Lost Old Colony railroad stations: a photo essay

[sixten]

I did a bit of Boston amateur archaeology today. If you ride the Red Line, you may have noticed remnants of the Atlantic, Harrison Square, and Pope's Hill stations between North Quincy and Savin Hill. Online photo documentation of these spots is lacking, which led my inner history-dork to go out and document the remains.

The collective intelligence of Archboston is more than enough to convince me that you could both correct my findings and contribute some additional historical facts about this line.

Going from north to south:

And not a station, but rather a former bridge which fed the Squantum Naval Air Station, which closed in 1953. As of 1969, this bridge had vanished.

Thanks guys.

 

[Shepard]

This is awesome. Has anyone proposed to re-establish Red Line stations in this area?

 

[sixten]

This is awesome. Has anyone proposed to re-establish Red Line stations in this area?

Thanks Shepard. No proposals to my knowledge. Given the lengthy stretch between North Quincy and JFK/UMass, it might make sense for some commuters to re-establish a station close to Harrison Square. Those in a hurry may disagree, for obvious reasons. At least there's Savin Hill.

As a side note: the Neponset Station off Taylor St. was precluded here because there do not seem to be any accessible remnants of it. Probably was a symptom of constructing the elevated railroad bridge there in the '70s.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Very cool. I've always thought they needed to rebuild the station at Pope's Hill. The station at Harrison doesn't really need to be there considering how close it is to Fields Corner. And IIRC the Atlantic station was omitted from the Red Line extension to save on travel time.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Very cool. I've always thought they needed to rebuild the station at Pope's Hill. The station at Harrison doesn't really need to be there considering how close it is to Fields Corner. And IIRC the Atlantic station was omitted from the Red Line extension to save on travel time.

Correct. The Braintree branch from 1971-88 ran express straight from Andrew to North Quincy and was intended to be a total modal replacement for commuter rail on the Old Colony. To the point where they were even talking Weymouth or Brockton extensions in the future on the assumption that the RR tracks would be totally abandoned to even freight. Obviously that's not how it worked out...the RL didn't have to stretch itself past 128 as a CR replacement and more local stops became desirable (starting with JFK getting added to that branch). If they built it today knowing what they know today I bet both Ashmont and Braintree would be stopping at both JFK and Savin Hill before diverging.

There hasn't been much of an advocacy from Dorchester to plonk an infill stop at Pope's Hill, but with Assembly Sq. now being built that location pretty much is the one place where a purely infill (non-extension) stop is most needed. I think it'll take CBTC signaling and finally fixing the screwy cab signal blocks downtown before they can add another stop with no ill effects to either branch's schedule. But once they do...yeah, not only is it a ridership draw in an transit under-served area with room to build, but the signals will have more than enough margin to absorb it and then some.