More Boston & Albany Railroad

Today, I am carrying on the connection, through these post cards, to the Boston & Albany Railroad – begun last week.

The locomotive (Number 400) on the front of this post card belongs to the Boston & Albany Railroad. It is a 2-6-6T tank locomotive that was built to carry up to twenty suburban coaches. You can see that it is only carrying three, so it must be able to zoom down the straightaways. The picture was taken in June of 1948. http://www.lionel.com/products/boston-albany-legacy-4-6-6t-400-2031010/provides the following information: In need of specialized locomotives for its Boston commuter service, the Boston & Albany purchased five 4-6-6T locomotives from Alco in 1928. The locomotives were designed for rapid acceleration, adequate power for heavy trains of up to 20 cars and perhaps most uniquely – to be operated equally well in either forward or reverse. Not having to turn the locomotives at the end of the line saved space and cost and also a lot of time. The locomotives bore a strong resemblance to the New York Central's Hudson in the front, with a small attached "tender" behind the cab riding on a shared 6-wheel trailing truck. Coal and water capacity was adequate for the commuter runs. The D1-A class served the railroad and Boston's workers well for two decades before being replaced by diesels. This part, below, was taken from Wikipedia: The Highland branch, also known as the Newton Highlands branch, was a suburban railway line in Boston, Massachusetts. It was opened by the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1886 to serve the growing community of Newton, Massachusetts. The line was closed in 1958 and sold to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which reopened it in 1959 as a light rail line, now known as the D branch of the Green Line. What became the Highland branch was built in stages. The initial segment was the Boston and Worcester Railroad's Brookline branch, which opened on April 10, 1848. This line stretched 1.55 miles (2.49 km) from a junction with the Boston and Worcester main line south of Governor Square southwest to the current location of the Brookline Village station in Brookline, with an intermediate station at Longwood Avenue. Construction costs were roughly $42,000. Brookline had previously only been reachable by road (horsecar service on what is now Huntington Avenue did not begin until 1859), and the branch was quickly a success. Based on this success, the Charles River Branch Railroad was founded in 1849 to extend service west from Brookline. Beginning in 1851, the railroad built 6.1 miles (9.8 km) from Brookline to Newton Upper Falls. This extension opened in November 1852, at a cost not exceeding $253,000. The line was further extended to Great Plains (later part of Needham) the next year, and to Woonsocket, Rhode Island in 1863. The Charles River Branch Railroad also constructed its own track parallel to the Brookline branch. From 1858, freight trains carrying gravel from Needham quarries to fill the Back Bay for development made up most of the traffic on the line. By the early 1870s the Boston and Worcester had become the Boston and Albany Railroad, itself destined to become part of the New York Central Railroad system.

The post card was published by Audio Visual Designs some time after 1963; there is a zip code in the address on the back of the card. This is taken from their website: Established in 1964, A-VD originally focused on providing quality printed material for railroads, railfans and related custom publishing services. Since then, we have expanded our reach to include custom postcards, holiday and birthday greeting cards and color or B&W calendars for many businesses in a variety of industries.