West Newton
West Newton is a dump of a station on the Framingham/Worcester Line located along the right-of-way of the Mass Pike (I-90) that was built along the Boston and Albany Railroad line between 1962 and 1964 reducing the railroad to two tracks and rebuilding this station. Today the station is a complete shack with a single, very long island platform along the southern track directly between the railroad line and the Mass Pike, there is a single board to allow a train on the opposite track to open a door and stop. The station's highway location and prevalence of express buses into Boston keep ridership low. The single platform is also a hinderance to serve the station and many trains skip the station. For example there is no inbound trains after 3:24pm until the final train of the evening at 1:05am. All weekend service does stop at the station.
The station's single side platform has a chain-link fence to separate it from the Mass Pike, in most areas there is a supplemental wooden fence along it (on the highway side) so motorists can't peer into the station. The exit sign for Exit 16 hovers above the middle of the platform The platform has a wide yellow painted line at its edge that is below the height of the rail and has a chipped concrete curb at its end. Entrances are from highway overpasses at each end of the platform that have exposed metal staircases down from the sides of overpasses at the opposite ends of the station, both entrances are from different sides of a rotary Washington Street (MA-16) form as it crosses over the Mass Pike and train station. This makes the entrances only from the outside of the rotary. The western end is from the southbound overpass of the rotary, the eastern end from the northbound overpass. At street level before these entrances is an MBTA Commuter Rail sign and current schedule. Just north of the eastbound end of the platform entrance is a small, and just west of the station (also on the northern side of the tracks) is a large park & ride lots with a total of 207 parking spaces.
In the middle of the platform for about two car lengths is a decaying canopy shelter with a windscreen on the highway side. It is painted grey with metal framing complete with pillars along the edge of the platform that look rusty. Along the windscreen are some advertising panels and built in attached to the windscreen concrete benches for waiting passengers. There is a single former information bulletin board (with a glass cover) but this has been opened and vandalized. There are small windscreens (with tiny windows) at each end of the canopy that make the platform even smaller, at each of these little end areas is a LED variable message screen that displays the current time, 'Welcome to West Newton' and when a train is scheduled to arrive will countdown to its arrival time. There is a single West Newton Sign that has a pipe running directly through the name above the T's white line.
All Photos taken on 20 March, 2013
 |
Last Updated: October 30, 2024
|
Auburndale