Granite Railway 3

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Today's continuing series brings us to a pile of rocks at the end of Bunker Hill Lane. What looks like a plain ol' pile of rocks is called a grout pile or the rejected stones for a project. It looks like "quality control" was in effect here. This is where the Granite Railway loaded up to begin its 3 mile run.

The large size stone with the split, in the image below, is a rejected stair made for the Bunker Hill Monument. The Bunker Hill Monument's rounded, conical` staircase has 224 stone stairs and moving stone there was the first commercial venture for the Granite Railway back in the 1820s.

I sure would like a stone wall made out of those rejects . . .

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Thursday is "This Old House Day"`

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Today's old house is located on the corner of Adams and Squantum Streets in neighboring East Milton, not far from the site of the Granite Railway. If you enlarge this picture you will see that this house is largely built of granite blocks from a nearby Quincy quarry. This stone cottage was once the site of the blacksmith and wheelwright who helped to build the railway cars for the first commercial railway in this country.

Click here to see another granite house. This house was modeled after a Granite Railway boarding house.

Granite Railway 2

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This is where the first commercial railway got started: at the end of Bunker Hill Lane. The overgrown rail bed here was once used to move massive hunks of granite from the quarry site to the Neponset River where it would be loaded onto a barge and brought to the building site of the Bunker Hill Monument. It would be a challenge to move the massive blocks of stone specified for this project. Quincy architect Solomon Willard was determined to get it done and enlisted the aid of Gridley Bryant who conceived of the idea for a rail system and got it operating by 1827.

If you enlarge the picture below you can see some of the details in a model of this railbed that is based on work done by Quincy archaeologist, Richard Muzzrole. The roadbed is essentially a dry stone wall three feet deep. The "wall" supported massive granite sleepers that are spaced eight feet apart. The first rails were wooden, but they were eventually replaced with granite ones to help transport stone loads of 21 tons or more for a distance of 3 miles. The horse drawn railway cars were loaded from the bottom so as not to damage the stone blocks. This was a pioneering design achievement which has earned this site a designated National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

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I just discovered an excellent blog post about the Granite Railway: click "Stories in Stone" to see the old rail car and find out more about this fascinating piece of Quincy's history.