Wachusett is still within the town of Fitchburg, about 4-1/2 miles southwest of the Fitchburg Transportation Center where trains now terminate. Work began earlier this year, for a target start date of early 2012.

Details about the project are here (.pdf file requires Adobe Reader)

Fitchburg, MA Sentinel and Enterprise, 10/19/10:


That story is here.

It's barely within the City of Fitchburg, just over the city line from neighboring Westminster...a whole other beast of an area than the urban area that the trains currently terminate in. The biggest thing with the location is the fact that it is less than a quarter mile at most from Rt. 2 which is the major road for that neck of the woods. It's going to take cars off of Rt. 2 but it also will take some of the pressure off of the neighboring cities and towns.

Only too them 23 years for Pan Am/Guilford/Boston and Maine to finally allow the line to be extended...maybe in another 23 they will allow it extended further back to Gardner where it used to end

My take is that the Fitchburg-Gardiner segment lost rail service because of Route 2; the highway had recently been upgraded to freeway standards. It takes a much more direct route than the rail line. If one looks at a satellite picture of the rail line, particularly between Wachusett and Gardiner, it's mountainous terrain. In fact it even goes through a horseshoe curve! So the location of the Wachusett station, I agree, will help to take some traffic off Route 2, but I don't know that a re-extension back to Gardiner would be worthwhile, when folks will be able to drive much quicker along Route 2 to park at the Wachusett station.

From what I'm seeing it appears that this extension has been pushed back from 2012 until sometime in 2013, perhaps as late as October of that year.

Per multiple sources including the initial federal funding grant that timeframe puts it on schedule actually, completion was supposed to be for December of 2013 with initial land acquisition is supposed to be starting or already completed. The entire project is expected to be completed by 2014 with the last road and parking upgrades as well as the final completion of the new layover facility.

Any delays are going to be with the layover facility, but that shouldn't delay the exension

Like the Wickford Junction extension it's not an MBTA project rather it is being done by the Montachusett RTA- that area's regional transit authority. The T's role is paying for the track upgrades for the line which had to be regardless of the extension.

Thanks, Ed. Worse than I thought but probably best they take the time to do it right. Layover facility is important, but they still have Fitchburg not too far away. At very worst they could still begin the service but deadhead to and from where they layover now. It's not as far as the issue with the Downeaster in Maine, which looks like it will hold up full implementation of Brunswick service for a while.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20120615/NEWS/106159764/1246

From Brandeis University (Waltham, MA)



http://thebrandeishoot.com/articles/12896

Not sure what they mean about this, since the Fitchburg Line comes into North Station, not South. It's anything but convenient to ride the subways between the two since it takes two lines to accomplish. Unless the improvements include a connection from the Fitchburg Line to South Station, which I don't think is true, speeding up service on the line isn't going to change anything about the North-South Stations transfer.

Fitchburg, MA Sentinel & Enterprise, 1/28/13



Story here.