MOW Equipment Parked in Watertown

I snapped a couple of pics of some MOW equipment in Watertown last night. I found it very interesting, because it's in the old A Branch yard. In other words, the equipment couldn't have been driven in by rail, it had to have been trucked in and parked on the rails. Pretty cool, anyone know anything about this? Seems like an unusual place to store your equipment since it's nowhere near anywhere you'd ever want to use it. Though on the other hand, plenty of free trackage for parking rail equipment there

You pretty much answered you're own question: plenty of free trackage. It isn't ideal but with all the rapid transit houses full, the only other spot to store it is probably the Charlestown and Everett properties. Those too are filled up. All equipment is trucked between the lines, anyway. Theoretically you could move equipment between the Orange and Green Lines via the national rail network with the accompaniment of a trackcar, but that is not done.

Kind of off topic, but couldn't they very easily build an orange/green connector for MOW etc right at north station, where the lines are already next to each other?

Not without a lot of serious tunnel surgery...

The Garden basement and a gigantic electrical substation separate Orange and Green on the lower lever of the superstation, so all the middle space on the outbound side of the platform wall is chock full of obstructions until the lines have fully diverged. It was the only way the New Garden could be built next to the Old Garden back in '95.

I think that just beyond the north end Haymarket station there is a section where only a cinder block wall separates the GL and OL.

I expect there's closely spaced supports for the roof inside that wall which would make building a connection far more difficult than it's worth.

I wonder if they have set up some sort of repair or maintenance shop inside the car house. Since the car house still has all its rails and pits in place still.

Two of them appear to be tampers, and the third one (closest to the door) looks like it might also be. If we knew the ID or models, we'd be able to look them up on:
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/Documents/Non-Revenue_Vehicles/Non-Revenue%20Fleet%20Inventory.pdf

I can't imagine why they would go through all the trouble of trucking those units out to Watertown unless they are all getting serviced at the same time by the same contractor / vendor and the Watertown yard was the only safe location with tracks but without other yard movements.

I doubt there's about to be any work done in the Watertown yard outside - other than maybe calibrating the alignment sights of the tampers.

The last time I was there the switches that are still there didn't look operable. Are they?

When the Longfellow Bridge shoo fly tracks were built there was no time when they were connected to the main line so that the track laying equipment could be brought in by rail.

It is not practical to leave the equipment in the nearest T parking lot or other available location without tracks.

1. The wheels would sink into the ground slowly, damaging asphalt pavement.

2. The trucks would not stay in line, causing difficulty while getting the equipment onto a truck for the next move.
(British) The bogies would not stay straight, causing difficulty while getting the equipment onto a lorry for the next move.