Abandoned T tunnels

vanshnookenraggen said:
KZ posted this shot in another thread but it reminded me of something I'd heard long ago about the Hynes Station. Hynes used to be a large transfer station (when it was called Massachusetts) and was scaled back when the Mass Pike was built. The trolley station still exists (seen here) and there is an unused entrance on Boylston (here) which is only open on Marathon Day... BUT I was told there was also an underpass under Mass Ave to the side where that crappy little bus shelter is. I didn't even think about how this was possible until I saw this pic from the other side:

hEGSDs6.jpg


Zooming in on Google Maps (here) shows something gated up. Could this be a stairway to the underpass? Can anyone swing by and check this out?
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When I first moved to Boston, you could still see the entrance to the passageway from the station concourse. I believe it has been covered up since, but at the time, it was just a grated gate, and you could see that there was definitely a passageway. I think I recall the other end (on the bus stop side) also having a grated gate.
 
Evidence (or lack thereof) from today...

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HenryAlan said:
When I first moved to Boston, you could still see the entrance to the passageway from the station concourse. I believe it has been covered up since, but at the time, it was just a grated gate, and you could see that there was definitely a passageway. I think I recall the other end (on the bus stop side) also having a grated gate.
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The bus stop area was spruced up (believe it or not) around 2004 when the DNC was in town. They replaced original 1960s green fiberglass panels with what is there now. There was a roll up gate that covered the old passageway exit on the bus stop side until the overhaul of the bus stop. The passageway was open until at least the mid 1970s, my recollection is it always had a strong smell of urine and several assaults took place in it, and that is why it was closed. There is also a small staircase midway through it if I recall, so making it ADA compliant to reopen it could be expensive (would require an elevator on the bus stop side as well)
 
Where did you get the photo of the entrance? Is it okay for me to use in a column I'm writing?
 
winstonoboogie said:
There is also a small staircase midway through it if I recall, so making it ADA compliant to reopen it could be expensive (would require an elevator on the bus stop side as well)
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Would it really need to have an elevator if one was installed elsewhere at the station?
 
^ Which is why Maverick has two elevators, despite having an island platform.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
I think the T has really dropped the ball when it comes to asking developers to improve stations under new developments. The city could give them extra height or a tax break or something. Other cities do it well, why not Boston? Not that there are too many places where this could be accomplished (North Station is the best example) but Millennium Place is a prime example of a missed opportunity with the Chinatown station.
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Wasnt it the case where the developer wanted to reopen, and I think pay to spruce up the entrance, and the MBTA was like "no fuck our customers lol"
 
jass said:
Wasnt it the case where the developer wanted to reopen, and I think pay to spruce up the entrance, and the MBTA was like "no fuck our customers lol"
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I believe you're thinking of Millennium Place. The story goes that the developer wanted to integrate the abandoned Chinatown station entrance into the building and the T basically said "No. We're keeping it as an emergency exit. Build around it."

The fact the DTX concourse isn't being opened up to the lower floors of the Filene's tower is a shame. At least squeeze some retail bays in there, or something.
 
So I was reading a clickbait "abandoned things in MA" article today that mentioned something peculiar that I had never heard of before:

the lost station at Northeastern
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Further research on Google only turns up one result, but it's a very credible one from a Boston Street Railway Association event in 2012:
Included in Saturday’s presentation will be photographs of the upper Broadway station, used for only two years, from 1917 to 1919; Maverick station’s streetcar loop; the Court Street station, closed in 1952 as the city’s streetcar era drew to an end; the former underground rapid transit yard at Harvard Square; the lost subway station at Northeastern University, and more. Clarke will also show photos of a film crew in the abandoned Tremont Street Subway (south of Boylston Street), taken while they made a documentary for the Travel Channel in 2011.

http://www.bu.edu/today/2012/rare-glimpse-into-a-hidden-subterranean-world/
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What's the deal with this alleged "lost" Northeastern subway station?

Edit: Another result is our very own The EGE asking about it on Railroad.net in 2012. It was never answered.
 
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Well initially the ramp up to the northeastern stop was over the start of an extended tunnel for the subway that was never used but I thought it had to be filled to support the ramp when the boeing LRTs were bought and I didn't think it was ever used.
 
When and why was the tunnel extension abandoned?
 
Not sure and I might be remembering wrong but I think it was some sort of financial reason.
 
citylover94 said:
Well initially the ramp up to the northeastern stop was over the start of an extended tunnel for the subway that was never used but I thought it had to be filled to support the ramp when the boeing LRTs were bought and I didn't think it was ever used.
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Yep. There was no subway going beyond there. Instead of building a typical incline, they just continued the tunnel wall at-depth, dead-ended it at a concrete wall, backfilled it with dirt, and slapped a semi-hollow ramp on top of it. Top of the ramp rested on the bare slab dead-end wall providing support for the incline, so once the trolleys got to the top of the ramp that was it...there wasn't anything underground stretching past there.

Then in '85-86 during the E shutdown they pulled off the ramp and reinforced the under-fill so it could support the weight of a Type 7 (Boeings did go over the old ramp regularly, since pre-'85 they handled the full daily rush hour shift of Heath short-turns).



It wasn't continued because world events intervened. BERy originally designed it with a flying junction at Copley, and had dreams of later phases extending it further out. Great Depression completely ravaged the budget, so they had to pare costs all over the place, especially with that at-grade junction. Then any thought of continuing it from there got completely sidetracked by WWII and the decade-long materials and manpower shortage that brought with it. And just 7 years after it opened BERy was extinct and absorbed into the MTA, which was in no position to pick things back up.

It was an unfortunately-timed build...designed in the Roaring 20's when mature street railway systems were thinking big on modernization while they had the resources to do it. Then upended in a great two-decade "@#$% happens" that nearly wiped everything out. Nearly all projects that didn't have luck at their backs with unusually fast design-build just didn't make it. Here or in literally hundreds of cities worldwide. This was exactly the same era that upended New York's IND Second System plans all for naught.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Yep. There was no subway going beyond there. Instead of building a typical incline, they just continued the tunnel wall at-depth, dead-ended it at a concrete wall, backfilled it with dirt, and slapped a semi-hollow ramp on top of it. Top of the ramp rested on the bare slab dead-end wall providing support for the incline, so once the trolleys got to the top of the ramp that was it...there wasn't anything underground stretching past there.

Then in '85-86 during the E shutdown they pulled off the ramp and reinforced the under-fill so it could support the weight of a Type 7 (Boeings did go over the old ramp regularly, since pre-'85 they handled the full daily rush hour shift of Heath short-turns).



It wasn't continued because world events intervened. BERy originally designed it with a flying junction at Copley, and had dreams of later phases extending it further out. Great Depression completely ravaged the budget, so they had to pare costs all over the place, especially with that at-grade junction. Then any thought of continuing it from there got completely sidetracked by WWII and the decade-long materials and manpower shortage that brought with it. And just 7 years after it opened BERy was extinct and absorbed into the MTA, which was in no position to pick things back up.

It was an unfortunately-timed build...designed in the Roaring 20's when mature street railway systems were thinking big on modernization while they had the resources to do it. Then upended in a great two-decade "@#$% happens" that nearly wiped everything out. Nearly all projects that didn't have luck at their backs with unusually fast design-build just didn't make it. Here or in literally hundreds of cities worldwide. This was exactly the same era that upended New York's IND Second System plans all for naught.
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Thanks for the info, so what is the BSRA referring to when they talk about a lost station at Northeastern? Just photos of the continued subway stub maybe?
 
datadyne007 said:
Thanks for the info, so what is the BSRA referring to when they talk about a lost station at Northeastern? Just photos of the continued subway stub maybe?
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Yes, it continued on a short distance beyond the trestle of the incline toward Opera Place. I've seen the photo, I don't think the shell continues for more than a car length.

additional edit:
In this photo, the PCC car has just moved onto the trestle that formed the incline ramp, steel supports with wooden ties and planks on the top. The tracks in ballast (dirt by this time) but within the boundaries of the incline wall, are sitting on top of a concrete box that was the provision of the start of a station. The photo at the BSRA meeting showed the interior of the box during construction in 1941.
bos772.jpg
 
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datadyne007 said:
^ Which is why Maverick has two elevators, despite having an island platform.
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Data or others -- didn't the crew working on Arlington uncover a stair to an under track passage from one side of the platform to the other?

I believe that it was closed for security and sanitary reasons and not re-opened as part of the rebuild because of ADA requirements
 
whighlander said:
Data or others -- didn't the crew working on Arlington uncover a stair to an under track passage from one side of the platform to the other?

I believe that it was closed for security and sanitary reasons and not re-opened as part of the rebuild because of ADA requirements
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Not Arlington. Up-and-over in the lobby has always been the way to switch sides there. Including on the Berkeley St. side.

Boylston had an underpass til the mid-70's when they had to fill it in to support weight of the new LRV's, and Symphony has an claustrophobic and inadequate-for-reuse sealed underpass closed way back in the MTA era after less than 20 years of use.
 
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