I am needing a vacation. For some reason, I started to think about a trip to Boston. To make it more, to my liking, it would be a train trip to Boston. As a railfan, you can see how this might work out and how it would be exciting. How would a train trip to Boston work and why Boston. First the why. Twenty-five years ago, I moved to Boston from Virginia. I was already a railfan and had taken train specific trips before. However, as a railfan, there is a different way of thinking, when taking a out of town watching trip and watching trains at home. Traveling out of town to watch trains, the goal is to watch trains in specific locations at specific times. Around home, "some day" becomes the mantra on watching. As is often happens, some day never comes and you move without taking those pictures. This is both true for train watching and local landmarks. Interesting, I took commuter rail to work every morning and transferred to the subway. I would go into town and take the various lines of the subway to get around. I took very few train watching trips in and around the area. Even local attractions were overlooked as far as photography were concerned.


I lived on the North Shore in the city of Lynn, MA. I lived several blocks from the commuter rail station. I did a lot of touring in Boston and Lynn. I particularly liked to walk down to the Bay and just reflect. Yes! I have no pictures of Lynn Shore. I did go inland and north and again, no pictures. The only pictures of the North Shore and Boston was a little park called the Goldfish Pond. My memory was scant on the details of when and where. I remember that at this time, the abutments for the bridge, bringing the commuter rail into North Station, caught fire. Trains coming into Boston from the north stopped at a temporary station in Charleston where commuters would transfer to the Orange line. This was at or near the Charleston T station.

MBTA pictures taken in 1984	Goldfish Pond, Lynn, MA 1984