Photo by Vic Campbell

Southeast Mass. Railroad Stations Tour with Author John Roy

September 8, 2007

Commentary from story by Vic Campbell, and photo notes.

About 32 people, curious about our old local railroad stations, boarded a van and a mini-bus at Boston's South Station and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Riverside light rail station at 9:20 a.m. for a tour to nine such locations. Our guide, Mass Bay RRE member John H. Roy, Jr., has spent the last fifteen years tracking down every surviving station, depot, and freight house in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In the newly-published handbook, "A Field Guide to Southern New England Railroad Depots and Freight Houses," published by Branchline Press, he provides a comprehensive guide to all 467 such structures - past and present - that survive today.

The first stop was at the ex-Boston & Albany RR station, Newton Highlands, Mass, built 1886-1887 by Norcross Brothers to a design by Shepley, Rutan, & Coolidge. Dr. Leonard Strauss, a Newton dentist who recently bought the building from the T, was our host for a walk-through of the original ticket and baggage-express offices (including the original Morse Co. elevator to the platform!) and the half-cellar with its ancient coal-fired furnace.

Under way again, we rolled slowly past the Starbucks Coffee-occupied Newton Center Green Line station (B&A, 1893-1894), a Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge design.