TrainManTy wrote:BostonUrbEx wrote:TrainManTy wrote:There are also sections of line that would require more major reconstruction than removing the trees all over the ROW, regrading, and replacing track.
What has to be done more major than that? Mass Central from Waltham to Clinton still saw freight until the 80s, I though, and then after maybe a decade the MBTA bought it? Just curious as to what could have happened to the ROW during that time (and who owned it during the time).
Well, there's the section between rail end in Leominster and Fitchburg. The track has been removed completely, but I don't know the technical state of the line (abandonment vs just disuse). I would guess the NIMBYs would put up a pretty serious fight.
As Tom said, almost all the rail on the Central Mass west of West Berlin where the line crosses the CSX Fitchburg Secondary is still in place, however it's covered in smallish trees sprouting out of the tracks. The light track is obviously bad, but the big question is on the state of the roadbed and how much would need to be replaced.
I'm unsure as to where the MBTA owns up until, but it might be linked to where rail still exists (assuming B&M was the scrapper, they could pull up everything not being used by them or owned by the T). Rail is in place at least up to Highland Street in Berlin center, from there it's another mile or so to the CSX crossing at West Berlin. Past that, I don't think any rail exists, and I know it's gone by the tunnel adjacent to the Clinton Dam. The T might own all the Central Mass ROW they need, but there's still the issue of a connecting track at West Berlin to get past the NIMBYs.
Also, the part of the line that's not owned by the T is becoming a rail trail. Does anyone know if this is railbanked for a future trails-to-rails conversion? Their map seems to indicate a gap in MBTA ownership between Berlin Center and West Berlin.
The Fitchburg Secondary is OOS/railbanked by CSX, so would be an "at-will" reactivation with due notice to Leominster and Fitchburg. They don't show any inclination to changing that designation, so a reactivation would be easy. I believe the only permitting required is to get it up to par with the more modern regs in place since it was last an active RR. But the OOS designation means they have to maintain structures to standard of a ROW that could be imminently (i.e. weeks/months) activated. NIMBY's have pretty limited means of opposing that kind of reactivation. See Grafton & Upton...and CSX is big enough to not need to play nice for playing nice's sake.
The trail agreement on that segment fell through last year when the nastiness between Leominster and CSX over asking price boiled over. The trail lobby disbanded itself so that plan is officially dead, though they said they'd reincarnate if CSX offered more favorable terms or the state bought the ROW. I'm guessing it'll be the latter before that proposal resurfaces, because CSX sure isn't going to be the initiating party. So this ROW will likely retain the OOS designation for a long time.
Problem with the state buying it as that they almost always abandon every inch of track not in use, so there's no way they'd keep the reactivation hold on that connection to the Fitchburg Line. And they pass out $1 trail leases like free candy to the first warm body that shows up.
There's only a 1 mile ownership gap of
Central Mass before it hits the Fitchburg Sec. MBTA landbanking cuts out at a private driveway on Carter St., Berlin about 500 feet from the Carter/Route 62 intersection. But it's wholly intact through the woods behind property lines and extremely unlikely to ever be encroached upon. The 1993 West Berlin/495 commuter rail study recommended locking this up to build a non-revenue connection between 495 and the Fitchburg Sec.
I don't really see this happening at all. The Fitchburg Sec. is a much better bet for commuter rail as a
branch out of Framingham because the would-be stops on the Northborough/290 study 10 years ago were Framingham Ctr., Route 9/Mass Pike, Marlborough/495, and Northborough/290. A murderer's row of major highway park-and-rides. It's a very, very good extension on ridership and utilization of active infrastructure...just not high enough on the CR needs list to crack the Top 6 so probably not one considering for another 20 years. But the Northborough/290 stop is a straight shot to downtown Hudson via the Route 85 stub off the 495/290 interchange. And if extended in the future to Clinton it would probably have an intermediate Berlin stop at 62 right where the CM ROW crosses. I think the greatest need is a South Sudbury stub where there simply aren't a lot of good transit options. If it weren't for the anti-everything Weston NIMBY's that would probably have some tangible long-term momentum behind it. Problem overall with the CM is that none of the stations sites in the '93 study had any room for much parking, and we all know how parking-mad the T is with CR stops. Until there's a sea change in philosophy where they start valuing downtown stops more than the platforms-in-sea-of-asphalt builds, they are not going to consider expansion options too heavily of that ilk. (Northborough, though, is not only a parking maven's wet dream, but by dumb luck of crossing so many interstates it's the whole meat of the proposal).
Where I could see this going long-term future is the T using its newly-acquired passenger trackage rights on the Worcester
Branch in concert with a Phase II extension of Northborough/290 into a sort of park-and-ride catered pingback line between Worcester and Framingham. Because then if you turn southwest to Worcester from Clinton wye there's Oakdale 190/140 and 12/190 on the northern tip of Worcester. This would be a pretty good thing when reverse-commuting to Worcester becomes a more viable need and both Worcester and Boston commutes can use the line to sweep clear all the park-and-rides on every Worcester County expressway. Slower than the direct Worcester Line shot, but with service tilted heavily to peak commute hours this northern flank would be a pretty big deal. I would much rather have this than a straight shot to Leominster. That simply runs into too much redundancy with the Fitchburg Line, and Fitchburg/Leominster metro has got nothing on saturation coverage of all 4 regional interstates tracing an arc around Worcester metro. Nobody's proposed this, but despite Tim Murray's bloviating about Worcester via Ayer on the horribly curvy Worcester
Branch I'm betting when they cut that future considerations passenger rights deal that the synergies with the Northborough/290 study and Worcester reverse-commuting were a bigger eye-popper as a long-term hold. And they're quite likely going to gain possession of the Fitchburg Sec. sometime this decade because CSX doesn't want to outright own anything east of Worcester. I could see it going to the state in a package deal with the Framingham Sec. and Milford
Branch if Foxboro CR happens. Anytime you've got a purchase opportunity for critical infrastructure with a chance of passenger in the half-century timeframe, it's worth buying up...and they've been quite proactive about doing that. I bet the Worcester
Branch similarly gets locked up after PAR milks it for all the track improvements, 286K, double-stack they can wring out of it for a sell-high opportunity.
