HARVARD UNIVERSITY is breathing new life into Beacon Park Yard, the site of a freight rail depot in Allston that has been closed for more than a decade.
The university rehabilitated two existing rail yard tracks and connected them to two newly constructed spurs, which tie into the tracks used by the MBTA commuter rail network. But Harvard’s rail venture isn’t about transporting people; it’s about hauling dirt away that has been excavated during the construction of the university’s so-called Enterprise Research Campus.
Trains hauling empty containers come in by rail and pull off the commuter rail tracks at Beacon Park Yard, which has been transformed from a vast empty space into a staging area for the construction project, the first of many planned by Harvard in the Allston area. Drivers looking south coming into Boston on the Massachusetts Turnpike have witnessed the transformation.
The empty containers are transported to the construction site by trucks via an internal Harvard haul road, where they are filled with contaminated dirt. They are then brought back to the rail site, loaded on the train, and hauled away to waste disposal facilities. Harvard said most of the soil so far has gone to a landfill called High Acres in Fairport, New York.
Harvard officials declined to provide much information about the cost of the soil-moving operation, but they said their train system at the former rail yard offers a lot of environmental advantages.
Beacon Park Yard with soil removal train cars. (Photo courtesy of Harvard University)
“The site was identified to alleviate the disruption and burden on the neighborhood of an all-trucking option,” the university said in a statement. “Using the railyard also reduces traffic and environmental impacts from carbon emissions that trucking the material on local roads and highways would create.”
The soil-moving operation launched late last year and to date more than 130 trains (each with six containers) have picked up and removed soil from the site, according to Harvard.
The operation is fairly unique in Boston, largely because few work sites in the area have access to former rail yards. Beacon Park Yard started out as a horse track in the 1860s, but was purchased by the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1890.
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority bought the property in 1958 and it became a place where freight from trains was offloaded onto trucks. Harvard bought the property in 2003 and over the next decade the freight offloading operation was relocated to the west, paving the way for redevelopment of the property.
Harvard is currently focused on building its Enterprise Research Campus, but eventually plans to build out an entirely new neighborhood. That larger project hinges on state efforts to straighten and bring to ground level the Turnpike as it runs through the area, complete with a new MBTA station called West Station.
Harvard officials wouldn’t say whether the soil-removing operation will continue with its future development projects on the site, saying the approach is still being evaluated.
Tony D’Isidoro, president of the Allston Civic Association, calls Harvard’s current use of Beacon Park Yard a “creative solution” to the soil disposal issue.
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