Folks: am going to be in Boston end of January to care for grandchildren. I do have the middle part of the day free, so would like to experience MBTA and railfan the area. Do you have any suggestions?. I would like a paper system map but apparently these are not available. Thanks in advance. Andy
https://www.mbta.com/schedules
since you are a grandparent you may be good for half rate fares on the MBTA .You can get a senior Crd through thr MBTA but I have been able to show some ID with my age and have that accepted for the half rate fare.
There is one pair of road freights that runs into Framingham and a number of local freights that run into or out of Framingham.
https://groups.io/g/csx-boston-line/files/csxtrainsymbols%20070617.pdf This is the only symbol info I could find quickly
Q436/Q437 do run mostly at night I believe. There ae a lot of local freights in and out of Framingham that run during the day but Boston does not have much freight activity any more.
Worcester is the location on the east end of the old Boston and Albany for freight activity. All the piggyback and container trains now originate and terminate at Worcester. Q4426/427 leave Worcester to go to and from the old B&M which runs to Ayer Now symboled as M426/M427 M427 often arrives early to late morning at New Bond st Worcester . It often leaves New Bond st early to mid afternoon to go down to the B&A and head west. The is a lot of P&W activity in Worcester with a freight to and from Gardner Mass . It leaves Worcester late morning to early afternoon returns about 4 hours later.
If you contact me I can give you more detailed info ronhigh44 at gmail
Ron
If transit stuff vintewrests you, by all means ride/photo the Ashmont - Mattapan with its 77-year-old PCC cars. There is a thread can give you the idea of the goold scenery, and photographing the line is easy.
Use the “Search” with AshmontANDMattapan
More vmodern light rail operations in the center of roads with landscaping: Outdoor portions of Beacon and Commonwealth Av. lines.
Convdersion of the old B&A (NYCentreal) Highland Branch to light rail makes it similar to classic interurbans.
Jack May’s visit to Boston is available on the Transit Forum.
A local group: www.bsra.org
Q (now M) 436 does run during the morning occasionally. M437 does not exist, it was supposedly going to but that never happened. Instead a local “L” symbol takes the train to Worcester for I115. Two pairs of intermodal trains run to and from Worcester, but mostly during the night. I022 arrives during the morning.
thanks Dave. I had a short walk to Mattapan and rode the PCC several time. South Station is being remodeled and I could walk freely on any platform. What fun. Thanks Andy