December 17, 2024

The old railroad bed, such as it is.

 

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

-Francis Drake

 

Back in my preteen years, while living in Salt Lake City, Utah, my neighborhood friends and I were always looking for adventure of one sort or another.  We lived in a suburban residential area that had grid-like streets, sidewalks bounded by well-kept lawns surrounding three-bedroom houses sitting on 3/4 acre lots.  It was quiet and not much happened, unless you made it happen.  One of the places we loved to go to make stuff happen, at least in our overactive imaginations, was “The Gulley.”

The Gulley lay a little more than two blocks from my house and was easily accessible.  A half-mile or so wide, it was the extension of Immigration Canyon, the route that Brigham Young and his Mormons took when they first entered the Great Salt Lake Valley.  At one time, there was a railroad that ran down inside its length, but that was long gone by the time my intrepid team happened upon the scene.  The railroad bed was still there, but the rails were all gone.  A few creosote-soaked wooded ties survived and we even found an occasional railroad spike lying around, but there wasn’t much else.  A small creek ran down through the lowest parts of the defile then disappeared under the city in storm drains.  The place was choked with weeds and bushes which made the going challenging, especially given our diminutive stature.  All the same, it was a great place to practice being something like a Richard Burton looking for the source of the White Nile.

Maybe my subliminal burning-yearning for adventure and exploration began way back then, I don’t know.  I certainly had many wonderful real adventures and explorations, in places like East Africa and elsewhere, since then, but those early formative years laid down the desire for searching out new things and experiences that persists today.  It’s interesting that now, in my seventies, I’m once again bushwhacking my way down overgrown old railroad beds just to discover what’s there.

Waldo and my usual trek is along the Assebet River Rail Trail.  It is a tarmac-paved path that runs atop (mostly) the old roadbed of the Marlborough Branch of the Fitchburg Railroad.  The rail trail goes from what is now the Acton Station of the Boston Commuter Rail south(ish) to downtown Marlborough, but not contiguously.  There is a northern piece that runs south from Acton for about 3.5 miles and a southern piece that goes further south for another 5.25 miles from Hudson to Marlborough.  There is this gap between the two, about 3.85 miles long.  Part of it (around 1.85 miles) is now a private road that you can walk along without hindrance, but about 2 miles of the gap is “undeveloped,” which usually equates to “bushwhack.”  Waldo and I, in the past, have walked all but that 2-mile bushwhacky part.  That’s a juicy piece of adventure we opt to begin today.

By looking at Google Maps, I know that there is at least one place where the old railroad bed crosses the Assebet River.  Looking at the satellite maps, I doubt that any bridges that once spanned the water are still there.  The plan is to start at the Hudson end of the trail and head north(ish) until we strike river, then turn around and come back.  We start out late in the day, so I decide to leave the northern part of the gap for another day.

Waldo and I start out from the parking lot at the southern end of the gap.  Somewhere near here, the railroad that is now the Mass Central Rail Trail crossed the railroad that is now the Assebet Rail Trail.  The Hudson terminus of the Mass Central Rail Trail is just across Route 62 and  runs southeast to Sudbury, but we don’t go that way.  Instead, we start at the northern end of the Assebet River Rail Trail and keep going north in a straight line.

The ground is flat and overgrown with small-bole new-growth trees (now barren of leaves) and many stalks and branches of the late fall remnants of bushes and weeds.  The ground is covered by a thick carpet of dead oak and maple leaves, but the ground under that is easy to walk on.  There is no obvious dike or raised ground that hints it was once railroad bed, but, with some imagination, I can sort of see where there might have been one.

We don’t go far and we cross a road.  On the other side, I can no longer guess where the railroad bed used to run.  Some ridges and troughs run in the right direction, but nothing that even whispers “railroad.”  There are no significant nearby hills and although we’re are in a wood, my view of our surroundings is not obscured by greenery.  Still, I can’t find wherever the tracks used to be — their footprint is lost to time.  Small-bole trees and weeds still complicate our route, especially when you’re attached by long leash to a hyperactive border collie who is operating in go-mode.  I plod my way through the brush behind Waldo until we get back to Route 62 (which runs parallel to our track, then turns to cross it).  On the other side, I can see a raised dike, that is obviously what’s left of a railroad, and we head there.

It’s a nice day to be outside doing this.

 

Can you see it? It takes off to the right, I’m pretty sure…

 

To be continued…

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