MethuenRailTrail

The Methuen Rail Trail has accepted a donation of these terrific granite boulders which will serve as landscape features and places to sit.

Big heads up thank you to the Methuen Credit Union and their developers.

Watch your driving.

We pulled a great deal of trash from the section south of Pine St and north of Five Corners bridge. No matter how much we clean there still seems to be illegal dumping in this area, no doubt due to its complete lack of sightlines. It’s an area in the downtown which is completely out of direct view of nearly everyone. With the construction of the Rail Trail this area will remain cleaner in future. Thanks to everyone who showed up.

Tim Galloway and I removed 700lbs of debris from the island in the wildlife sanctuary. No one lives there now, and there is still a few more loads out there to remove. But we made a grand effort and hopefully none of it will be visible any longer from the water or land.

railroad siding – a short stretch of railroad track used to store rolling stock or enable trains on the same line to pass.

While the abutters were cleaning the property around the 1856 warehouse and the Shady’s property, more rail was uncovered. The more rail stock we have the more work we can get done for free from Iron Horse Preservation. Yippee.

As swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, Great Blue Herons return to Methuen to nest. Today out on the Spicket River, in view of the Methuen Rail Trail (just past the MSPCA,) four Heron’s have already taken their place on their respective nests. In a big display of ‘watch this space’ the rookery will eventually house 30 nest birds this summer with each pair hopefully producing one or two offspring.

Sunday we have a walk on Newburyport’s Clipper City Rail Trail scheduled for all those who want to come check it out.
The rail bed there was very similar to what Methuen has now, with regards to elevation and bridges.
So it will be good to check out how they have dealt with access and signage and so forth.

Apparently the Amtrak Parking Lot at the head of the trail isn’t the “official” parking and they just made it illegal to park on the street nearest the trail head.

I have arranged for us to park in the parking lot at BLUMBERG AND COMPANY 75 PARKER ST which is about 2 blocks from the trail head.
here is the link to the Google map http://goo.gl/maps/lazx

The Newburyport trail is only 1.1 miles, so if it’s nice enough and folks want to we can cross the river on the Rt1 Bridge and walk the Eastern Marsh Trail i in Salisbury which is 1.4 miles.

Holler is you are coming and we can get some carpooling going!
info@methuenrailtrail.org

Tags: clipper city, metrhuen rail trail

Thanks to all who showed up for our 1 hour cleanup. We sure did get a lot of junk off the trail. And as always thanks to the Vermette family for weedwhacking the last of the tall weeds – now the trail truly can be walked, run or cycled end to end. I hope to see you all at Tuesday’s meeting where we will pick a date for next months’ 1 hour cleanup.

I have been watching local riders a little more lately.
The father who has to take his girls biking around the loop parking lot.
The gang of 14 year olds who coast full bore down park st into on coming traffic.
And these guys who don’t really have anywhere else to ride.
The skate boarders aren’t going to like the stone dust surface..but that won’t be forever.

Thank you to all who offered to help. The Spicket River was extra low last Friday and Tim and I just waded in and pulled out the offending materials. And this time we took it to the dump. There is a lot of trash along the banks in spots and hopefully we can keep pulling more out every opportunity.

For now we are going back to cleaning up the Rail Trail itself.
We have a cleanup scheduled for Saturday the 11th at 8 AM – we are meeting at the corner of Union and Rail Road so that we can pull trash out from under the Oakland ave Bridge.