Shorpy Comes through again

Fort Point Bridge 1910

Shorpy (always something interesting) has this photo (above) in their archives. What's so interesting about a bridge you ask ? Well, has to do with this image:

South Station Yard Tracks 1904

This image of South Station, which is my inspiration for building my layout was taken from the top of the bridges in the first photo. So, if you were in the position of the photographer looking at the Station, all you need to do is turn around 180 degrees and you will be looking down the tracks on the 3 bridges in the first photo. The time difference is 6 years between the two photos but everything was still the same.

The Bridges carried traffic from the New Haven Railroad's Old Colony line to South Station. They were designed to lift in order to allow boats to reach docks in South Bay Boston. Most of the docks in South Bay were used to offload Sugar & Fruits from points south. Domino & Paul Revere Sugar were located in this area.

Starting around the early 1920's Boston & the New Haven Railroad began to fill-in South Bay in order to create more land to build on as Boston was expanding quite rapidly. The New haven Railroad constructed a huge rail yard to handle passenger cars layed-over between assignments. Companies built Warehouses, Power Stations, & factories on the filled-in area.

Eventually, the Bridges no longer need to be raised as there was no longer need for boat traffic to pass under them. In the top photo, the leftmost bridge was mostly used to carry coal to the power plant @ the Station. It was also supposed to be used for approaches to the never-used loop track under the station.

When the Power Plant was shut-down in the early 1950s, the tracks over the rightmost bridge were removed as there was no need for them as they serviced nothing.

The Center Bridge & the Leftmost Bridge were used right up until the late 1990s when they were removed as part of the big dig project. The bridges were replaced with concrete deck bridges as part of the renewal.

You can see a few parts of the bridge displayed in a small park located next to where they used to be located today.

The image for South Station can be found here: http://www.shorpy.com/node/7451
The Image for the Bridge can be found here: http://www.shorpy.com/node/4513

Always interestng....