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Budding graffiti in Somerville
By adamg on Mon, 05/25/2015 - 8:42am
Chris Silverio photographed the old Budd cars in the Somerville yards outside North Station.
The old B&M had the largest Budd-car fleet in the country; the cars, each of which had their own diesel engine, ran through 1985. Now, the state hopes to buy more modern versions for the Fairmount Line, to service the West Station planned for Allston, and, maybe, for the rail spur to the South Boston convention center.
Copyright Chris Silverio. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
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Comments
Why are those things still there?
Really. Is it that expensive for the MBTA to have them scrapped?
Untapped Revenue Source
Alert the Governor's MBTA task force! The T left yet another revenue source on the table. The hundreds of dollars generated by scraping the cars could be applied to the operating deficit.
Actually the T should preserve and restore one car and scrap to clean up the property.
No Hypo Needles in Sight... Only buff cyclists
http://www.bedforddepot.org/6211/index.html
There is a lot of asbestos in
There is a lot of asbestos in them.
Among other things not so
Among other things not so nice.
Would be better to sell/lease
Would be better to sell/lease them to an entity which would restore them as a restaurants/diners outside North/South Stations.
Those Budd cars have been there since
early 2004 and are basically shells of their former selves. The T's plan was to refurbish the interiors so the cars could be employed as temporary crew offices during the Democratic National Convention, when North Station was completely closed. Unfortunately, the cars were moved there before anyone at the T realized that, due to the asbestos, it would be impractical to restore them for only a week of use.
The graffiti has been collecting on those cars, which prior to 2004, hds been stored at the B&M/Guliford shops in Billerica, almost from the first day they were spotted outside of North Station.
Unfortunately, at this point, scrapping the cars, full restoration, nor re-purposing as diners or other businesses are practical options. Besides the graffiti and the need for full asbestos remediation (this alone likely costs more than the scrap value of the stainless steel), the cars are missing the diesel engines, the power train (these cars were diesel hydraulic, not diesel electric), and do not even have the original trucks/bogies - both cars are sitting on regular freight car trucks/bogies.
AWESOME
AWESOME
Keep that crap down in Manhattan
If we need graffiti sprayed on every surface to be a world-class city, then I vote to keep out.
So the photographer endorses graffiti?
Because that's what you're doing when you publicize it like that.
Stop it.
Not everything has to be a controversy.
Yes, please get rid of these.
Yes, please get rid of these...every time I go by them on the Orange Line I have visions of all the hypodermic needles that are no doubt within strewn about everywhere.
Really?
Graffiti = heroin?
I know, huh.
I've roamed that area fully and peered into those.
The idea that junkies are so bereft and dumb that they would hike way out there to shoot dope is a product of a febrile and feeble imagination. The area is too forlorn for winos.
There are a few coyote dens though.
(No subject)
Security seems a little Lax
How many T- Trains have to be taken out of service because there is no security in the train yards to prevent spray can artists and vandals from destroying the equipment or stealing copper or electrical wiring or metal?
Oh security at actual work yards is quite good.
Those are just sidelined curiosities on the edge of the access road used by cement trucks doing business with Boston Sand and Gravel. They are scrap, basically, on the property of that which owns them.
Having sounded the alarm for this non problem, perhaps you can comb the urban zone for abandoned shit boxes in weedy lots for your next version of "The Sky is Falling".
1953 called...
you really need to get out more often!
Budd's were sold but not removed
The current inventory list states that these Budd ("Buddliner") Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs - now called diesel multi-units or DMUs) were sold for scrap many years ago but the buyer never took them away. Apparently the buyer does not have the resources or cannot be found. As such, they actually belong to someone other than the MBTA and are abandoned there.
It is unlikely they can be towed out of there by rail since current regulations may require them capable of having working air brakes and emergency brakes, and that is not the case with these.
Thank you...
Thank you dmk for setting the record straight on why these are here. Both are former Boston & Maine Budd RDC cars, 6213 & 6214 respectively.
These were sold to the T in 1976. I believe car 6213 was already out-of-service when the T sold it/never ran under their ownership. 6214 was actually stored out-of-service in the late 70's at the old BET, before joining 6213 at the old N. Billerica shops (now where Pan Am Railways is headquartered).
The old Billerica shops was a haven for to-be-scrapped & junked rail locomotives & busses. There were a plethora of B&M, Guilford, Penn Central, MBTA vehicles sitting around. It was here where a lot of the tagging occurred (as happened to other long-ago scrapped equipment stored here).
The two RDCs were sold in 1989 (along with 2 others) to a company who never claimed them. Both 6213 & 6214 were moved to the current "BET" in April, 2003 at a modest 10mph. I believe the move was to coordinate with then-plans from MBCR to convert them to crew cabs, which never materialized.
I don't know if this means the T reclaimed ownership of the cars (not sure legally how that'd work w/ a 20+ year old transaction). Both cars, I believe, are currently on box car trucks with no working brakes, as their former wheels would not move while at Billerica/during the planned move in 2003.
So in terms of the spray painting, I'm sure there's been some performed at their current location. But their former N. Billerica location was where most of it began...there was a whole yard of equipment that was tagged/destroyed further by trespassers. Nobody blew-up from it, nobody thought it was a reflection of a city, and thankfully there was no gathering on the internet to hear empty complaints about something out of the way & not harming anyone.
Move past the paint, and you're looking at railroading history...just not presented in the way I (and many others) think it should be. But even if the MBTA appreciated heritage equipment & wanted to do something to these cars, the first finger laid on them for improvements would be met with the internet T-bashers ready to pounce with criticism like "Can't run service right but have time for these?", "Put money into new equipment & not old/unusable stuff like this", etc.
You're wrong about most of the tagging
taking place in North Billerica. I still remember the day the cars showed up on the track they presently sit on and they were more or less pristine, except for some warning stencils regarding how not to move the cars.
Maybe you remember it as such
Maybe you remember it as such, and are correct...you might be! I just remember the N. Billerica shops & the equipment on premises in the mid-to-late 90s was tagged (varying degrees), OOS & nothing much looked pristine then.
I wasn't talking about
the other equipment at North Billerica. I was merely rebutting your statement that these two Budd cars were already well tagged by the time they were transferred from North Billerica to BET.