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Ahkhira t1_iszyatx wrote

Reply to comment by shellshocker528 in Do you think MA needs to build a commuter rail between Worcester and Fitchburg/Leominster? by HRJafael

Thanks for the history lesson! I was about to look it up myself, but research on mobile is a pest.

I really wish we had our trains back.

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SLEEyawnPY t1_it0f5ga wrote

>I really wish we had our trains back.

At one time circa 1950s, 1960s you could take an overnight sleeper train from NYC to Portland ME, it followed a kind of weird route, leaving the Northeast Corridor in Providence to head northwest through Woonsocket to Worcester, then running northeast to Lowell & Lawrence and on to Portland.

From there you could connect to Montreal and St. John NB by rail also, I believe if you had a sleeping car room and there was enough demand sometimes they'd just transfer the whole car to another railroad, and you didn't need to change trains yourself.

There were also regular commuter trains between Boston and Albany and Boston and Hartford, though the Boston to Hartford route was never that popular and didn't last past the 1950s.

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Ahkhira t1_it0mv6z wrote

I grew up near a part of the old Boston-Albany grade that was lost in a flood back in 1955. I spent many years running horses up a couple miles of leftover track bed, and that's what spawned my interest in railroad history, and also local history.

The section of the railroad that I lived near was destroyed by a flood in 1955. Unfortunately, the railroad never could have been rebuilt after that flood. The flood devastated several towns, and many lives were lost. The river literally moved itself, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came and built the dams and the watershed that we have now. It was proven quite necessary. At least twice in my lifetime, I've seen the high water mark changed. If that dam wasn't built, I don't even want to think of the losses the local area would have sustained.

You can come visit and find old remnants of what was the Boston-Albany line if you know where to look. There is still some active freight railroad in the area, but it's a shadow of what it used to be.

Most of the rail near my house is now a rail trail. There are many fragments of rusted rails, rotten ties, old cinder trackbeds, steel trestles, and even some stone bridge abutments.

If you walk along the trail in the early morning fog, let your mind fade into black and white, breathe deeply, and let your imagination go, you can see the old steam locomotive coming through the old stone bridge by the river....

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