"Pink Palace" to Get a New Lease on Life

Late last month the mayor's office released a statement announcing that Earl of Sandwich, a sandwich shop based in Orlando, Florida will be moving into the Boston Common. The restaurant will make its home in the Common's "Pink Palace," an old and decrepit men's restroom, built originally in 1920. The plan is to have outdoor seating.

The Palace, nestled near the tennis courts and the gazebo on the southern end of the Common is a 660 square foot structure that has been long since abandoned and has seen much better days. The city considers it a historic landmark, with its granite walls and glass ceiling. Today one can observe the front door to the Palace locked and hanging by its hinges, the floor falling through, and the ceiling broken all over. You've probably walked by this tiny building many times before without even knowing it. I know I have. 


The project to allow a commercial restaurant to operate within the Common is part of the city's larger plan to help revitalize the 377 year old park, one of the nation's oldest. In addition to the Palace's face-lift, the city has begun construction of the Liberty Mall, located further up the Common, as Dan talked about in a previous post. A remodeling of the Visitor Information Center to upgrade the HVAC system and the restrooms and to allow for less wind to come through the entrance, along with a remodeling of the exterior of the Deer Park Maintenance Building on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets are also in the works.


Earl of Sandwich has 11 locations nationwide in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Michigan. This new location will be the second for Boston, the other one located at Logan Airport.

Hawker-Siddeleys are falling short.

Yup! You guessed it I'm talking about the Orange Line. You know, it's that line that you've ridden on that you probably got talked to by some crazy people on, had to evacuate for a fire, had your train breakdown and got stuck in a tunnel, the door you were standing at that didn't open, or you were new to the city and thought, because an outdated map at one of the stations told you so, that you could connect to the Green Line at Forest Hills.


The Orange line that we know today, was finished in 1987 and runs from Forest Hills to Oak Grove right through the heart of Downtown Boston. It also has the highest ridership out of the three heavy rail lines in the system. Today, as you might have heard, the MBTA has many problems it is dealing with, but in my opinion, a huge number of their problems lay with the ever-aging Orange Line. In this post I hope to share what I feel are the largest and most concerning problems on the Orange Line and what the MBTA is trying to do in order to fix some of these problems.

New (1981)

Today

First and foremost the largest issue that has been plaguing the Orange line over the past few years and especially this winter is it's fleet of rolling stock. The entire Orange line fleet consists of 120 Hawker-Siddeley (now Bombardier Transportation) 01200 series cars. These cars were bought brand new and were implemented in phases between 1980 and 1981. These cars have reinforced roofs for pantographs (much like their sister cars which were the old Blue Line cars). It was thought that if the Orange Line was extended, they would opt to use overhead collection, but since these extensions were never built, pantographs were never installed. 


Today these cars are really showing their age. These once shiny and state-of-the-the-art trains are now rusted out clunkers in need of a serious overhaul or complete retirement. This past year has been a very trying time for the Orange Line fleet. Many of the trains tried to slug through the winter, but hardly made it out alive. There were a multiple of breakdowns caused by the cold and the snow and also just the overall age of the trains. In many instances snow clogged the air intake for the trains propulsion, causing them to stall out (which is a horrible design, if you ask me, because the Orange Lines undercarriage, where this intake is located, has very low clearance with the ground especially when there is snow on the tracks).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying bash the Hawker-Siddeley's. These were wonderful and revolutionary cars when they first entered the MBTA system, but because of negligence to the fleet on the part of former MBTA heads, these trains are definitely not going to last much longer especially through our tough New England winters.


You're probably wondering if the T is taking any steps toward revamping the current fleet or introducing a brand new fleet. The truth is I did lots of research on the subject and came up with only one answer--being that the T was looking into replacing the entire fleet, but there was no projected time line for it. In my opinion, the replacement of these cars should be a very high priority for the T. Also, if they were to choose a train to base the new Orange line cars off of I would think they should use the new Blue Line cars manufactured by Siemens. These are the nicest, and cleanest cars I have ridden on. This is just my opinion though. Well anyways that's my little (or fairly large) rant about my take on the status of the Orange Line.


Heres a little video about the Orange Lines winter update!

Real Time Displays (Update)

Hi all! Here is a bit of an update on my earlier post about what I thought were going to be real time displays on the Red Line. Yesterday, as I was waiting for a Red Line train to Central at Park Street, I noticed the display that I talked about in my earlier post. I saw that it was lit up and displaying something. I ran over to it, almost tripping, and noticed, to my disappointment, that it was not displaying real time subway data, but instead was showing a quad-screen view of multiple closed circuit cameras. When I got to Central I noticed that same thing on the displays there too. I thought to myself, "Why on earth would the T display c.c. video footage of their stations?" I then came to the idea that maybe it may be for the motormen.

The way the system works now, each red line train, which consists of six cars, has two motormen on it: one who is in the first car and one who is in the third car. Both motormen are responsible for opening and closing the doors for their half of the train. In order for the motormen to know when to close the doors at a station they must hang out the windows on either side of the train. If these monitors are for what I think they are then the motormen will now be able to just look at the monitor to see when they can close the trains doors. Another interesting thought I had was that maybe these were part of the first steps to eliminating the second motorman from all Red Line trains.

The MBTA has been proposing, for quite a while now, to eliminate the second motorman position on the Red Line in order to save more money. Last year the T cut the second motorman position from all Orange line trains and it seems to be working fine. The reason I believe this may be one of the first steps toward this happening on the Red Line is because the monitors and cameras are strategically place so that the Motorman in the first car can get a full view of their entire six car train. This will make it a lot easier for the motor man to lean out his window to see down all six cars. Especially during rush hour when there are tons of people on the platforms. I keep you all posted when I find out more though.


Now back to the real time displays. Yesterday Aaron and I went on an adventure on the Blue Line to Maverick Square in Eastie. As we were waiting for the Blue Line at Government Center we both noticed a very dirty LCD screen, which you could tell had been repurposed, and was displaying realtime Blue Line data. The top of the display says "Blue Line Service (Pilot). I am guessing it is part of the same pilot program the T initiated on the Orange Line. I really hope it sticks around and starts popping up at more stations because it was amazing to see exactly where the next train is and when it will be arriving.

When Aaron and I got off at Maverick station we noticed that the station had its own way of displaying real time train data. This being in the form of a huge horizontal map of the Blue line tracks which shows the location of every running train by lighting up lights along the tracks. Not sure how old this is but I will try and find out!