The traffic on the route remained brisk and even after the Great Depression and the Second World War , several express trains and numerous suburban trains ran over the route. In the early 1950s, however, the subsequent line north of Portsmouth was closed and the Boston – Portsmouth route was now reserved for suburban and local freight traffic. On January 4, 1965, passenger traffic between Newburyport and Portsmouth ended. At the same time, the bridge over the Merrimack River north of Newburyport and thus the Newburyport – Salisbury section was closed.
The Boston suburban trains ended in Ipswich from 1976. In 1994 the Ipswich – Newburyport section was officially closed, but was partially reactivated shortly afterwards. After a new terminus for passenger trains had been built on the southern outskirts of Newburyport, operations could finally be expanded again in 1998. Since 1976, the Revere – Newburyport route has been owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority , which has subsidized passenger traffic on the route since 1965.
On the section north of the Merrimack, freight traffic between Salisbury and Seabrook ended in 1982, and between Seabrook and Hampton around 2000. Freight traffic between Revere and East Boston also ended around 2000 and the line was closed. The last time the CSX Transportation used the section, as the direct connection to the CSXT network had been closed since 1972.
Route description
The original terminus of the line in East Boston was at the southern end of Bremen Street. This road runs on the railway line that operated until 1905. At the Cary Cut, the Grand Junction Railroad crossed , to which there was a connecting track. From 1918 to around 2000, trains ran from here, but the trains used the Grand Junction Railroad to East Boston at this time. Along the east bank of the Chelsea River , the disused line in Revere meets the MBTA line from Boston North Station . The route continues through the suburbs of Lynn and Swampscott and then passes through a large piece of forest to Salem.
The former Salem station, which was used by suburban trains until the 1990s, is now out of service. The rail line runs through a 657-meter-long tunnel under Washington Street north of the station. At the northern exit of the tunnel there used to be a spacious triangular track, in whose eastern track curve the new Salem stop is now located. The branch line to North Andover, which leads from here to the west, was therefore extended to the north parallel to the main line and only joins the main line about 100 meters north of the former triangle of tracks.
North of the Salem stop, the railway crosses the Danvers River and then leads via Beverly, where the branch line to Rockland branches off, to North Beverly. The double-track section of the line ends north of this stop. At the next stop, Hamilton-Wenham, two lines used to branch off on either side of the main line.
Via Ipswich, where the passenger train terminus was until 1998, and Rowley the line finally reaches Newburyport, where a double-track terminus with a central platform was built. The tracks end bluntly at the northern end of the platform. The last kilometer of the route before Newburyport is double-tracked.
The disused route continues through the town of Newburyport to the bridge over the Merrimack River . At 350 meters, the longest bridge on the route still stands today, with the exception of the middle bridge segment. The route continues northwards via Salisbury and Seabrook to Hampton, from where the route to Portsmouth train station (approx. 17 km) can be used again. The Hampton – Portsmouth piece is now only operated as a branch line from Portsmouth. To get to the rest of the Pan Am Railways network, trains have to use the former Portsmouth and Concord Railroad . Previously, the main line from Portsmouth ran further north towards Portland.
passenger traffic
According to the timetable of September 28, 1913, 54 trains ran Monday to Friday, 57 trains on Saturdays and 28 trains on the main route to Lynn on Sundays. Most of these trains continued to Swampscott, Salem, Beverly, Hamilton & Wenham or Newburyport. There were 15 trains to Portsmouth on weekdays and six on Sundays. Four weekday and three Sunday trains were express trains and ran to Portland. The travel time from Boston to Portsmouth was around 98-105 minutes on an express train and up to 150 minutes on a suburban train.
According to the timetable of January 8, 1934, there were 41 trains Monday to Friday, 42 trains on Saturdays and 21 trains on Sundays, of which nine (Mon-Fri), or eight (Sat) and five (Sun) ran to Portsmouth. These included the express train The Gull to Halifax and the Pine Tree Limited to Bangor. The scheduled travel time for express trains was between 75 and 80 minutes, that for suburban trains between 90 and 120 minutes.
The September 28, 1952 timetable still offered 30 trains Monday to Friday, 22 trains on Saturdays and ten trains on Sundays, of which eight, seven and three ran to Portsmouth, respectively. The subsequent line north of Portsmouth was already closed at this point. The travel time of 90 to 120 minutes was the same as in 1934.
In 2008, 13 trains ran Monday through Friday to Newburyport, another to Hamilton & Wenham and five more to Beverly. On weekends, six trains run to Newburyport and seven more to Beverly (and on to Rockport). Travel time to Newburyport is 59 to 66 minutes.
Sources and further reading
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
- ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued November 1913. Boston & Maine RR. Table 40/41. Page 194.
- ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued February 1934. Boston & Maine RR, Table 50/51. Page 82.
- ↑ Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. Issued April 1953. Boston & Maine RR, Table 11/12. Page 127.
- ↑ Official timetable of the MBTA
- literature
- Edward Appleton (Massachusetts Railway Commissioner) History of the Railways of Massachusetts ( transcribed as HTML ). Bulletin No. 1 - The Railroad Enthusiasts, Inc., 1871.
- George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads 2nd Ed. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, WI 2000, ISBN 0-89024-356-5
- Ronald D. Karr: The Rail Lines of Southern New England. A Handbook of Railroad History. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 1995. ISBN 0-942147-02-2
- Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. (2nd edition) SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010. ISBN 1-874745-12-9
- Web links
- Operating companies: Pan Am Railways , MBTA (English)
- Boston & Maine Railroad Historical Society (English)
- List of stations (with miles) and staff from 1923 (English)