March 14 is the anniversary of one of the worst railroad accidents that ever happened in Massachusetts. On March 14, 1887, a train filled with suburban commuters was on its way from Dedham to Park Square station in Boston, stopping in West Roxbury and Roslindale along the way. Moments before it would have passed through Forest Hills, disaster struck. By the time the engineer turned around, he saw a cloud of dust and a pile of twisted rubble where nine passenger cars should have been. In a split second, a normal morning commute was transformed into a nightmare of death and dismemberment for hundreds of passengers.
Tag: railroads
Boston’s Railroad Jubilee (episode 203)
In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days. After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line’s steamers giving access to markets in England. To celebrate the new era of railroading, the city threw a grand Railroad Jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the Governor General of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country. Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs old political party; Boston’s ever-present competition with New York City; and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.
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A Genuine, Bonafide, Non-Electrified Monorail! (episode 133)
You may think taking the T is painful today, but back in the days of horsedrawn streetcars, public transportation was slow, inefficient, and frequently snarled in downtown traffic. In the 1880s, proposals for elevated railways and subways competed for attention as Boston’s rapid transit solution. Then, an ambitious inventor stormed the scene with a groundbreaking proposal for a monorail. He even went as far as building a mile long track in East Cambridge, showing that the monorail worked. If it hadn’t been for bad luck and bad politics, we might all be taking monorails instead of today’s Red and Orange lines, but instead the monorail turned out to be more of a Shelbyville idea.
Continue reading A Genuine, Bonafide, Non-Electrified Monorail! (episode 133)
Boston Standard Time (episode 113)
With New Year’s Eve comes the ball drop in Times Square at the stroke of midnight. But in the late 1800s, Boston dropped a ball every day to mark the stroke of noon, because telling the time was serious business. The time ball, along with telegraphic signals and fire alarm bells, announced the exact time to the public, at a time when the exact time was critical to navigation on the high seas and safety on the newfangled railroads. With ultra-precise clocks made by local jewelers and true astronomical time announced daily by the Harvard Observatory, Boston Standard Time became the de facto standard for a wide swath of the country long before time zones were officially proposed and adopted.