F-Line to Dudley
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No need to do any relocating. The juiciest site for the Route 128 park-and-ride station that would anchor such a DMU short-turn is right there where the Central Mass re-converges and has that unused 128 overpass dumping over to the ex-Route 117 grade crossing right by the Polaroid driveway. Put a lit path from the new station on the ROW and it's a 2000 ft. walk to that complex's doorstep. Connect the access road from the Route 117 side over the brook and tracks to the access road from the Route 20 side and the 70 bus can switch its 117-to-20 looping point over from Stow Rd. to the other side of 128 on the access road.
Central Mass is owned and landbanked by the T from the Fitchburg split at Beaver St. Waltham out to West Berlin where it passes under 495. It's intact in the woods beyond there for a couple more miles until it crosses the active Fitchburg Secondary at Route 62. The T did do a commuter rail restoration study to 495 in the mid-90's: http://www.masscentralrailtrail.org/railroadcomingback.html. Would have split off at 128 instead of duplicating the miles in Waltham, and had the option to bundle the Fitchburg Secondary connection into the build for north-south equipment transfers out of Framingham (i.e. a wholly T-owned alternative to the Worcester-Ayer freight branch) and future passenger considerations.
Despite the congestion on Routes 20 and 62 the ridership didn't project very large. Virtually zero parking available at any of the potential station sites other than the 495 park-and-ride, and downtown Hudson was the only one dense enough to draw much of a walkup crowd. Mainly a problem of wetlands, wetlands, wetlands everywhere pinning them in at the only appropriate stop locations. Wayland, South Sudbury, and (negotiable Weston) station sitings had trouble integrating diffuse pockets of insular disconnected subdivisions much like the current trio of Weston stops on the Fitchburg, Route 20 is a dividing line making it hard to attract walkup from the south of it (and the further south you go towards Route 30 the easier it is to just Pike it to Riverside), and there's near-zilch in the way of connecting buses to bolster that up. Hudson's a pretty decent one, but even West Berlin/495 had weaknesses. Mostly being smack middle of wetlands making it nearly impossible to do much TOD at all around the site.
They did the Northborough/290 commuter rail study on the Fitchburg Secondary about 5 years later. 495 would've been covered out of Framingham by stops in Marlborough and @ 290 only 1 exit from the 290/495 interchange and the Route 85 connnector straight into downtown Hudson. With better TOD potential. That would've covered all needs on that 495 quadrant south of Littleton, and compensated Hudson with a straight downtown shot where a connecting bus would be an attractive prospect. And the ancillary advantages of later proceeding to Clinton, Leominster, and re-connecting to the Fitchburg Line outside of Fitchburg were more attractive prospects on a southside routing (albeit still not that good) than it would do on a Central Mass routing that duplicated too much of below-capacity Fitchburg's service area.
I would say this is the one 100% intact ROW that's not worth thinking about any further. It doesn't have one unequivocal must-have large enough to write a mission statement around. Comes too close to duplicating the service areas of other current or potential lines, and the stops that are supposed to relieve acute Route 20 congestion...pretty much can't with the available land and wetlands constraints. It's the same set of pretty-nice-but-meh surplus to requirement that doomed the original Central Mass RR. It missed way too many destinations trying to split the difference cross-state between the Fitchburg and Boston & Albany. Compared to restoring the Stoughton Line, or the Eastern Route to Portsmouth, or the Franklin Line to Blackstone for Woonsocket, or even rolling back a couple NIMBY lost causes like Millis or Woods Hole on the Cape...there just isn't a big galvanizing selling point for this one.
As for the Waltham stretch...trail it. That's even denser residential than the river-hugging Fitchburg which is in the prime commercial district and Brandeis-land. That would get excellent utilization, and if the Fitchburg Cutoff path got extended to Belmont and Waverley in stages on the empty ROW space there is a way to connect this ROW to 128 and beyond (don't forget the Bruce Freeman Trail link-up in S. Sudbury) to the Alewife/Minuteman network. Which would be pretty damn sweet if they're methodical enough about stringing those rail-with-trail segments gradually across Belmont.
IF there ever comes a day when rapid transit overcomes the Belmont NIMBY's and goes to Waltham on the old Track 3 & 4 berths of the Fitchburg (probably easiest as a GLX out of Porter because of the grade crossings)...then they can consider re-routing the Fitchburg to express over the Central Mass and rejoin itself at 128 so rapid transit can claim the Beaver St.-128 ROW that is pinned to only 2 tracks. But that would be just about the last new rapid transit service expansion on a bucket list of 15+ higher-priority ones. We're talking after Red-Hanscom, Blue-Salem, Green-Watertown (via Porter), etc. Third-tier project, 2050, our grandkids having this discussion on whatever Jetsons-shit ArchBoston forum exists mid-century.
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