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Readville: Crossroads on the Corridor

Bound for the last stop on the Providence Line at Wickford Junction, MBTA Train 819 with F40PH-3 1069 passes an idle CSX GP40-2 at CSX’s Readville Yard. A parking lot at the end of the street on the Dedham/Boston border provides this unusual view on November 20, 2024.

Readville: Crossroads on the Corridor

February 2025by Tim Doherty/photos by the author except as noted

Nine miles west from South Station in Boston, the Northeast Corridor drops from three tracks to two. One Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority commuter line diverges to the north with a stop at Readville, and another one crosses over from the south. The New Haven’s once-extensive yard complex still hosts CSX’s largest carload yard within the Route 128 beltway and the MBTA daytime layover yard for the southside commuter rail trains. The Northeast Corridor runs right down the middle, hosting 38 Amtrak trains each weekday. An additional 74 MBTA commuter trains run back and forth between Boston, Providence, and Stoughton, Mass., and Wickford Junction, R.I.

The compass circle of lines centered on Readville is the product of multiple independent railroad projects in the first half of the 19th century. After the consolidation by the New Haven at the end of that century, the railroad had duplicate routes through Readville connecting Boston with points west. Over time, the better engineered Boston to Providence/Shore Line predominated over the other routes, which eventually fell victim to their secondary status and redundancy. With multiple trains on different tracks, the sprawling former New Haven station complex at Readville is a great place to sit back and watch the parade of MBTA, Amtrak, and a handful of CSX trains coming and going in four different directions.

Readville

ABOVE: An MBTA Providence Line train led by F40PH-3 1032 is about to be overtaken by Amtrak Acela 2159 at Readville on the morning of November 23, 2021. The MBTA train on Track 3 will wait for Acela’s passing before crossing to Track 1 near the southern end of the station.

Northeast Corridor
Forming the northern end of the Corridor, Boston & Providence Railroad started carrying passengers between Readville and Boston in 1834. With the construction of the massive stone viaduct at Canton in 1835, the line extended to Providence and then on to Stonington, Conn., in 1837. A steamboat crossing to Long Island and a rail connection provided the first through route to New York City. From that point on, B&P would become the principal route between New York and Boston. Ownership transferred to Old Colony Railroad for five years before being taken over by the New Haven in 1893. After the New Haven was absorbed into Penn Central in 1969, MBTA purchased most of the remaining Penn Central rail property in 1973. Amtrak received Penn Central’s reserved intercity passenger easement on the corridor in 1976 after the creation of Conrail.

A Corridor Crossroads
Crossing over the Corridor at Readville is the former New Haven Midland Division, which is now the MBTA Fairmount Line. With a connection to the Corridor at Transfer Interlocking, the old Midland Division parallels the NEC a couple of miles to the east all the way to South Station and Cove Interlocking.

Readville

ABOVE: CSX’s Readville–Framingham local L010 operates with the punctuality of a passenger train as the moves from Readville to Walpole are made tightly between MBTA commuter trains. After backing out from the yard, the local passes over a short section of the Fairmount Line before joining the Franklin Line.

The Midland was constructed as a route into Boston from Dedham and Readville in the 1850s to compete with Boston & Providence. It operated intermittently until Boston, Hartford & Erie leased it in 1867 to provide a through route to New York. With the takeover of successor New York & New England by the New Haven in 1898, the line turned into a secondary branch and lost its through passenger trains. Commuter service on the Midland would end by 1944 until it was restored by the Southwest Corridor Project on November 3, 1979.

The Southwest Corridor project, developed by state planners and implemented by MBTA, relocated 4.7 miles of the rapid transit Orange Line in the city of Boston from the original Washington Street Elevated structure to the parallel NH/NEC alignment between Forest Hills and Cove. In its place, two subway tracks and three railroad tracks of the NEC would be built in tunnel and trench sections. A key element of the Southwest Corridor project was the shift during construction of all the Amtrak intercity and MBTA commuter trains to a rehabilitated Midland Division. This move allowed the new Orange Line and NEC segments to be constructed without railroad interference (see “MBTA Orange Line: A Total Transformation” in the September 2024 Railfan & Railroad).

Readville

ABOVE: With three MBTA routes and the Northeast Corridor converging at Readville, three-way meets of trains are common. At twilight on November 27, 2023, eastbound Amtrak Train 86 is stopped for traffic ahead while Acela 2173 heads west and an outbound Franklin Line train stops on the ramp.

Three stations were initially opened in 1979 as trains shifted to the Fairmount Line. With the completion of the Southwest Corridor Project in 1987, the commuter service proved popular enough to continue on what was known internally by MBTA as the Dorchester Branch and publicly as the Fairmount Line. Four more stations were included as part of the 2005 commitment to mitigate the air quality impacts of the Big Dig highway project, and they were constructed over the next decade. The station construction and service frequency improvements on the Fairmount Line were based on a community-backed plan to replicate rapid transit-style services to become the proposed Indigo Line.

The MBTA’s commuter rail operator, Keolis, sought and was approved in 2024 to begin the purchase of new Battery Electric Multiple Unit (EBMUs) trainsets for the Fairmount Line. These BEMU cars would do two things — make a meaningful step toward electrification of the MBTA’s commuter rail system and make a big step toward what has been envisioned for the Indigo Line.

The MBTA southside daytime layover yard for commuter trains is located just to the east of Readville station on the Fairmount Line. There is no public access to the yard itself, but movements into the yard are visible from either the Fairmount Line or the station itself. Each weekday morning and early afternoon, a parade of deadheading trains travels between the yard and South Station. As one of the larger MBTA facilities on the south side of the system, Readville generates various equipment and other non-revenue moves regularly enough to pay attention to them…


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This article was posted on: January 24, 2025