Tuesday, September 28, 2004, 8:19am
Tuesday, September 28, 2004, 8:19am
We crawl into Framingham this morning through broken woods behind a downtown body shop with automobile doors and fenders leaning neatly outdoors against its back wall. I’ve long since forgotten what this dealership sells. Maybe it’s still Long Pontiac and Cadillac, but they’ve sold many brands over the years and I’m no longer sure which emblem they’re featuring these days. Since it’s nearly pointless to offer cars to those commuting along the rails, it’s hardly surprising to see car parts rather than advertising facing this way.
Curtis, as I recall from my high school days, once worked here – his father being the VP of this particular auto body repair operation. In my senior year Curtis arrived at school one day in what looked like a brand new 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass – shiny with perfect paint. As actually happened, he’d welded this single car together from two half-wrecks to make his own assemblage – a notion inconceivable today among even the most experienced welders of our time. These were the days before digital fiber optic data lines, on-board computers, unibody structures, and composite materials. Resurrecting a 21st century car by welding two halves together might have as much success as sewing a living humpback together from rotting whale carcasses lying dead on a beach.
Rain from Jeanne has just started in earnest this morning. Rather than hunker below my humble umbrella I decided instead to wait inside the Ashland Station crossover tower. The building takes the form of a galvanized steel I-beam frame without walls, bolted together like an erector set from pre-cut shapes in a gauge suitable for a 26-story office tower or moon rocket launching pad. The only thing resembling walls are the tightly meshed heavy gauge screens filling most of the upper level exteriors. On first inspection I thought these were here to keep birds from nesting and people from falling. Yet there is no such mesh on the sides facing away from the tracks, so the design seems more intent on preventing mischief than any particular concern over pest control and pedestrian safety.
The building is really two separate towers rising four short flights of stairs from either side of the tracks. In between a simple mesh-encased walkway passes roughly 20 feet above the rails. Stairways in each tower allow for foot traffic and poured concrete ramps are designed for wheel-borne access – or for people like me who simply prefer the ramps at times.
By now Ashland and Framingham lay far behind and just about everything hauled aboard no longer drips. With no more passengers boarding, there isn’t any need for seat tags placed earlier to signify paying customers, and on approach to our express portion of the run the conductors collect these before vanishing for most of the remaining miles.
Crisscrossing beneath the Pike in eastern Newton I hear the lead car whistling far up ahead the standard sequence for a street crossing or warning to those laboring along the tracks. In a cold heavy rain, it must be a lousy day to be working on a railroad overpass. Yet in the construction trades, working and getting paid are strongly correlated activities, so work continues despite the rain, the noise and the potential danger. Two more times I hear that whistle blow its medium-medium-short-long warning. There are no street crossings east of Dennison Crossing in Framingham, and except for a singular flash from a yellow raincoat I have no direct evidence for its meaning.
Rolling deeper into an urban landscape the combination of dingy windows and beating rain foreshortens my view of the city. Dimmer still, into the Back Bay Tunnel the cave is marked on this side by widely spaced orange light bulbs passing once every second until we slow for our next-to-last station stop. Passengers begin to queue in the darkness of the tunnel, and about half are gone by the time we leave heading for South South Station.
Beyond the tunnel I see water sweating from concrete supports standing below the I-93 canopy and its convoluted tributaries – a sequoia grove of pillars as far as I can see in all directions. Our pace is slow and soon we roll to a gentle stop waiting for outbound traffic to clear. Many times we’ve stopped at this same spot – right where the railroad crosses over the Mass Pike as it begins its passage beneath the Fort Point Channel – a quarter-mile long seabed tunnel forced through the gooey muck at a cost of $1 million per linear foot. We’ll likely sit at this spot a minute or two until the usual Worcester-bound double-decker heads off to the west. Just outside the station all lines converge forming perhaps six or eight meandering tracks crisscrossing and forking before straightening into thirteen parallel tracks laid beside thirteen parallel boarding platforms.
For the last lurch into South Station we roll alongside another single-decker making the same entrance at the same time. Soon the far end of our platform slides into view – which is my own signal to queue at the door.
