Re: Boston, Revere Beach and Lynn

Greetings Glenn:

Seems that this recent BRB&L discussion has jogged my memory. In recollection to the late 1970s while doing research work on the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn, much time was spent in the town of Winthrop, Massachusetts. One particular character there was a man named Bernie Baesch. At the time, he owned the local taxi cab company with it's garage and office located out on Point Shirley right across the street from the Atlantic Ocean.

One of Bernie's earlier business enterprises had been as a junk man and scrap dealer operating out of East Boston. As explained to me by the man himself, Bernie's outfit was contracted as the primary scrappers of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in spring of 1940. Part of the deal as dictated by the bankruptcy court overseers, was to clean out the offices of the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn railroad and then purposely destroy all company records. With that, Bernie with his workers followed instructions and burned many cabinets that were filled with all sorts of archived papers.

From what is known, the federal judge, a person named Brewster was administering the bankruptcy from Boston. Fact is, this judge actually owned a large share or perhaps controlling interest of the bus company that provided direct replacement service after the BRB&L railroad's January 27th, 1940 abandonment. It may have been figured that with total loss of the official records, various citizen groups still trying to save the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn railroad would be seriously impeded. History would show that the scheme apparently worked as by summer, Bernie and his crew were burning the BRB&L coaches for scrap at the Orient Heights yards.

This part of the story was included within the final manuscript of that original Narrow Gauge book, but was edited out by the publishing organization. The reason given was that it was groundless speculation on my part and relatives of the long deceased judge could initiate a law suit. To my understanding, dead people can't sue for defamation of character. So it goes!

Thankfully, with an inherent sense of history and in quiet defiance of Judge Brewster and his federal court, our good friend the scrap man, Bernie Baesch way back in the summer of 1940 managed to load three large wooden file cabinets onto his truck and secretly haul them away to safety in Winthrop.

In the fall of 1977, I was allowed to rummage through the surviving BRB&L oak cabinets. The files were up against a brick wall at the back of the taxi garage. Calling that place an actual garage was a real stretch as it was more like a dimly lit indoor automobile junk yard. A small fleet of dust covered derelict taxi cabs with flat tires were parked, backed in, against the wall, The sacred BRB&L file cabinets were behind the cars in a corner surrounded by greasy engine blocks, leaking transmissions and all sort of murky automobile related trash. Remember having to climb over some of the junker cars and tripping on a tail fin of a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere taxi cab. Wish that I had that antique hack now.

Anyway, the top drawer of the far right side cabinet held a stack of about forty mounted 11X14" size sepia tone official Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn photographs. Most were shot in the year 1900. Another drawer had a couple of books bound full of stock certificates of both of the Boston, Winthrop & Shore Railroad and another containing those of the Eastern, Junction, Broad Sound Pier and Point Shirley Railroad. The other big cabinets held some books with right of way maps and yard track plans.

Bernie kindly loaned me the stack of photographic prints. Within a short time, I'd made good quality 4x5" negatives from them and then returned the BRB&L original photos. Still have those negatives and they can make beautiful enlargements too. Some of those pictures are well known by now and have appeared in various publications. Where those people got those photos is still a mystery to me,

And then . . . along came the great blizzard of February 1978. The sea wall at Point Shirley in Winthrop took the mountain size waves head-on and lost the fight. Bernie Baesch's Winthrop Taxi Cab company was literally wiped out and the BRB&L file cabinets with contents were destroyed by the Atlantic Ocean. To my knowledge, that stuff is long gone.

I do have one request ... if sufficient information is available, please add some trackage

In the years since your book was originally
published, I think I've managed to develop a fair
sense of how things were laid out.

To make this long story a little shorter . . . I think that at this point, any yard track schemes would have to be figured out from existing photographs. Among the official BRB&L photos sourced from Bernie's taxi garage was that view of the Lynn yard with hi-ball signal and turntable. Except for a smaller engine storage facility, the yard at Lynn near Central Square, wasn't very complex.

... I've often wondered if the Lynn yard had two
turntables like the East Boston yard did.

I'm going to guess that there was only the one turntable at Lynn and it was well outside of the passenger terminal area. The other turntable was at Jeffries Point close to the East Boston ferry boat terminal. Both terminus water towers were also near those turntables. Don't know if Orient Heights had a turntable but can't recall ever seeing reference to one.

Bob




Section of official BRB&L photograph of East Boston, Jeffries Point yard in 1900. This is one of the picture views found in the file cabinets at Bernie's taxi cab garage in Winthrop, Mass in 1977. To my knowledge, the original 11x14" mounted print was destroyed with the building contents during the blizzard caused tidal wave of February 1978.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2010 12:32PM by RCS.