Tracking the Light is Brian Solomon’s daily blog focused on the nuts and bolts of Railway Photography.
Today’s post explores the former Boston & Maine yard at Shelburne Falls (technically Buckland, but I’ll let the pundits argue that privately), now home to the modest Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. See: http://sftm.org
Last week Mike Gardner visited the site to make photographs of Pan Am Railway’s eastward autorack train symbol 28N. While waiting, I exposed a few views of the disused yard tracks parallel to the old Boston & Maine, now Pan Am, mainline.
Tracking the Light posts something different every day!
Yes, in the winter you can see the grade on the left side of Rt5 at South Deerfield. Somewhere in there, there was a junction with the line that went toward Bardwells. North of Hillside Road you cross the old NHRR right of way and that’s where you can see the stone culverts on the right (near Old Deerfield Village). When I first started visiting the area in the early 1980s, the NH ROW was much more evident than today.
Thanks, Brian.
I ‘ve seen where the south end of that branch came off the main, where Route 5/10 now runs, and some places in the countryside leading up towards the Deerfield River.
Did you ever notice that next to one of the little shops on the east side of Routes 5/10, about a quarter mile before the turn-off into Historic Deerfield, is the remains of an old culvert (probably a pass-under for a road or farm access). It’s overgrown with vegetation but intact. It is in line with remains of the NHRR main, but there is no sign of an ROW grade right there–just the culvert sticking up. That stretch of 5/10, which isn’t on topo maps old enough to show the NHRR line, runs through swampy ground. I wonder whether the RR fill was taken to build 5/10 there.
I’m always on the look-out for former ROW when driving someplace. I commuted from Amherst to Deerfield for six months a couple of years ago. Plenty of lost railroad in western MA, as nobody knows better than you.
The junction was at Bardwell’s Ferry between the big bridge over the Deerfield River and the deep rock cutting at the west end of the bridge. The old New Haven right of way is still extant in places, but totally tree’d over. It’s been many years since I inspected the area around the rock cutting, but as I recall there wasn’t much to see, but there was evidence of the NH row. I think there might have been some cross ties further down the line toward the road crossing. But that was 30+ years ago.
Brian S.
Do you know, is there any trace remaining of the former junction between the New Haven and the B&M, east of Shelburne Falls?