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Greenbush Construction Inspection Tour
September 2006
Mass Bay RRE takes a second look at progress on the Greenbush commuter rail line
Text by John Reading
Looking at a construction site on a Saturday is like watching paint dry - nothing's happening. You need some outside help to fit what you see into what came before, or what will come after.
So it was for a busload of Mass Bay RRE members, who toured the MBTA's Greenbush rail construction September 30. But Eric Fleming and Al Goff, from the T's construction team, were on hand to fill in the details for us.
Our trip began at South Station, where we boarded a Plymouth local on Track 12 for a ride down the original Old Colony RR main line to "America's Hometown." (Despite efforts by the media, both local and national, to label the Greenbush, Kingston and Middleboro lines the "Old Colony," Mass Bay RRE members know that the original OCRR was a 60-mile system sprawling as far as Fitchburg and Lowell, MA and Newport, RI, until the expanding New Haven leased it in 1893.)
In our reserved coach, we watched the landmarks fly by (including the surviving Kingston station) to Plymouth. Here we walked to one part of the Cordage Museum, which displays two of three surviving compressed-air locomotives from the long-shut-down Plymouth Cordage Co. [See photo.] The Museum was fortunate to find the two engines, formerly dislayed at Edaville, at a rail museum in New Hampshire - whose owner was willing to let them come back to their old stamping ground for a reasonable price. Museum curator Bill Rudolph showed us the engines and the small indoor museum in old Mill #3 before we boarded our Plymouth & Brockton motorcoach for a short trip to Kingston.
