Tag Archives: Beacon Park

photography

Beacon Park Final Farewell—August 2016.

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My last view. (Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler and Google Plus viewers may need to click on Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light to see the big picture).

This former Boston & Albany freight yard was the site of some my earliest photographic efforts.

My last-ever view of Boston's Beacon Park yard. Exposed using a Lumix LX7 and processed with Lightroom to adjust framing and contrast.
My last-ever view of Boston’s Beacon Park yard. Exposed in late-August 2016 using a Lumix LX7 and processed with Lightroom to adjust framing and contrast.

Several years ago, in a deal with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, CSX agreed to close its Boston yard to open the property for redevelopment. As a result, its intermodal yard at Worcester was expanded to accommodate the lost capacity.

The result is that Boston now has virtually no through rail-freight service. The trickle of remaining CSX rail-freight traffic is handled by a local from Framingham, Massachusetts. Container (and piggyback) traffic is accommodated by road.

Many years ago, Boston was a major freight hub, and Beacon Park was a very busy place—those days have long since passed.

For the last few years, the tracks at Beacon Park have sat disused and rusted.

Presently, track gangs are salvaging what remains of the old yard.

Someone, somewhere will declare ‘progress’.

Ironically, I exposed this view from a bus on the Mass-Turnpike Extension, the highway that more than 50 years ago assumed operation on considerable chunks of former Boston & Albany right of way.

Tracking the Light is Daily.

 

photography

Conrail Classic: Beacon Park Yard, November 1987.

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Exposed on Kodachrome 25 using a Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.
Exposed on Kodachrome 25 using a Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.

This Kodachrome slide represents a memory of how things were:

Back when Conrail operated the old Boston & Albany.

Back when Boston’s Beacon Park was an active yard.

I passed this location on the Logan Express bus from Framingham the other day. It is much changed

The tracks at CP4 were being re-aligned.

A few years back CSX had come to an arrangement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and agreed to close the yard.

Now at Beacon Park the remaining yard tracks are weed grown and vacant.

Intermodal trains now only run as far east as Worcester where a new, expanded yard was constructed during 2011-2012 to take the place of Beacon Park.

What little carload freight CSX has in Boston is handled by a local freight.

I’d be willing to bet that today more freight moves through the interchange at Palmer than is generated in Boston.

Tracking the Light is Daily!