West Cambridge – Middlesex Junction railway line
The railway line West Cambridge - Middlesex Junction (also Lexington Branch ) is a railway line in Middlesex County in Massachusetts ( United States ). The route is 28.39 kilometers long and connects the cities of Cambridge , Arlington , Lexington , Bedford and Concord . The standard gauge line is closed.
history
On March 24, 1845, the Lexington and West Cambridge Railroad Company received a concession to build a railway line from the main line of the Fitchburg Railroad near West Cambridge to Lexington. The company was set up on July 7th of that year and construction work started immediately. She opened the railway line on September 1, 1846. The operation initially led the Fitchburg Railroad, which led the passenger trains to Boston. On September 1, 1857, the railway company itself took over management of the line. The company was renamed Lexington and Arlington Railroad Company on May 7, 1867 and bought up on January 6, 1870 by the Boston and Lowell Railroad . The new owner no longer wanted to use the Fitchburg line, but instead built a connection to their own main line with the Somerville Junction – Lake Street railway. The section from West Cambridge on the Fitchburg Main Line to Lake Street has been closed.
Now the Boston & Lowell wanted to compete with Fitchburg on the way west and on April 10, 1871, the Middlesex Central Railroad Company , which was owned by the Boston & Lowell, received the concession for the extension of the line to Concord. The Fitchburg main line also ran through the town of Concord. The extension to Concord went into operation on August 1, 1873. In 1879, a connection was also made to the Framingham – Lowell railway line, which ran west of Concord, and the line was extended to Middlesex Junction. In 1885 the railway company offered short-term continuous trains from Boston to Nashua on the line that drove via Middlesex Junction and North Acton on the Nashua – North Acton railway line . This connection was not profitable and after a few months the passenger trains only drove to Middlesex Junction, where they had to change in the direction of Nashua.
In 1887, the Boston and Maine Railroad took over operations on the line after leasing the Boston & Lowell. Around the same year, the goods traffic running through Middlesex Junction was also discontinued, so that the track connection became superfluous. It was closed in 1900, after the Boston & Maine also took over the Fitchburg Railroad, together with the adjoining track section. The route now ended at Concord prison at Reformatory Station , where a few passenger trains also ran. After the First World War, the number of passengers transported to Concord fell sharply, as the city could be reached more quickly from Boston via the Fitchburg main line and there was also an overland tram running parallel to the railway line. In 1926, therefore, passenger traffic between Bedford and Reformatory Station ended, and the following year the line between Concord and Reformatory Station was closed and dismantled. Also in 1927, Boston & Maine rebuilt the connection to the Fitchburg main line in West Cambridge, which was closed in 1870, and ran all passenger trains over this route.
The extremely sparse freight traffic between Bedford and Concord ended in 1962 and this section was also closed. With financial support from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority , Boston & Maine continued to operate passenger services to Bedford. However, it had to be discontinued after a blizzard in January 1977 and was not restarted afterwards. In 1983 Guilford Transportation took over Boston & Maine and with it the route to Bedford, which, however, had not been used since January 1981. The route was closed in 1991 and subsequently converted into a cycle path.
Route description
The line branches off the Boston – Fitchburg line at the former West Cambridge station and initially heads north, past the building of the Alewife subway station, where the Red Line of the Boston subway ends. This is where the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway begins , a cycle path that was laid out on the disused railway line to Bedford. North of the bridge over Alewife Brook, the connecting line, built in 1870, joins the Boston & Lowell main line. It had already been shut down in 1980 because of the construction of the subway. The route leads to Lexington through urban development and so there were stops in close succession along the route, which was double-tracked at least until the 1950s to Lexington. Many Boston commuter trains ended up in Arlington or Lexington. At Arlington Station, which was in the middle of the city center near the central intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Mystic Street, several tram lines crossed the railroad tracks at the same level. The railway line turns northwest here and runs parallel to Massachusetts Avenue through Lexington. Lexington's station building in Depot Square still stands today and is in commercial use.
The route now continues first through the suburban development of North Lexington and then through a wooded area and an industrial area, where a siding to Hanscom Air Force Base branched off, to Bedford. The station, which was designed as a typical wedge station with the station building between the two lines, was on Loomis Street. The station building still stands here. The building of the original station on S Road, some 50 meters to the west, which operated from 1873 to 1885, has also been preserved. A Budd Rail Diesel Car (car number 6211) is set up on the track side of this building . With this type of vehicle, Boston & Maine have mainly handled suburban traffic since the 1950s. The route to Concord now turns west and runs parallel to the Concord River , the two source rivers of which are crossed in Concord. The route is used from Bedford to the former Concord station through the Reformatory Branch Trail , a cycle and footpath. Concord train station was on Keyes Road. The former reception building now houses the administrative facilities of the city of Concord. The now unused railway line runs west to the prison. The connection from Reformatory Station , the small terminus on Assabet Avenue, to the Framingham – Lowell railway line west of the prison, which was closed in 1900 , was built over when the prison complex was expanded.
passenger traffic
In 1881, eleven trains ran on the route on weekdays, three of which ended in Lexington, five in Concord and three at Reformatory Station. On Wednesdays one of the Lexington trains also continued to Reformatory Station. The offer was expanded significantly in the following years and in 1893 26 trains ran on working days. Four of these trains ran only as far as Arlington, ten ended in Lexington, four in Bedford, and the remainder ran as far as Reformatory Station. On Sundays there were two trains to Lexington, three to Bedford and two to Reformatory Station. Due to the increasing individual traffic and competition from the tram, the train service was shortened sharply after the First World War. In 1926, after the cessation of passenger traffic west of Bedford, only five pairs of trains drove on the weekday rush hour from Boston to Bedford on the route, one of which continued to Lowell. After the Second World War, more trains were canceled and from 1958 a single pair of trains was still running. In early business traffic, a diesel railcar drove from Bedford to Boston and back again in the afternoon. This train ran for the last time in January 1977.
literature
- 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
- B&M Corporate History, 1914, pages 91–94 ( Memento from June 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 6.9 MB), pages 104–105 ( Memento from June 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 6, 9 MB) (English)
- List of stations (with miles) and staff from 1923 (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ see timetables of the route from the years mentioned.