Monday, November 22, 2004, 8:25am
Journal Two
Monday, November 22, 2004, 8:25am
Inching along through Natick at perhaps 20mph we’re not late enough to be stuck behind the 8:30am local out of Framingham and I have no other guesses other than to say that we’re stuck behind something.
Evidence is limited in other ways – as this dingy window in particular is about equal to waxed paper – the poor man’s window of previous centuries. Though I suppose, like other assertions in this journal, I should check my facts before saying such things.
A passing bright steel gray glow must be Lake Cochituate and the white blobs near the horizon the taller buildings of the Natick Labs. We’re up to 25mph now, maybe 30 – I don’t have a speedometer, so it’s only a guess.
“We apologize for the delay this morning. The delay is due to track conditions. Again, we apologize for the delay…”
Like Oz first announcing bad news and thereafter quietly appearing in human form, the elder of the two Framingham commuting conductors enters the cabin. A few seats ahead of me, a fellow Ashland Station commuter pumps him for details, and indeed we’re not lumbering behind the 8:30am train, but instead piled up behind the 8:00am local.
No Norm again today and no William either. Instead, a younger conductor patrols the trailing two cars of this train. Frank is running the front two or three carriages – though I’ve only heard him make one announcement this morning, and unlike the Wizard of Oz, he’s yet to reveal his human form to the passengers of the fifth car.
At Natick Station the huge mural painting has me envisioning the much smaller railroad motif inside the Ashland post office. While queued in line I’ve noticed that wall fresco dozens of times and I’d always felt a Disney sort of whimsy seeing a tiny steam engine pulling a chain of horse-drawn-type carriages. Yet I’ve since discovered that indeed the first trains through from Boston to Worcester were pulled by a tiny seven-ton steam engine by the name of ‘Yankee’ trailing a series of stage couch carriages strapped to some sort of frame containing iron wheels.
Starting in 1810, the earliest rail line in Massachusetts hauled granite north to Boston from quarries in Quincy. Besides routine foundation stone for a host of buildings, the most notable result was the assembly of the Bunker Hill Monument – an inspiration for the Washington Monument in miniature and an idea stolen from the ancient Egyptians who probably borrowed the idea from somebody even more ancient than that.
The Quincy rail line was horse-drawn and early planning for rail systems across the Commonwealth and elsewhere presumed flesh and blood horses as well. Apparently, the original intent of a railroad was to simply to build a better road, with little inkling of the proportions to follow.
After considerable debate between those advocating private versus public ownership of the rails, in 1830 a host of private rail companies received charters from the Massachusetts legislature. Only three of these companies took root – The Boston and Lowell, the Boston and Providence, and the Boston and Worcester and by 1835 all three had working lines. From what I understand, the Ashland post office mural depicts the very first Boston and Worcester passenger train though Unionville – the old name for Ashland village – exactly as it arrived to great fanfare that summer day.
While on the topic of historical inquiry I’ve checked some immigration statistics for new arrivals shortly before the construction of these first lines – figuring these would be the most likely laborers carving rail lines to faraway cities. Because the Irish potato famine began no earlier than the 1840s it seems that I am dead wrong about hordes of Irish laborers building mile upon mile of hand-hewn granite retaining walls lining much of this line. Later, the Irish did indeed perform much of the backbreaking construction work of the original Boston city subway system, and very likely some of Irish descent were among those working on these earlier railroads, but there were no mass migrations underpinning the labor pool from anywhere, and the railroads were largely built by descendants of the earliest settlers.
When initially opened, the first tracks were privately-owned toll-paying public ways where anyone could spice a siding onto the main line, and after paying a rental fee – operate at will, at least until everyone discovered how this arrangement left the rails utterly impassable. Soon it was required that every user first negotiate a fixed schedule and obtain written permission to use the rails prior to each excursion – a tradition that exists right down to this very day with respect to CSX who now owns the Boston and Worcester Line and the MBTA who rents time on the rails – and particularly why a broken FAX machine at Union Station in Worcester can gum up the works the length of the line all the way into South Station.
The rails reek of history like this, and the more I read the more I realize how little I know.
