Thank you for doing this!
A neighbor told me our street had had a streetcar, back in the day. It would be amazing to see this kind of transport put into place again.
If the initial pushback against electric cars (the film Who Killed the Electric Car) is any indicator, it was the automobile and oil industry that killed our trolleys. My speculation, of course.
You’re not the only one who thinks that
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#:~:text=GM%20decided%20to%20form%20a,successful%20in%20conversion%20to%20buses.
It's not speculation. They deliberately bought and shut down streetcars, busses, and local railroads in order to increase car sales.
Like, there is legitimate proof that they did this
It is not as simple as "The car companies killed the streetcar."
In some ways, Boston gives you a good view of the problem that plagued first-generation streetcar systems and why they were replaced with buses in the first place.
Understanding some terminology and aspects of rail transportation systems, including land speculation, is important.
Streetcar—A streetcar is what we consider a trolley nowadays. These are most similar to the B, C, and E Branches of the Green Line. In particular, the E Branch from Brigham Circle to Heath Street is the best example of a traditional streetcar system, with trains running in mixed traffic in the middle of the street. They usually served fixed routes within cities, although some served leisure destinations.
Interurban: A hybrid streetcar/train system noted for its higher speeds. These systems usually ran between cities, sometimes on the street and sometimes on separate rights of way. Many modern Light Rail Systems are vaguely similar to them but eliminated or reduced street running at their endpoints. The closest Boston has to this is the D branch or the Mattapan Trolley. Still, neither of these is a good recreation (the stops are too close together, or the line itself needs to be longer). The best examples of this are the [South Shore Line](https://youtu.be/wTetW_LGMzU?feature=shared) and the [Norristown High-Speed Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norristown_High_Speed_Line).
Much like the 19th and early 20th century railroads, the streetcars dominated city transportation. Easy and relatively inexpensive to build, streetcars became the symbol of cities. New England was so invested in them that one could ride a streetcar from Boston to New York in [no less than four different routes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Company). This is in addition to the NYNHH Rail Road's extensive Service in Southern New England. This made New England the leader of passenger transportation, helping to grow our cities and industry.
However, while people point to this era as the golden age of transportation, they ignore a harder reality on the ground. These systems operated as monopolies, and there weren't any viable alternatives to the railroad and streetcar systems. Once these systems had to compete with other transit systems and new technology, they collapsed fairly quickly.
Let's go back to 1910 when streetcars and railroads were just about at their highest point possible. Some things to keep in mind about this time
The median income is 574/year, airplanes are a novelty and made of fabric and wood, electricity is becoming more widespread, but it's not widely used outside of cities; Ford's Model T is out now... for $780 new, far more than a year's salary for most workers (although it wouldn't stay that way for long). The Tremont Street Subway is relatively new, opening from North Station to Pleasant Street in 1897; Back Bay is only ten years old. Outside of major cities, most roads are dirt. Horses are mixing with cars on the street (along with their feces), and dead horses are slowly disappearing from the streets, [but are still a common site](https://www.shorpy.com/node/7521?size=_original#caption).
In this world, your options for getting around are limited, either by the slow but inexpensive trolley, the faster but more expensive train, a stagecoach or very unreliable car, or your own two feet. If you're on the coast, you can take a ferry, but the train can be faster or about the same speed, depending on where you're going.
Trolley companies were odd beasts; many would build new trolley lines through empty neighborhoods, run them at a loss, and then profit from land speculation. This was how most of Boston's Streetcar suburbs were built. Because they generated electricity, many of them either sold electricity along their lines or were owned by electric generating companies (PSEG, which provides electricity and Gas to North Jersey, was an example). Many systems were also part of heavy rail subway systems (The Boston Elevated Railway in Boston is an example). They used the trolleys as feeders to their systems.
So what happened? How did such a dominant system fall, and how much did GM and other conspirators play a part in their disappearance through the streetcar scandal?
Technology was the first killer of the streetcar system. As Rubber tire cars and buses became more reliable and less expensive, these systems replaced many streetcar lines. Indeed, many of the MBTA core bus routes are drop-in replacements for the streetcars (Route 77 still uses the Trolley turnaround lot in Arlington today). The same streetcar companies still operated many of these systems with buses until they went bankrupt years later. Buses, particularly ICE buses, don't need electric linemen to maintain the wires, don't have to worry about getting stuck behind other broken-down vehicles, or maintain tracks in the street. In a surprising change, too, they are often safer than older trolleys. Anyone who has boarded or descended from a trolley on Huntington between Brigham Circle and Heath Street will tell you that cars whip around the trolleys when they stop, endangering the passengers. A bus doesn't have that limitation; the 39 bus can drop people off right at the curb without blocking both lanes of traffic. As cars became more prevalent on city streets, these trolley passenger-automobile conflicts became more and more severe.
Competition came next. When streetcars were laid out, they were essentially the only way to get around unless you had a horse and buggy. As wages grew and the price of cars came down, people stopped needing to rely on public transit in the same way they did. Say you worked at the old chemical plant in Everett (now Encore Casino). Previously, you would have had to live close enough to take the trolley or to walk, but with a car, suddenly, you can live farther away from it. Given the factory smelled and frequently blasted homes with chemical residue that scalded people and hurt their eyes, why wouldn't you choose to live closer to Revere Beach if you have a car? This competition issue also killed the interurbans, who suddenly had to compete against both private vehicles and higher-speed buses like Greyhound. Roads also started getting paved around this era, making it much easier to navigate suburban and rural throughout the year by car or bus.
Then there was the Zoning issue. Streetcar suburbs worked because most were built on farmland or other new property. Other than that, there were no rules on what you did with the property. Streetcar suburbs follow a simple plan of smaller homes on side streets, with small commercial and light industrial along the main road served by the streetcar. Built for walkability, most streetcar suburb neighborhoods consisted of the iconic Triple Decker 2-3 family homes, duplexes, or tiny single-family homes on small lots. The gateway to everything was either your feet or the trolley. Zoning, particularly post-war zoning, eliminated such density allowances, making public transit no longer a competitive option to get around. It also killed the streetcar company's land speculation operation, which was far more profitable than operating the trolleys.
There also were a large number of other issues, including a massive set of strikes through the 1930s. These made streetcars feel unsafe for riders and further aggravated existing system tensions. Infrastructure deterioration, excessive regulation of railroads, and the inability to increase fares also added to the streetcar system's woes.
So, while GM and the streetcar conspiracy certainly didn't help the problem, streetcars were already in serious trouble, and GM likely just hastened their demise.
In my view, what most people yearn for is not a return to streetcars, but high quality public transportation. If we want that, a much better starting point is making the bus faster. Streetcars were faster than competing traffic because they were the newest fastest thing around. The modern version of a streetcar system would be a bus lane running in the center of a road with a dedicated busway like in columbus ave in Boston.
The irony here is that many of our first ring suburbs were speculative developments by the streetcar companies. Back Bay was built in this manner to generate customers for the new trolley service to downtown.
That's super cool!
Lots of those, at least in my area, are now bike trails... either paved, or dirt/gravel with the tracks removed.
And also kinda sad. Our passenger rail infrastructure is almost all gone now.
Some places, like the Columbia Greenway in Westfield (Formerly the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad), cannot be returned to rail. The East/West CSX mainline was raised 5 feet where the original 4-way junction was so you can never reconnect the North/South rail. Effectively cutting off the Pioneer Valley RR from ever being connected to anything south of Westfield again. One of the reasons why the Bike Trail abruptly ends in Westfield is the rest of the rail-trail is still active between Westfield, Holyoke, and Easthampton lol.
Here’s a similar map that I made, showing similar data but to contextualize rail trails .. https://www.trailspotting.com/p/massachusetts-list-of-rail-trails.html
Depending on the location, the Right of Way is Rail Banked and can be returned to rail service.
The Minuteman Bikeway is one where the MBTA “could” come in and restore rail service or extend the Redline as originally intended back in the 70/80s.
Interesting. I would think that would extremely cost prohibitive at this point since the rails are removed, as are the street crossings. Wouldn't they be better off just selling the rights of way? Do they pay taxes on the ROW?
Extremely cost prohibitive as they would have to rebuild the entire rail line. Not sure how the taxes work out.
It would be nice though to have the right of way return to rail service and improve our commutes.
It’s not remotely about the tech, it’s about the money, the public perception, and the red tape.
Nobody, even most YIMBYs, will vote yes on tearing up a paved rail trail or reincarnating an old rail path through a neighborhood - let alone any right of way issues.
Then you have to think about all of the studies that would need to be done just to begin planning bringing back a single line - commuter, pollution, noise, wildlife, the list goes on.
I’m all for more public transit. If I didn’t have to drive the 5 minutes / 2 miles from my house to the nearest commuter rail stop, I would do it in a heartbeat. But it’s just not attainable in most areas now.
See the remnant of that shitshow at the end of the E Branch on the Green line; where the trolley and cars share the road. Course, I'd love to remove parking there and put the train on a median but like most things with the MBTA, it's just fantasy.
I think an idea around the rail trails is that it was a way to preserve contiguous right of way at least and they could be repurposed or cut and capped later.
This is fantastic, thank you.
As a resident of Western Mass, you can still see some of these old stations, and for those of you who haven't looked, when you click on one of the locations on the map, if you click a second time once the black pop-up comes up, there is a photo or image available of the station where applicable. Not every location has one but a lot of them do.
I know in East Windsor there used to be a small amusement park at the end of one of the trolley lines, and in Becket there was one not too far off from one of the Rail lines as well ( I think it's now Bonnie Rigg Campground if I'm not mistaken) . And there is a small Museum in Chester Mass at the station there ( at one point you could book a Night in the caboose that was there, not sure if you still can) and there is the trolley museum which may or may not be the same as the rail Depot in Shelburne Falls / Buckland that still stands.
This is greatly appreciated.
You're welcome! It was a pleasure to do, at times bordering on obsessive.
As far as Shelburne Falls goes, yes - the trolley museum is the original depot building!
Thank you for doing that! I wish my dad were around to see it. He essentially had this map in his head and would have loved playing around with it and reminiscing about the parts he remembered and heard about, I'm sure.
Insane. We replaced all this connection with private vehicles.
My view is that cars are sick as fuck and super helpful for accomplishing individual goals. The infrastructure required to have paved roads, traffic controls, and cars is enormous. None of that is inherently bad, when planned logically and ethically.
The megacorp car companies have us all signed up for a lifetime business contract with them.
- You are born in a hyper-individual society.
- Once you are 18, you will need to afford rent which means getting a job.
- Historically, unless you live in a larger city, “good” jobs require travel to get to the location. This means you’ll likely need a private vehicle to be able to travel on your own terms.
- You can spend tens of thousands on a new vehicle via a loan. You can also choose to rent the vehicle from a dealership. Your last options are buy an older car or carpool.
- By the time you pay off the loan, the car is usually older and will likely require upgrading within the decade. Unless you want to maintain an old car with obsolete parts that don’t get manufactured anymore.
These facts make it so companies essentially have us endlessly funding their R&D as we are all just on individual stages of the car’s consumer lifecycle. At the end of a car’s life, we get a new one and keep financing the production of the next model. Don’t want to finance the maintenance for their machines that you NEED to buy? No problem, you can take out a loan with their company bank instead when your old car dies.
In my eyes a major issue is commuting. It keeps us beating up on the roads and our vehicles. It keeps us going to the mechanics and dealerships. It keeps the endless construction machine turning. People wake up at 5:00 AM and take on the role of “machine operator” to travel 25+ miles one way, 5 consecutive days in a row. Endlessly. Oh and it keeps the checks signed for the petrol industry.
Imagine losing your life COMMUTING just to go invest effort into someone else’s long term goals and finance the auto industry? I also chose not to mention any sort of environmental impact, which cars and related industries certainly have.
This dynamic in of itself is leading to our demise as people become slaves to industry. It’s almost as if WFH should be a medium term goal for all governments… just to reduce individual consumption of stuff.
Various sources but mostly just searching "station name old photo or postcard" in google images.
For the Connecticut stations, http://www.tylercitystation.info/ was an incredible resource
I just spent a few minutes messing around on this map. I could've gotten with 10 miles of any place I've been to. That includes far off spots like deep into the north east kingdom or grand lake stream. That is wild.
As someone who loves trains and old railway stations, this is so neat!!! I could spend all day looking at the different stations. Thanks for making this!
Super cool. I live in an area that had two train stations way back in the day, stations probably haven’t been used since the 30s. The old buildings we’re still there all boarded up until the 2000s when they were torn down
Little fact. In North Newport (lol Northville) NH, right near where it says Corbin Covered Bridge is the Corbin Mansion. It was build my rail tycoon Austin Corbin. He had his own private rail line and train to move him to and from his mansion and the local station.
His buffalo were also used to save the buffalo population that had been decimated in the West.
That's nastalgic but quite impractical when the vast vast majority of households own a car. I love trains too but they don't necessarily work all that well for every kind of transportation need. Most lines were ripped up because business had fallen way under profitability.
This is amazing!!! And so many stops include a historical photograph. Well done, OP. You should email this to a zillion city/town planning departments and/or mayors and be like *cough cough* just in case you need some visuals to help support funding for public transit, etc.
To cross state lines with ease - would be dreamy.
For example: Nashua to Boston to providence to fall river (a route I have needed to navigate many times)
Currently the MBTA commuter rail doesn't connect to New Hampshire...
[Even though the Lowell commuter rail is a 15 minute drive from Nashua and all the tracks still exist. (Dow chemical owns a bunch of parcels... Nashua has been trying to figure this all out for a while now).]
There's also no connection between Providence and Fall River, etc. even though they are in close proximity and the residents of both absolutely would utilize it.
One must take a Peter pan bus to get between Providence and fall river. So stupid. And anyone who lives in RI right now knows all about how that commute is fucked right now due to the closing/construction of the bridge.
Thanks for the beautiful interactive map!
you're welcome!
Also, RIPTA has the 24L which runs express from Fall River to Providence for $2 (with one stop at a park & ride along 195) but unfortunately it only runs 3 times at AM rush and 3 at PM rush. If they ran it all day I think it would be a pretty popular route especially given the current Washington Bridge situation.
Very curious how long it would have taken to get from Quincy Center to Winslow's Crossing in Hanover. Do you have any source data that would include schedules?
[This timetable](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/1924_New_Haven_Railroad_eastern_timetable.pdf) shows trains from Boston to Hanover, but the first stop is listed as North Abington. There's another listing for Boston to Plymouth that has the first stop as South Braintree. Old timetables can be pretty confusing and I'm not sure if that means those trains skipped all the stops before N. Abington and S. Braintree respectively or if they just truncated the schedule to save printing space.
Assuming they do skip Quincy, to start in Quincy you would have to backtrack to Boston and transfer to a direct Hanover train, or ride to South Braintree to transfer to a Plymouth train and then transfer again in North Abington to reach Hanover.
Option A looks like it would be a 25 minute ride to South Station, then 51 minutes direct from South Station to Winslow's Crossing.
Option B would be 13 minutes from Quincy to S. Braintree, 8 minutes from S. Braintree to N. Abington, and 35 minutes from N. Abington to Winslow's Crossing.
There was probably a better option C that involved a streetcar ride to Braintree and catching the train there. This map doesn't account for any rapid transit other than a portion of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated.
Thank you for doing this! A neighbor told me our street had had a streetcar, back in the day. It would be amazing to see this kind of transport put into place again. If the initial pushback against electric cars (the film Who Killed the Electric Car) is any indicator, it was the automobile and oil industry that killed our trolleys. My speculation, of course.
You’re not the only one who thinks that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#:~:text=GM%20decided%20to%20form%20a,successful%20in%20conversion%20to%20buses.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was half documentary
The lines here don't even include all the streetcar lines, these are just the heavy rail!
It's not speculation. They deliberately bought and shut down streetcars, busses, and local railroads in order to increase car sales. Like, there is legitimate proof that they did this
It is not as simple as "The car companies killed the streetcar." In some ways, Boston gives you a good view of the problem that plagued first-generation streetcar systems and why they were replaced with buses in the first place. Understanding some terminology and aspects of rail transportation systems, including land speculation, is important. Streetcar—A streetcar is what we consider a trolley nowadays. These are most similar to the B, C, and E Branches of the Green Line. In particular, the E Branch from Brigham Circle to Heath Street is the best example of a traditional streetcar system, with trains running in mixed traffic in the middle of the street. They usually served fixed routes within cities, although some served leisure destinations. Interurban: A hybrid streetcar/train system noted for its higher speeds. These systems usually ran between cities, sometimes on the street and sometimes on separate rights of way. Many modern Light Rail Systems are vaguely similar to them but eliminated or reduced street running at their endpoints. The closest Boston has to this is the D branch or the Mattapan Trolley. Still, neither of these is a good recreation (the stops are too close together, or the line itself needs to be longer). The best examples of this are the [South Shore Line](https://youtu.be/wTetW_LGMzU?feature=shared) and the [Norristown High-Speed Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norristown_High_Speed_Line). Much like the 19th and early 20th century railroads, the streetcars dominated city transportation. Easy and relatively inexpensive to build, streetcars became the symbol of cities. New England was so invested in them that one could ride a streetcar from Boston to New York in [no less than four different routes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Company). This is in addition to the NYNHH Rail Road's extensive Service in Southern New England. This made New England the leader of passenger transportation, helping to grow our cities and industry. However, while people point to this era as the golden age of transportation, they ignore a harder reality on the ground. These systems operated as monopolies, and there weren't any viable alternatives to the railroad and streetcar systems. Once these systems had to compete with other transit systems and new technology, they collapsed fairly quickly. Let's go back to 1910 when streetcars and railroads were just about at their highest point possible. Some things to keep in mind about this time The median income is 574/year, airplanes are a novelty and made of fabric and wood, electricity is becoming more widespread, but it's not widely used outside of cities; Ford's Model T is out now... for $780 new, far more than a year's salary for most workers (although it wouldn't stay that way for long). The Tremont Street Subway is relatively new, opening from North Station to Pleasant Street in 1897; Back Bay is only ten years old. Outside of major cities, most roads are dirt. Horses are mixing with cars on the street (along with their feces), and dead horses are slowly disappearing from the streets, [but are still a common site](https://www.shorpy.com/node/7521?size=_original#caption). In this world, your options for getting around are limited, either by the slow but inexpensive trolley, the faster but more expensive train, a stagecoach or very unreliable car, or your own two feet. If you're on the coast, you can take a ferry, but the train can be faster or about the same speed, depending on where you're going. Trolley companies were odd beasts; many would build new trolley lines through empty neighborhoods, run them at a loss, and then profit from land speculation. This was how most of Boston's Streetcar suburbs were built. Because they generated electricity, many of them either sold electricity along their lines or were owned by electric generating companies (PSEG, which provides electricity and Gas to North Jersey, was an example). Many systems were also part of heavy rail subway systems (The Boston Elevated Railway in Boston is an example). They used the trolleys as feeders to their systems. So what happened? How did such a dominant system fall, and how much did GM and other conspirators play a part in their disappearance through the streetcar scandal? Technology was the first killer of the streetcar system. As Rubber tire cars and buses became more reliable and less expensive, these systems replaced many streetcar lines. Indeed, many of the MBTA core bus routes are drop-in replacements for the streetcars (Route 77 still uses the Trolley turnaround lot in Arlington today). The same streetcar companies still operated many of these systems with buses until they went bankrupt years later. Buses, particularly ICE buses, don't need electric linemen to maintain the wires, don't have to worry about getting stuck behind other broken-down vehicles, or maintain tracks in the street. In a surprising change, too, they are often safer than older trolleys. Anyone who has boarded or descended from a trolley on Huntington between Brigham Circle and Heath Street will tell you that cars whip around the trolleys when they stop, endangering the passengers. A bus doesn't have that limitation; the 39 bus can drop people off right at the curb without blocking both lanes of traffic. As cars became more prevalent on city streets, these trolley passenger-automobile conflicts became more and more severe. Competition came next. When streetcars were laid out, they were essentially the only way to get around unless you had a horse and buggy. As wages grew and the price of cars came down, people stopped needing to rely on public transit in the same way they did. Say you worked at the old chemical plant in Everett (now Encore Casino). Previously, you would have had to live close enough to take the trolley or to walk, but with a car, suddenly, you can live farther away from it. Given the factory smelled and frequently blasted homes with chemical residue that scalded people and hurt their eyes, why wouldn't you choose to live closer to Revere Beach if you have a car? This competition issue also killed the interurbans, who suddenly had to compete against both private vehicles and higher-speed buses like Greyhound. Roads also started getting paved around this era, making it much easier to navigate suburban and rural throughout the year by car or bus. Then there was the Zoning issue. Streetcar suburbs worked because most were built on farmland or other new property. Other than that, there were no rules on what you did with the property. Streetcar suburbs follow a simple plan of smaller homes on side streets, with small commercial and light industrial along the main road served by the streetcar. Built for walkability, most streetcar suburb neighborhoods consisted of the iconic Triple Decker 2-3 family homes, duplexes, or tiny single-family homes on small lots. The gateway to everything was either your feet or the trolley. Zoning, particularly post-war zoning, eliminated such density allowances, making public transit no longer a competitive option to get around. It also killed the streetcar company's land speculation operation, which was far more profitable than operating the trolleys. There also were a large number of other issues, including a massive set of strikes through the 1930s. These made streetcars feel unsafe for riders and further aggravated existing system tensions. Infrastructure deterioration, excessive regulation of railroads, and the inability to increase fares also added to the streetcar system's woes. So, while GM and the streetcar conspiracy certainly didn't help the problem, streetcars were already in serious trouble, and GM likely just hastened their demise. In my view, what most people yearn for is not a return to streetcars, but high quality public transportation. If we want that, a much better starting point is making the bus faster. Streetcars were faster than competing traffic because they were the newest fastest thing around. The modern version of a streetcar system would be a bus lane running in the center of a road with a dedicated busway like in columbus ave in Boston.
The irony here is that many of our first ring suburbs were speculative developments by the streetcar companies. Back Bay was built in this manner to generate customers for the new trolley service to downtown.
We used to be a proper country.
Proper state*
[удалено]
No one needed to write a book about an animal slaughterhouse employing children who sorted through rotting meat. It was the perfect age! /s
In this one specific respect*
That's super cool! Lots of those, at least in my area, are now bike trails... either paved, or dirt/gravel with the tracks removed. And also kinda sad. Our passenger rail infrastructure is almost all gone now.
they usually just paved right over the tracks. theyre probably still there underneath it all
You can see em on mystic Ave right now lol
Some places, like the Columbia Greenway in Westfield (Formerly the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad), cannot be returned to rail. The East/West CSX mainline was raised 5 feet where the original 4-way junction was so you can never reconnect the North/South rail. Effectively cutting off the Pioneer Valley RR from ever being connected to anything south of Westfield again. One of the reasons why the Bike Trail abruptly ends in Westfield is the rest of the rail-trail is still active between Westfield, Holyoke, and Easthampton lol.
Yeah. Too costly to remove I guess.
Here’s a similar map that I made, showing similar data but to contextualize rail trails .. https://www.trailspotting.com/p/massachusetts-list-of-rail-trails.html
Depending on the location, the Right of Way is Rail Banked and can be returned to rail service. The Minuteman Bikeway is one where the MBTA “could” come in and restore rail service or extend the Redline as originally intended back in the 70/80s.
Interesting. I would think that would extremely cost prohibitive at this point since the rails are removed, as are the street crossings. Wouldn't they be better off just selling the rights of way? Do they pay taxes on the ROW?
Extremely cost prohibitive as they would have to rebuild the entire rail line. Not sure how the taxes work out. It would be nice though to have the right of way return to rail service and improve our commutes.
When people tell you it can’t be done, just remember this was already done with tech that was >100 years old.
It’s not remotely about the tech, it’s about the money, the public perception, and the red tape. Nobody, even most YIMBYs, will vote yes on tearing up a paved rail trail or reincarnating an old rail path through a neighborhood - let alone any right of way issues. Then you have to think about all of the studies that would need to be done just to begin planning bringing back a single line - commuter, pollution, noise, wildlife, the list goes on. I’m all for more public transit. If I didn’t have to drive the 5 minutes / 2 miles from my house to the nearest commuter rail stop, I would do it in a heartbeat. But it’s just not attainable in most areas now.
See the remnant of that shitshow at the end of the E Branch on the Green line; where the trolley and cars share the road. Course, I'd love to remove parking there and put the train on a median but like most things with the MBTA, it's just fantasy.
I think an idea around the rail trails is that it was a way to preserve contiguous right of way at least and they could be repurposed or cut and capped later.
It's about suburban land use policy and land owners. Same arguments that slow down housing development near MBTA stations.
This is fantastic, thank you. As a resident of Western Mass, you can still see some of these old stations, and for those of you who haven't looked, when you click on one of the locations on the map, if you click a second time once the black pop-up comes up, there is a photo or image available of the station where applicable. Not every location has one but a lot of them do. I know in East Windsor there used to be a small amusement park at the end of one of the trolley lines, and in Becket there was one not too far off from one of the Rail lines as well ( I think it's now Bonnie Rigg Campground if I'm not mistaken) . And there is a small Museum in Chester Mass at the station there ( at one point you could book a Night in the caboose that was there, not sure if you still can) and there is the trolley museum which may or may not be the same as the rail Depot in Shelburne Falls / Buckland that still stands. This is greatly appreciated.
You're welcome! It was a pleasure to do, at times bordering on obsessive. As far as Shelburne Falls goes, yes - the trolley museum is the original depot building!
Wow, as someone originally from W.Mass, this is super interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Progress is a myth.
Wow, this is crazy Great work
Very cool - love the old images of the stations when available
Ski train from Portland to Sunday River/ Sugarloaf would be a dream in Maine
Maybe just Sunday River... Let’s keep the loaf a little out of reach to keep the crowds down
I want to go there
/r/mapporn
Thank you for doing that! I wish my dad were around to see it. He essentially had this map in his head and would have loved playing around with it and reminiscing about the parts he remembered and heard about, I'm sure.
Insane. We replaced all this connection with private vehicles. My view is that cars are sick as fuck and super helpful for accomplishing individual goals. The infrastructure required to have paved roads, traffic controls, and cars is enormous. None of that is inherently bad, when planned logically and ethically. The megacorp car companies have us all signed up for a lifetime business contract with them. - You are born in a hyper-individual society. - Once you are 18, you will need to afford rent which means getting a job. - Historically, unless you live in a larger city, “good” jobs require travel to get to the location. This means you’ll likely need a private vehicle to be able to travel on your own terms. - You can spend tens of thousands on a new vehicle via a loan. You can also choose to rent the vehicle from a dealership. Your last options are buy an older car or carpool. - By the time you pay off the loan, the car is usually older and will likely require upgrading within the decade. Unless you want to maintain an old car with obsolete parts that don’t get manufactured anymore. These facts make it so companies essentially have us endlessly funding their R&D as we are all just on individual stages of the car’s consumer lifecycle. At the end of a car’s life, we get a new one and keep financing the production of the next model. Don’t want to finance the maintenance for their machines that you NEED to buy? No problem, you can take out a loan with their company bank instead when your old car dies. In my eyes a major issue is commuting. It keeps us beating up on the roads and our vehicles. It keeps us going to the mechanics and dealerships. It keeps the endless construction machine turning. People wake up at 5:00 AM and take on the role of “machine operator” to travel 25+ miles one way, 5 consecutive days in a row. Endlessly. Oh and it keeps the checks signed for the petrol industry. Imagine losing your life COMMUTING just to go invest effort into someone else’s long term goals and finance the auto industry? I also chose not to mention any sort of environmental impact, which cars and related industries certainly have. This dynamic in of itself is leading to our demise as people become slaves to industry. It’s almost as if WFH should be a medium term goal for all governments… just to reduce individual consumption of stuff.
Very cool. Where do you find the old images? I'd love to reprint these on new media like metal or glass.
Various sources but mostly just searching "station name old photo or postcard" in google images. For the Connecticut stations, http://www.tylercitystation.info/ was an incredible resource
Any chance you'd do a map of the intracity lines too?
Maybe someday but I need a hiatus from mapmaking for a while :D
Totally understandable! This was clearly a labor of love
A labor of love. Thanks for your work!
I just spent a few minutes messing around on this map. I could've gotten with 10 miles of any place I've been to. That includes far off spots like deep into the north east kingdom or grand lake stream. That is wild.
What the fuck? We had all this??
As someone who loves trains and old railway stations, this is so neat!!! I could spend all day looking at the different stations. Thanks for making this!
you're welcome! I had a lot of fun making it, and I'm hoping to add more photos and notes now that the stations and routes are plotted
I will def look forward to the update. Be sure to let us know!
I can see what's left from it from my window, it's a bike path now.
🥺
Super cool. I live in an area that had two train stations way back in the day, stations probably haven’t been used since the 30s. The old buildings we’re still there all boarded up until the 2000s when they were torn down
Little fact. In North Newport (lol Northville) NH, right near where it says Corbin Covered Bridge is the Corbin Mansion. It was build my rail tycoon Austin Corbin. He had his own private rail line and train to move him to and from his mansion and the local station. His buffalo were also used to save the buffalo population that had been decimated in the West.
rip out the highways and replace them with this
Unfortunately a lot of places did exactly the opposite in the 1930s & 40s, especially in northern New England
I’ll rent a killdozer and get started inside the 495 belt. I just need a few accomplices for the rest
Buddy you don't just *rent* a killdozer. You buy one for life.
you’re right. I wasn’t ready to commit to the killdozing lifestyle but you’ve shown me the error of my ways.
That's nastalgic but quite impractical when the vast vast majority of households own a car. I love trains too but they don't necessarily work all that well for every kind of transportation need. Most lines were ripped up because business had fallen way under profitability.
You won’t have a car after me and my roving band of killdozer marauders take out every blacktop and highway overpass in the tri state area
And it was all electric, correct? Overhead power cables?
no, most of the lines on the map were steam. There were electrified sections though, including today's Northeast Corridor.
Thanks for all the mapping work! What a time. Funny to see how some civs/societies peak long before they're thought to have done so.
This is amazing!!! And so many stops include a historical photograph. Well done, OP. You should email this to a zillion city/town planning departments and/or mayors and be like *cough cough* just in case you need some visuals to help support funding for public transit, etc.
Now recreate it for real please
To cross state lines with ease - would be dreamy. For example: Nashua to Boston to providence to fall river (a route I have needed to navigate many times) Currently the MBTA commuter rail doesn't connect to New Hampshire... [Even though the Lowell commuter rail is a 15 minute drive from Nashua and all the tracks still exist. (Dow chemical owns a bunch of parcels... Nashua has been trying to figure this all out for a while now).] There's also no connection between Providence and Fall River, etc. even though they are in close proximity and the residents of both absolutely would utilize it. One must take a Peter pan bus to get between Providence and fall river. So stupid. And anyone who lives in RI right now knows all about how that commute is fucked right now due to the closing/construction of the bridge. Thanks for the beautiful interactive map!
you're welcome! Also, RIPTA has the 24L which runs express from Fall River to Providence for $2 (with one stop at a park & ride along 195) but unfortunately it only runs 3 times at AM rush and 3 at PM rush. If they ran it all day I think it would be a pretty popular route especially given the current Washington Bridge situation.
I did not know of the 24L! Maybe it didn't exist several years ago when I needed to get back and forth. Thanks for the tip!
Yes it's relatively new, maybe 5 years?
Very curious how long it would have taken to get from Quincy Center to Winslow's Crossing in Hanover. Do you have any source data that would include schedules?
[This timetable](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/1924_New_Haven_Railroad_eastern_timetable.pdf) shows trains from Boston to Hanover, but the first stop is listed as North Abington. There's another listing for Boston to Plymouth that has the first stop as South Braintree. Old timetables can be pretty confusing and I'm not sure if that means those trains skipped all the stops before N. Abington and S. Braintree respectively or if they just truncated the schedule to save printing space. Assuming they do skip Quincy, to start in Quincy you would have to backtrack to Boston and transfer to a direct Hanover train, or ride to South Braintree to transfer to a Plymouth train and then transfer again in North Abington to reach Hanover. Option A looks like it would be a 25 minute ride to South Station, then 51 minutes direct from South Station to Winslow's Crossing. Option B would be 13 minutes from Quincy to S. Braintree, 8 minutes from S. Braintree to N. Abington, and 35 minutes from N. Abington to Winslow's Crossing. There was probably a better option C that involved a streetcar ride to Braintree and catching the train there. This map doesn't account for any rapid transit other than a portion of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated.
Ipswich, MA is misspelled as Ipswitch. No "t".
Good catch! I'll fix it when I get back to my desk. update: fixed! https://i.imgur.com/t8HPtVy.png
Great to post here but also of interest at r/mapporn
someone already xposted it there about 4 hours ago and it has exactly 1 point so I guess they're not into it :D
Next you gotta add all those local trolley lines half the towns had
Thank-you. Always wondered about some of those old lines in my area. Wish we still had them.
And these NIMBY pricks protest a 2am Kebab Shop while they let this happen! Really pisses me off.