Old Littleton station
Looking across King St. at the grade crossing, you can see off in the distance an intact freight siding, although I have no idea if it actually gets any service these days.
Old Littleton station
It's been a long time since the post office moved individual bags of mail by train, but there still is a post office across Taylor St. (behind and to my right) from the B&M station.
Old Littleton station
If you look carefully above the big pile of junk in front of the entrance, you can see the "LITTLETON" station sign.
Ayer station
Ayer is another odd duck of a station. Like West Concord, it is also the location of a former diamond crossing of two railroads, but in this case, the southern leg is Pan Am's Worcester Main Line, and the station is located in the middle of a working railyard and athwart the busy east-west main line.. However unsuitable the station location may be, it's all the town has, and the local economic development department is investing in improved pedestrian accommodations. The local RTA has built a new parking garage adjacent to the Nashua River Rail Trail, the former north branch of the diamond.
Ayer station
To get to the station, one crosses a lightly-used freight track at grade before getting to the outbound platform. In the distance at right, an old interlocking tower before the freight track branches off to the northwest. (The branch serves a couple of local freight customers but is abandoned north of the Nashua River.)
Ayer station
This station layout is very, very odd, and of course the platforms are inadequate and totally inaccessible. The platforms here are highly substandard and barely 350 feet long, although there is room in the right of way for at least 500-foot platforms. Seems like the best option would be to shift passenger service to the north, replacing the freight track and building an island platform here.
Ayer station
A freight train of single-stack container well cars is stopped in the interlocking, fouling the eastbound main line — good thing there is no passenger service operating on a Sunday! Clearances on the Pan Am generally don't allow for double-stack containers east of Ayer, although there is clearance for autoracks.
Ayer station
Looking east along the inbound platform, with two generations of shelter.
Ayer station
If you believe the engineer's stop-location signs, a five-car train can platform here (the 5-car-stop sign is located just beyond the signal). All in all, a pretty horrendous station.
Shirley station
Surely, Shirley station can't be as bad as that, right? A cute little shelter, bike rack, small parking lot?
Shirley station
Oh no, it's much worse. That's the platform. All of it.
Shirley station
No really, that's all the platform there is. And there's plenty of room within the right-of-way for a proper platform, but apparently even that was to much too spend on this station. (But they built a ramp up to the inaccessible, low-level platform!)
Shirley station
This is actually a spot where you could maybe see staggered platforms and a gauntlet track (or just a pair of turnouts) as a real solution, but at inflated MBTA costs that's at least a $5 million project. (For how awful it is, this station got 150 boardings a day in pre-COVID measurements, which is only, um, $33,000 a passenger. Maybe more people would use it if the station were more usable.)
North Leominster station
This is another odd duck. Low-level platforms with mini-highs, but on a viaduct and connected to a multi-story parking garage belonging to the local Regional Transit Authority. Why would you not build full-high platforms here? It certainly seems like it's new enough, and if the traffic justifies building a big garage, it surely ought to justify high platforms. I'm guessing this may have something to do with railroad objections to high platforms, since the station sits smack across the Pan Am Southern freight main line to Albany.
North Leominster station
The station is at least old enough for the signage to have experienced some significant sun fading.
North Leominster station
The three-story parking garage and bus station, which opened in 2014, has its entrance on Nashua St. The street level is combination bus stop and kiss-and-ride, with parking on the upper floors. Like at Ayer, the garage is owned and operated by MART, the Montachusett Regional Transit Authority.
North Leominster station
The station does have full-length platforms, even if they are low-level.
North Leominster station
As at the other outer stations on the line, passengers in one direction must cross the tracks at grade — in this case, I'm standing on the inbound platform. Despite all these flaws, and a location hardly conducive to walk-up traffic, North Leominster served 240 boardings a day in the 2018 passenger counts.
North Leominster station
I was really surprised to see this sign — announcing the bustition of weekday service between Littleton and Cambridge for the next two months — here, and only here, of all stations on the line.
North Leominster station
That's an electrical substation just north of the tracks — a reminder that the Fitchburg Line should be one of the easiest to electrify, with few underpasses needing to be raised or replaced, no freight service east of Littleton, and close proximity to electrical transmission lines for much of its length. (Most of the difficult construction would be required here, west of Ayer, to maintain freight clearances, so the outer part of the line might require diesel operation for substantially longer.)
Fitchburg station
Finally, we are in Fitchburg! It's not the end of the Fitchburg Line, because there are two stations in Fitchburg, but this is the older and more heavily used of the two. The railroad was three to four tracks through most of Fitchburg, but other than the two-track main line, that has largely been abandoned. The third track is still maintained through the station, however, with a single platform track serving trains in both directions, befitting Fitchburg station's prior status as a terminus. Crossovers east and west of the station allow eastbound trains to service the platform track and then switch back over to the usual main line track.
Fitchburg station
I do not understand how these signal indications work for a three-track line.
Fitchburg station
A suspiciously new-looking station, and yet... it's a full-length low-level platform with a mini-high at the end. There is plenty of space for a proper high platform. The platform track sees absolutely no freight. Why, MBTA? Why?
Fitchburg station
Now that's what signals for a bidirectional triple-track line ought to look like.
Fitchburg station
Like North Leominster, this is an intermodal station operated by the local RTA, MART (or MRTA, the signs are inconsistent). The part of the station at center seems to be leased out to a cafe; the mini-high platform is at left.
Fitchburg station
Big parking garage, state university, bus station, train station, and a café. You'd think it would be a decent trip destination, but it's not, at least not on expensive commuter rail. It's a sizeable trip origin, though, with 290 boardings in the 2018 manual passenger counts.
Wachusett station
Now on to the other station in Fitchburg, which is also the very newest station in the entire MBTA rail network. It isn't at Mount Wachusett (which is in Princeton), but it's called "Wachusett".
Wachusett station
Another ocean of parking (all surface parking this time, no garages out here)
Wachusett station
A two-circuit high-voltage transmission line crosses the rail line here. (This wouldn't be a good location for an electrification substation, though: those are better placed in the middle.)
Wachusett station
It is a very big station for a single-track terminal more than an hour from Boston.
Wachusett station
As at Fitchburg, there is a separate platform track here so terminating trains don't foul the main line while they switch ends and police the train. Terminating trains do not lay over there; there's separate facility a mile away for train storage and light maintenance.
Wachusett station
Looking east at the end of the platform, where the ramp comes down from the parking lot
Wachusett station
Current safety codes require an "area of refuge" that is accessible to disabled passengers if the main accessible egress is blocked. The MBTA elected to simply build another ramp at the west end of the platform.
Wachusett station
As befits a brand-new station, Wachusett is equipped with the very latest in energy-efficient LED lighting and surveillance cameras everywhere. Hi, guys!
Westminster layover facility
1½ miles west of Wachusett station, in an industrial park next to a quarry in the town of Westminster, the MBTA built a layover facility to store Fitchburg Line trains overnight. Of course, it being a weekend during a service suspension, the trains weren't going anywhere today — but I could clearly hear and smell diesel engines running, which is not supposed to be the case in a layover facility (there are supposed to be electric plug-ins to keep each train's engine warm overnight). The trains are stored here in the consists that they will enter service with on Monday morning.