Structure · Built 1911
Boston and Maine Railroad Billerica Shop Complex - Locomotive Repair Shop
Boston and Maine Railroad Billerica Shop Complex - Locomotive Repair Shop
| Address | 1000 High St |
| MACRIS ID | BIL.301 |
| Built | 1911 |
| Other Lot Structures | Boston and Maine Railroad Billerica Shop Complex - Power Plant (Built 1911) |
The Locomotive Repair Shop at 1000 High Street is the largest building of the Boston and Maine Railroad's Billerica Shops, the central plant where the railroad rebuilt its locomotives and passenger cars from 1914. It is a two-story steel-frame building with brick walls, about 160 feet wide and 838 feet long, under a shallow gable roof with stepped parapets at the ends and eighteen glass transverse monitors that light the floor. Large window openings fill its walls. It stands on the southeast side of the shop yard, south of the office and storehouse building, with the Locomotive Blacksmith Shop and the Power Plant to the north.
Its site was farmland bought for the shops in 1911. The building covers parts of two parcels on the railroad's purchase plan of April 1911: Parcel X, 10.9 acres beside Parcel XI on the south side of Cold Brook, which the former selectman John E. Rowell sold the railroad with two other parcels on May 1, 1911, and Parcel XI, 31.1 acres reaching south to Pond Street, which Lawrence C. Swain of Wilmington sold it that May. Archie C. Burnett and Charles S. Cummings, who had taken options on the whole district east of High Street, released their rights to the railroad at the same time.
The shop was built from 1911 to 1914, and by the fall of 1913 the locomotive erecting shop stood complete with the other main buildings. Locomotive repair work began there on February 9, 1914 (see Opening of the Boston and Maine Shops). A commissioner's report printed in the town report of 1928 described the building as 833 feet long and about 150 feet wide, "fitted with tracks and many pieces of large machinery, including powerful cranes which are capable of lifting locomotives and transporting them to different parts of the building." Its sections were "the erecting shop, the machine shop, the boiler shop, and the tender shop." Locomotives were taken apart in the erecting shop, their parts repaired in the other sections and reassembled, and the engine was then moved out for testing. The machine shop refinished worn parts and made crank pins, springs, packing rings, valve bodies and bolts, and the boiler shop repaired ashpans, flues and fireboxes. In 1925 the Billerica shops repaired 325 locomotives, and the railroad's list of its property for that year valued the "Locomotive Shop" at $327,455 and the machinery and traveling electric cranes in it at $360,400.
In 1927 a two-story brick wheel and car shop, about 151 by 572 feet, was added along one long side (the south side in the MBTA survey of 1988, the east elevation in a survey of 2017) by the Dwight P. Robinson Company of New York, and a lye vat building for cleaning machine parts was built at the same time. Heavy locomotive repair went on here long after the passenger car shops were sold in 1944. The building stayed railroad property until December 1976, when the trustees of the bankrupt Boston and Maine conveyed the railroad's lines and shop land to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which leased the property to the railroad's operators. An MBTA survey of September 1988 found the mezzanine, once shop space, mostly empty except for the superintendent's office, the old blacksmith shop moved into the 1927 wing, and "the entire shop" used for all the locomotive repair work of Guilford Transportation Industries, then owner of the Boston and Maine (see Closing of the Boston and Maine Shops).
The shop and its 70-acre parcel still belong to the MBTA. In 2017 the authority leased the property to Pan Am Railways, the successor of Guilford, whose railroad CSX Transportation took over in 2022, and a historic survey of that year named the locomotive shop among the buildings that keep their architectural integrity in recommending the complex for the National Register of Historic Places.
References
- MACRIS BIL.301
- Annual Report 1928, commissioner's report: the locomotive shop, 833 by about 150 feet, cranes, erecting, machine, boiler and tender shops
- Annual Report 1928: the railroad's 1925 list of its Billerica property: Locomotive Shop $327,455
- Billerica assessor, 1000 High St (17-2-2): Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, 70.11 acres, deed Book 2226, Page 326 (1976)
- F. K. Irwin, 'Boston and Maine Repair Shops,' Railway Age Gazette Mechanical Edition, Nov. 1914: repairs begun Feb. 9, 1914
- Pan Am Railways (Wikipedia): headquarters at Iron Horse Park; CSX acquisition 2022
Deed References
| Date | Type | Grantor | Grantee | Summary | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2, 1911 | Release and Assignment of Options | Archie C. Burnett of Newton | Boston and Maine Railroad | 1911 shop purchase: release of the land options | 466/420 |
Signed April 26, 1911, recorded May 2, 1911 with the first purchase deeds. For one dollar and other valuable considerations Burnett releases "all my right, title and interest in and to any and all land situated in Billerica ... lying easterly of High street, southerly of the location of the main line of the Boston and Lowell Railroad, northwesterly of Pond street, or the road to Tewksbury, northerly of the road to Salem and northeasterly of the location of the Bedford and Billerica Branch," and assigns to the railroad "any and all rights under certain options to purchase" any part of it. Like releases follow by Charles S. Cummings of Boston (page 421) and by the trustee in bankruptcy of the Burnett-Cummings Company (page 422).
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| May 2, 1911 | Warranty Deed | John E. Rowell of Billerica (Marietta F. Rowell releasing dower and homestead) | Boston and Maine Railroad | 1911 shop purchase: Rowell Parcel X | 466/433 |
Signed May 1, 1911. For one dollar and other valuable considerations, "three certain pieces or parcels of land": First, about eleven acres on High Street at the Boston and Lowell location, bounded by the center of the old Middlesex Canal, Parcel V; Second, about 10.9 acres beginning on Cold Brook at land formerly of Edward Spaulding and of Lawrence C. Swain, bounded by Swain, John J. Fahey and Warren Holden land, Parcel X; Third, about 20.2 acres beginning on Pond Street at the Swain land and running about 2,503 feet to Cold Brook, by the brook about 405 feet to the John R. Sutcliffe land and back to Pond Street, Parcel XII, all on the plan "Land in Billerica, Mass. on High street, Pond street and the road to Salem purchased by the Boston & Maine Railroad," April 1911. No title recital.
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| May 29, 1911 | Warranty Deed | Lawrence C. Swain of Wilmington (Mina A. Swain releasing dower and homestead) | Boston and Maine Railroad | 1911 shop purchase: Swain Parcel XI | 467/184 |
Signed May 12, 1911; recorded May 29, 1911. For one dollar and other valuable considerations, a parcel beginning on Pond Street at land formerly of John J. Fahey, running about 997 and 345 feet by the Fahey land, about 1,350 feet by land formerly of John E. Rowell, by land formerly of Edward Spaulding to Cold Brook, by the brook about 380 feet and by other former Rowell land about 2,503 feet back to Pond Street, "about thirty-one and one tenth (31.1) acres," Parcel XI on the plan of April 1911. No title recital.
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| December 27, 1976 | Indenture (Deed of Rail Lines) | Robert W. Meserve and Benjamin H. Lacy, Trustees of the Property of Boston and Maine Corporation, Debtor | Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority | 1976 B&M trustees to the MBTA (current deed of 17-2-2) | 2226/326 |
For $36,549,000 the bankruptcy trustees of the Boston and Maine granted the MBTA their "right, title and interest (sufficient to permit the Authority to operate a passenger and freight rail service over the rail line rights of way)" and other lands, "including all track, signals, bridges, buildings, shops, towers and other improvements," as shown on 309 sheets of plans dated December 1, 1975; the Middlesex North sheets are Plan Book 123, Plans 74 to 106. Sheet 17 of the main line (Plan 123-76) shows the East Billerica station grounds at Gray Street, the 1868 Bohonan parcel (No. 12) and the 1944 Franz lot (No. 18) cut from it. Dated December 24, 1976, nearly two years after the station closed.
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Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.