Vintage High Res Pictures Discussion

Sorry, but do you mean the Mattapan High Speed line?

If yes, the cars would go down from Cabot to Ashmont, connect to the freight tracks that ran next to the PCC line, then head up to South Station, lay over and head around town on the Grand Junction or the Union Freight??

Or am I completely confused?

Thanks for the picture and information on this interesting portion of Boston transit history.
Stephen

Stephen wrote:Sorry, but do you mean the Mattapan High Speed line?

If yes, the cars would go down from Cabot to Ashmont, connect to the freight tracks that ran next to the PCC line, then head up to South Station, lay over and head around town on the Grand Junction or the Union Freight??

Or am I completely confused?

Thanks for the picture and information on this interesting portion of Boston transit history.
Stephen

Yup, you're almost there, buddy. The older cars would have left Codman Yard at Ashmont, most likely originally coming from Eliot Yards at Harvard Square. This was 1963 and there was no Cabot. It was New Haven Railroad property then. So the cars got down to Codman Yard (many probably on their own power), got moved onto the MTA's High Speed Line and then off at the Central Ave. connection with the New Haven RR. They then got towed up to South Station by the NH, where in many cases they probably layed up until the Boston and Albany RR could tow them out via the Grand Junction to the Everett Scrap Track for burning and scrapping. (Would make a great [but sad] re-creation on a model layout !)

Thank you very much for the clarification. I forgot about the Cabot yard being a later development.
It would be great to get picutres of an entire trip. You're right, it would be interesting to model it.
Do you know if the NH and B&A had a flat car (or other idler car) that had a standard coupler on one end and a subway/elevated style coupler on the other end?

Thanks!
Stephen

More than likely, they would have used a conversion piece that goes between couplers- regular knuckle MCB standard on one end and Tomlinson on the other, as opposed to outfitting a car with a Tomlinson for such a temporary move. It's amazing that there wasn't a less circuituous way to get to Everett than to bring a Cambridge car through Cambridge via Milton ! It was the extra width of the Cambridge system that precluded an easy connection with the Main Line (north of Summer St. Station would have been perfect). I also would love to see pics - or even better, a movie of that move. Can you imagine a couple of C/D No. 3's crossing Main Street in Cambridge ?!!!

Ok, that makes sense.
It certainly was a long way out of the way. And yes, a video would be even better!

Thanks,
Stephen

The website Shorpy has a lot of vintage photographs. There is a decent amount of Boston transit photographs including South Station and Dudley Station. Forewarning the photos are very large!

I can't believe how massive south station was in 1904.

Absolutely beautiful photos!

Also, nice shot of the loop trackage in the South Station photo. Though, it looks to be already disconnected from the line by that time.

Those were amazing photos, I easily spent an hour looking through them.

I loved this one at its highest res. Washington Street.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/7920

That South Station panoramic photo is spectacular ! Everytime you look at it you see something new. Over on the far right, there's a stub which just ends without any device whatsoever. One has something that I've never seen before- just a switch lantern affixed to the ground at the end ! Then there's that dismantled switch at the "Subway Tracks". By the time that this photo was taken, I guess that that idea was abandoned.

crash575 wrote:The website Shorpy has a lot of vintage photographs. There is a decent amount of Boston transit photographs including South Station and Dudley Station. Forewarning the photos are very large!

I can't believe how massive south station was in 1904.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/4513?size=_original

(Again, very large photo!)


The bridges containing approach tracks to South Station over the Fort Point Channel in their raised positions.

If anyone can go to the new park focused around the remaining bridge part. Really interesting. They have the history of South Station with a lot of vintage pics there, the bridge piece, and it is right next to Cabot shops and the entrance to South.

Those Shorpey photos are great. It's rare that you find photographs of that era which are detailed with high resolution unless they are "company photos", shot by professional photographers. This one here is mistakenly labelled however. It's labelled "Spans for Northern Avenue, Congress Street and Summer Street", which in fact is not the case. As Mr. Urby correctly stated, they are the approach bridges for South Station - the three Rolling Lift Bridges that have since been taken down with Big Dig construction. The bridges spanned the Fort Point Channel opposite Dorchester Ave. from South Station, and led into the Dover Street Yards which later became the MBTA Cabot Yard as ATSF indicated. Too bad they had to go. They were pretty unique. The bridges at Summer, Congress, and Northern Ave. ran north of South Station off Atlantic Ave. and didn't carry railroad traffic. The Summer Street Bridge carried streetcar traffic and was the scene of one of the worst streetcar accidents in U.S. history.

3rd rail -

Thanks for posting the pix of South Station from the late 70s and 80s. It brings back a lot of memories.
The place was like a museum on wheels with all the various types of equipment used. Seems like only
yesterday!

My pleasure, NaDspr. It brings back a lot of memories for me also- standing eye-to-eye to trucks and under-chassis-gear on the low-level platforms, the smell of diesel (I just missed steam ), the sound and appearance of steam heat on the trains in cold weather, friendly crew members who would roll out the red carpet for a kid interested in trains, EMD E's, Budd RDC's, complicated trackwork and switch patterns,...I could go on forever !

-edit- removed so both are on new page