Red Line (trunk)
JFK/UMass station
Originally called "Columbia", JFK/UMass Station was expanded after the Braintree Branch was constructed in order to allow South Shore riders easy access to the nearby UMass–Boston campus. The Old Colony commuter rail stop was also added late in the process for the reopening of those lines; originally it was planned that commuter trains would not stop between Quincy Center and South Station. A man was killed after these photos were taken when one of the stairways down from Columbia Road collapsed. North of the station, Columbia Junction provides the only access to the Red Line's inconveniently located Cabot Yard, the overnight storage and maintenance facility for the Braintree Branch.
JFK/UMass station
This very odd station configuration, with separate but parallel platforms for the Braintree and Ashmont branches, was built this way because Greater Boston was really, really racist; the branches should have diverged south of Savin Hill (the four tracks run parallel all the way) but management thought that South Shore suburbanites wouldn't take the Red Line to the financial district if their trains stopped in a Black neighborhood. As a result, the newer Old Colony commuter rail suffers from a severe bottleneck here was the five tracks are squeezed in next to the Southeast Expressway. Both Red Line branches took over rights of way belonging to the Old Colony Railroad or its predecessors.
Kendall/MIT station
Kendall Square has been a hotbed of development since the late 1970s, but in the 2000s most of that activity was concentrated on the northeast side of the square proper, and along Binney St. After that district was largely built out, development moved back to Main St., west of the square, where the main Red Line headhouses were moved when platforms were extended for six-car trains in the 1980s. A number of the buildings on the south side of Main St. have been demolished for a large MIT-led commercial redevelopment, and on the north side of the street, one of the 1980s Cambridge Center building was demolished and replaced, and several others saw gut renovations for tech companies (notably Google). As a part of this redevelopment, the headhouses on both sides of the station are being replaced at no cost to the MBTA by the developers of the adjacent buildings. This peek behind the construction fence shows what remains of the old inbound headhouse. The station remained open with a new (temporary/) headhouse seen at right.
Kendall/MIT station
Across Main St., what's left of the old outbound headhouse still servers riders while its replacement is built behind the scrim wall. It was announced in the spring that the outbound station would be closed for several weeks to facilitate construction of the new headhouse, but this does not seem to have come to pass by year's end.
Kendall/MIT station
When the platforms were extended, the MBTA was still operating its obsolete #5 Cambridge–Dorchester cars — which were not retired until 1994 — and those cars could only operate as two- or four-car trains. These signs hanging from the ceiling tell the operators where to stop when operating short trains (although this never happens any more: the Red Line runs six-car trains at all hours regardless of demand).
Kendall/MIT station
The original Kendall station was actually located in Kendall Square proper, just a simple stairway down from street level. When the platforms were extended, the east entrances were made exit-only, and token sales moved to the more spacious, new west entrances. When tokens were phased out, the entrance was reopened with new electronic faregates.
Kendall/MIT station
A "Transit Ambassador" — a third-party contractor brought in to provide customer assistance after the elimination of token-booth clerks — stands by the fare array on the outbound platform. In addition to customer assistance, the ambassadors also log maintenance issues and check on the operation of the elevators.