MethuenRailTrail

Tim Vermette, the MRTA Project Director has been sneaking out with a lawn mower clearing more and more trail bed every time. This is some of the work Tim did today. The sad part is that the weeds grow back as fast as he can cut them. Once the tracks are removed and an actual hard pack trail is put down, it will be much easier to keep the sides groomed for running and cycling. Cheers to Tim for his awesomeness!

Our clean up days have been reduced to One Hour sweeps, and we do more in that one hour than most people do in three!
Thanks Gang!

We had such a great turn out and accomplish so much more in these little clean up splurges, that in future we will limit our clean ups to no more than 1-2 hours, depending on location. Whatever we miss we get on the next pass.

This time out we tackled the Railroad St location just north of the Old Depot. There is an issue with trees and brush left on the trail from the VFW roofing project, but no doubt we can get that taken care of in time. Aside from that we made great headway removing all the visible trash and debris.

The kids in Methuen have been oh so busy. We have fresh tagging under the Rt 213 overpass. Admittedly the art work is quite impressive and obviously represents an investment of time and energy. However when the trail is completed this particular type of artwork will look out of place; in the meantime it is worth the walk to go check it out.

On the other hand someone scrawled traditional graffiti on the wooden trestle. This is a much bigger crime against nature. Hopefully much of the paint will not survive the winter, making removal easier in the spring. Small amounts of graffiti can be ignored for the time being but this will appear in every picture shot at this location.

New member David Gagnon and I,  joined Tim, Matt and T.J. Vermette to work on our ongoing project of trail widening. Today we targeted the small shrubs that had taken control of the ‘island’. The long term goal is to make the path on the WEST side of the trail wide enough to mountain bike or hike the trail comfortably from end to end. After taking on the island, we moved down the trail to the spot under the MSPCA bridge. Where we lopped many saplings out of the train tracks and pushed the brush back.