Revere – Point of Pines – Saugus River Junction railway line
| Revere MA-Saugus River Junction MA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 7 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The railway Revere Point of Pines-Saugus River Junction is a railway line in Massachusetts ( United States ). The route is about seven kilometers long and tied the beach towns of Crescent Beach, Oak Island and Point of Pines to the main Boston – Portsmouth line . The line is closed and dismantled.
history
The East Boston – Portsmouth main line of the Eastern Railroad , completed in 1840, passed the beach settlements of the city of Revere to the west. Since many passengers drove to the beaches in this area in the summer and because they wanted to compete with the parallel Boston, Revere Beach and Lynn Railroad , the Eastern built a swiveling from Oak Island Grove via Point of Pines back to the main line over the the passenger trains ran in the summer season. Around 1884, she extended this pivoting to Revere in order to also connect Crescent Beach and to be able to build a breakpoint closer to the beach in Oak Island. The Oak Island Grove stop on the main line was about 400 meters from the beach, while the new stretch was next to the boardwalk, right next to the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn stretch. Apparently, this offer was not well received, because at the end of the 1891 season, the Boston and Maine Railroad , which had taken over the Eastern in 1884, stopped traffic on the route. She left the tracks in case one day the need should arise again. The last tracks were not dismantled until around 1926.
Route description
The line branched off the main line about half a mile (800 meters) north of Revere station and led in a tight right turn towards the beach, where the first stop was Crescent Beach. In another tight curve, the line then turned onto a route parallel to the narrow-gauge East Boston – Lynn railway line , the route of which is now used by the Boston subway to Wonderland . The route continues through Oak Island. The original line, operated from 1881 to about 1884, branched off the main line north of Oak Island Grove Station and led down to the boardwalk. The route of this link is still partially visible today. Shortly thereafter, the route reached Point of Pines, where from 1884 to 1885 a route branched off to Point Shirley . Here the route bends in a large S-curve back onto the main line towards Portsmouth. The only major engineering structure on the route was the bridge over Pines Bay , a fjord-like arm of the sea that had to be crossed here.
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 .