Wind power

By adamg on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 1:27pm

Jim Burke posted some photos that somebody in his family took of the remains of a passenger train that was left on tracks near the Fellsway when the Hurricane of 1938 came through. Given the snow on the buildings in the background, he speculates the photo was taken a few months afterwards.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

UPDATE: See the comments below - this might actually be a passenger car wrecked in a 1956 collision, not a train destroyed by hurrican winds in 1938.

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Comments

I suspect the photo is mislabeled

By roadman on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 4:08pm.

That looks to me like what's left of a Budd Rail Diesel Car (RDC), which were built starting in 1949, not 1938.

The snow in the background leads me to believe the photos were taken after the February 1956 B&M collision between a locomotive hauled passenger train and a set of RDCs outside of Swampscott station.

I was going to post the exact

By anon on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 3:51pm.

I was going to post the exact same thing, one of the other photos on the Flickr page linked clearly shows the front piece of a wrecked Budd car, even though it is labled 1938 hurricane. The owner of the photo might want to check if someone in the family spent some time around Swampscott in Feb 1956, because it sure looks loke photos from that wreck.

The Fellsway used to have streetcars

By Ron Newman on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 4:28pm.

Could this be the remains of one of them?

A stainless steel streetcar?

By roadman on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 4:53pm.

Not in 1938, and highly unlikely for New England at all.

Also, look more closely at all three photos on the linked Flckr page (including the one that shows the end of the railcar), then look up a photo of an undamaged Budd RDC in Google. When you compare the two, I'll bet you come to the same conclusion I already have, that this is a wrecked RDC.

Plus, there are no overhead wires (which streetcars would have run off of) in any of the photos, and the track layout looks a lot like Swampscott did in the mid-1950s (before the Marblehead Branch was abandonded).

Put the magnifying glass on

By bob pessek on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 5:17pm.

Put the magnifying glass on the photos; in the background of one can be seen, partly visible, two cars that are surely newer than 1938 models. More like the l950s.

February 1956 Newspapers

By Night Owl City on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 9:21pm.

On Google news there are several articles related to the February 1956 collision.:

Tragedy struck in February 1956, when a Budd- car train traveling through blinding snow from Danvers, Massachusetts, slammed into the rear of a locomotive - powered train at Swampscott, killing thirteen occupants and injuring more than two hundred.

The Reading (PA) Eagle ran a front page photo that seems to depict similar wreckage as above.

Date of photo

By anon on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 9:24am.

The house in the background has a chimney-mounted TV antenna. The first TV stations in Boston (Ch's 4 & 7) began broadcasting in 1948.