Usually when passenger service on a rail line is discontinued, it never comes back, but there have been some exceptions. One is the MBTA’s South Coast Rail “line,” in the shape of the letter “Y,” going from Boston to the two outer destinations of New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts. The route was historically part of the Old Colony Railroad, and later the New Haven, branching westward from the main (now Amtrak’s NEC) at Canton Junction. The old New Haven served New Bedford and Fall River until 1958, and passenger trains on the rest of the Old Colony lines bit the dust shortly after.
On March 24 of this year, service from Boston’s South Station returned under the auspices of the “T” for the first time in 66 years, with 36 miles of track rebuilt. As part of my effort to catch up on all the “new starts” in the United States and Canada, including lines that have returned to service, I rode from Boston to New Bedford on Tuesday, October 7 and back from Fall River the next day.
Service returned under the MBTA (the “T”) as part of Boston’s regional rail system, operated by Keolis. The operation is unusual, because of the shape of the line. The operation is not like the Northside line on Boston’s North Shore, where alternating trains go either to Rockport or Newburyport, with essentially “double service” to inner suburbs like Salem and Beverly. Instead every train runs between South Station and either New Bedford or Fall River. Shuttle trains serve the other destination from a transfer station in East Taunton, about a 75 or 80-minute ride from Boston. There are slightly more trains that serve New Bedford than Fall River 15 or 14 on weekdays and seven or six on weekends. Saturday and Sunday schedules are the same.
While the operation is interesting, the line is not scenic, and the stations are not placed conveniently for visiting the towns, which are interesting and normally have plenty of things to see and do.
The Line
The current line is not the original route to New Bedford and Fall River. Rather it is a longer line where service is operating for several years on a temporary basis. There are presently unfunded plans to restore service in the future through Easton and Taunton on the former line that was abandoned south of Stoughton, which is two stops south of Canton Junction. In the meantime, the trains now run on the former Middleborough-Lakeville Line, on newly upgraded track the rest of the way to the transfer point and the destination cities on the New Bedford Main or Fall River Branch from Myrics Junction. The route to Fall River essentially follows the original 1846 route of the Old Colony & Fall River RR.
Passenger trains were absent from the entire Old Colony system (except between Providence and Boston, which is now part of the NEC) from 1959 until the present Kingston (and also a short branch to a Plymouth station that was not close to the center of town) and Middleborough-Lakeville Lines opened for restored service in 1997. Because of local opposition and other issues, the Greenbush Line did not get new passenger service for another ten years. The South Coast routes extend the former Middleborough-Lakeville Line and run on it as far as Middleborough. Today the Lakeville station is used only for the seasonal Cape Flyer train to Hyannis on summer weekends, although there has been talk of running peak-commuting trains as far as Buzzards Bay, just short of the Cape Cod Canal and the famous lift bridge that carries the Cape Flyer and local freight trains over the canal.
From South Station, the trains run along the right-of-way of the Red Line subway on a surface-running segment through Quincy to Braintree. They do not serve Back Bay Station. The only current station located in a downtown area is Brockton, although the Bridgewater station is within walking distance of downtown and Bridgewater State, the local college. The next stop after Middleborough is East Taunton, where cross-platform transfers are available. I rode the 6:45 AM departure, the first train of the morning. It was bound for Fall River, so it was necessary to change trains for New Bedford.
The ride between Boston and the outer ends is scheduled to take roughly 1¾ hours, although my train was not due into New Bedford until 8:47. The trainset that was supposed to leave Boston consisted of both single-level cars (two types) and bilevel cars, a mix found only on the T. Due to mechanical issues, all riders were sent to an all-bilevel consist on a dfferent track, which delayed our departure by 15 minutes. Still, there was enough slack in the schedule that we arrived at New Bedford at 8:43. On the way there, there is a station at Church Street, in the northern part of town.
The Towns
New Bedford and Fall River have much in common, and a single day was only enough time to get the flavor of each of them. Both towns are historic, and both pride themselves on their maritime history. New Bedford has two maritime museums: the New Bedford Whaling Museum (which requires all day to see in detail) and another operated by the National Park Service, which was closed due to the federal government shutdown when I was there. The town also has an active waterfront, with ferries, fishing boats, and some freight-carrying boats. Fall River also has a maritime museum and a waterfront but, instead of major commercial activity, there is Battleship Cove, which is now home to the battleship USS Massachusetts and other vintage Navy ships that are now tourist attractions.
The cities are similar in population: New Bedford has slightly more than 100,000 residents, which Fall River has slightly less than that number. Both cities have highly diversified populations, due in large part to their industrial and seafaring histories. Mills are still standing in both places, and some have been repurposed for commercial or residential use. In addition to immigrants who came to this country to work in the mills, many islanders from the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and Madeira formed the large Portuguese communities in both towns. There are also Italian, various Hispanic, other European, and Asian communities. New Bedford was founded by Quakers, and the Black community there has historic roots. Frederick Douglass lived there for a few years around 1840. The diversity in both cities also gave rise to a varied food scene, consisting mostly of locally owned, independent restaurants.
Another feature that the destinations have in common is that the train stations are not located in convenient places. The New Bedford station is about a half-hour walk north of the city center. The mapping software on my tablet directed me to walk along Acushnet Avenue, a grimy industrial street named after the river that flows through the town. It might have been a better idea to walk across a new bridge from the station and over a wide highway to Purchase Street, and take a bus the rest of the way. The Fall River station is also located some distance north of downtown. There is a boardwalk and bike-and-walking trail along the waterfront that goes to the station, but there are presently no wayfinding signs, so access is tricky. There is a proposal to extend the line to Battleship Cove in the future.
Both towns are historic, but their histories are somewhat different.
New Bedford
New Bedford is a beautiful, historic city. Its primary industry in the middle of the 19th century was whaling, although other maritime trades were practiced there, and industry later supplanted maritime trade. Herman Melville spent time in town and used it as the setting for Moby Dick, his classic novel about whaling, which was published in 1851. Many of the old buildings along the waterfront have been preserved, and they are now filled with shops and eateries that cater to tourists as well as locals.
Downtown New Bedford appears to have changed little in the past 100 years, and many century-old (or older) commercial and government buildings are well-kept and still serve their original purposes. The interior at City Hall (originally the library) dates from the early 1900s and features a semicircular elevator surrounded by an old-fashioned cage, run by an operator, and furnished with a bench for the comfort of the passengers making the 20-foot journey between the first and third floors. The residential parts of County Street and other nearby neighborhoods feature an eclectic mix of houses of different Victorian styles, as well as those from a century ago. While the town has its rough spots, there appears to be enough to see and do for an inquisitive tourist to keep busy for three or four days of sightseeing. So, there is still plenty to see and do in New Bedford, especially if the local history museum reopens (which could happen before the end of this year). One of the activities is finding the train station.
Fall River
Fall River is as historic as New Bedford, but not as upscale. There are historic buildings downtown, and the classic library, whose slogan: “The People’s University” is carved into its facade, is one of the most beautiful. More buildings in Fall River have been unsympathetically altered, while more in New Bedford retain their historic accuracy. Still, Fall River has some neighborhoods with historic houses, like New Bedford’s, too. Fall River does not have as large a historically upscale component as New Bedford. Traditional New England “triple-decker” houses, with a different family living on each floor, are common throughout Massachusetts, and they abound in Fall River.
As in New Bedford, there are several Portuguese restaurants, and the food in the Portuguese communities in Massachusetts is different than that found in the other major Portuguese community in the Northeast: The Ironbound in Newark, N.J.. The other local food specialty is the “Fall River Chow Mein Sandwich,” an example of an unfriendly meeting of East and West found in local Chinese restaurants. If you are used to authentic chow mein from a big-city Chinatown (with pan-fried noodles to give them a chewier texture than lo main noodles have) you won’t find it in Fall River. What you will find is the bottom of a slider-sized hamburger bun with a handful of crisp noodles taken from a bag and placed on top. The noodles are then topped with a brown gravy whose color and saltiness come from a generous amount of soy sauce. The top have of the bun is placed alongside, and the concoction is eaten with a fork, not chopsticks. If you are not from Fall River, you might consider it a genuine culinary atrocity. I did, but I spent $5.00 to try it so you don’t have to.
Fall River also has a local obsession: Lizzie Borden and the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother. The house where the murders took place is still standing, and today it operates as a combination inn and tourist attraction. For $30.00 you can take a tour of the house, which will include the basement, where the murder weapon (an axe) was found, for an additional $7.00. For a few hundred, you can stay there, if you have always wanted to spend the night in the place where two of the most infamous murders in American history took place. Lizzie was acquitted (some local buffs believe that her privileged background helped produce that result), and she managed to stay in the area and keep her lifestyle going until she died in 1927. The building next door to the infamous house on Third Street is now home to Lizzie’s, a combination art gallery and coffee shop, where the coffee is good and Lizzie is still the main topic of conversation.
Back to Boston
Because I was booked to go home on Amtrak train 179 (7:47 PM form South Station), I had to catch the 4:41 train from Fall River. It ran through to Boston and connected with a shuttle from New Bedford. Part of the line through Fall River is elevated, so it’s possible to get a last look at the town on the way to Boston, including a brief glimpse of the ships in Battleship Cove on the waterfront. There is one station between Fall River and the East Taunton transfer station: Freetown, about a ten-minute ride inbound. Freetown is the home of a large nature park, but it is not visible from the train.
For this writer, the ride back was a good way to learn more about the railroad form Assistant Conductor Aden Walker, a second-generation railroader whose father is an engineer on the system. He pointed out the interlockings, stretches of single track, and other features of the route as we rode. There are four callouts needed to dispatchers on different parts of the route, ending with Terminal Dorchester, which covers all Amtrak and local trains that serve South Station, as well as other services. Our train was running against the heart of the commuter peak, and we had six meets along the way. Most of the route is rated for 79 mph, but with a 30-mph restriction at Bridgewater. We arrived at South Station at 6:23. Part of the fun during the ride was learning about the route from a young railroader who was following a family tradition and looking forward to a long career on the rails.
The fare between Boston and either New Bedford or Fall River is $12.25 each way, $6.00 for seniors and people with disabilities. There is a lot to see in both cities, and it’s not necessary to take the train to East Taunton and transfer to a train going to the other destination. The Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA) runs local buses in both cities, with a route between them that runs local service and express buses that run on the highway and take 25 minutes between the two downtown terminals. Buses run until about 9:00 on weekdays, but only from mid-morning until late afternoon on weekends.
There is a lot to see in both towns, especially when the museums are open. It was more pleasant than taking a bus would have been, and riding on a route that has been restored after a decades-long absence is something to celebrate. The towns are closer to Providence than Boston, but trains from Providence don’t go to New Bedford or Fall River, only to Boston and the suburbs on the way there.
