Boylston Updated

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: 1. Bring a power washer in there and blast off all the peeling (likely lead) paint and grime off the walls and ceiling. Hell...they can do it overnight and not even have to close the station. It did wonders at Porter last year when they blasted all the grime off there.

Bad idea. Blasting lead paint off is just going to cause lead dust to go airborn which can cause a health hazard, especially with the thousands of people who use that station everyday. (Assuming of course it is lead paint, which given the age of the station seems likely.) Granted, the media has certainly overplayed the dangers of lead paint, but it is no where near good for you. If they can't afford to remove it properly (and it would be expensive), all you can safely do is paint over it.

The rest of it I'm down with though.

Robert Paniagua wrote:6. New speakers. Something audible from all points on the platform. The existing ones are NOT antiques...they just don't work right.

Yeah, and not just at Boylston, but at most stations, they also need new speakers, since the ones in place currently are barely audible, and nobody can really hear them, so that's one improvement.

I'm always amazed by the speakers in the stations. It almost seems as if they were made to have poor sound quality.

This isn't relevant to the thread, but I feel that all future equipment have exterior speakers like the 01800s and Type 8s. I really like to hear the train talking as I'm walking away from it.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote: 4. Replace the rusted-out 1960's-installation fences and put down new, simple benches. The fences are roped off with police tape, and that's really going to become a safety hazard. If one of those collapses there's nothing preventing passengers from stepping onto the outer platform and taking an up-close look at all the work equipment parked there.

And speaking of...

On Friday one of those fences on the outbound platform separating the inner and outer/work-equipment tracks HAD collapsed. The last thin rust flakes that had been holding it to one of the columns gave way, and the whole thing is now collapsed partially on its side attached only precariously to the next pole over...exposing a wide-open 3-4 foot gap anyone can walk through to access the outer platform and go exploring on the wire truck or even slip down for a stroll down the abandoned tunnel. And of course the police tape that had been blocking off the area for the last couple weeks was gone. No T personnel on the platform guarding it or anything, and given it's location about 2/3 of the way from the entrance there's no way really that the outbound platform collector or the inspector in the inbound booth can keep a constant watch on that area while doing their jobs. Not only that anyone who leans on it (like, say, a child) risks completely collapsing it or catching some jagged metal pieces. I was absolutely appalled at the safety violations in plain view with absolutely nobody tending to it as my inbound train passed the scene. I REALLY hope they've put up some temporary fencing over the weekend to block off the area, because that's got disaster written all over it.


(EDIT: Monday evening...fence still sitting there half-collapsed as before with wide-open passenger access to the outer track and absolutely nothing blocking off the area. At least the wire car wasn't there today.)

A group of men were doing something to those gates in the outbound station today. I saw orange sparks and heard a grinding noise so I guess they were cutting them down where they had collapsed.

mattster wrote:A group of men were doing something to those gates in the outbound station today. I saw orange sparks and heard a grinding noise so I guess they were cutting them down where they had collapsed.

The collapsed fence was temporarily bolted back up Tuesday sometime between the A.M. (when it was still collapsed) and P.M. commutes, then this morning I saw it had beem completely replaced by a crap-looking but much sturdier replacement chain-link fence. I'm guessing the teardown of the old fence is what you saw.

Good. They're lucky nobody got hurt wandering onto the outer track with the work equipment parked there and wide-open access to that pitch-black abandoned tunnel (which the booth collector cannot monitor because of all the placards on the fence leading up to the booth) in the nearly 5 days during which that fence was collapsed and the opening was there. And the mid-week temp fix wouldn't have held for more than a couple of weeks at best, as that old fence was past the point of complete disintegration.