Although the "Western Route" is still operating, there are a lot of old sidings, stations, and occasionally other  buildings that will be of interest to the railroad archaeologist. In this section I plan on documenting these remaining railroad artifacts. Above is a picture of the nicely restored East Kingston station.

There used to be a freight house in East Kingston, across the tracks from the station, unfortunately it was torn down a few years ago. Before I was taking pictures and unfortunately I have no pictures of it.

My interest in the "Western Route" will run from Wakefield MA, up as far as South Berwick ME. The Boston and Maine in it's early days was a line that ran from the Boston and Lowell RR in Wilmington to the Portsmouth, Saco, and Portland RR in South Berwick, ME. I will cover the area of the original B&M plus a little bit further on the south side.

Let's look at some maps so we can see the Western Route.

The above map shows the Western Route from South Berwick down to the Rockingham County line on the Durham Newmarket border. The Eastern Route went to Portland via Portsmouth, The Western via Dover and the WN&P via Rochester.
 

Above we see the line from Newmarket to East Kingston. Note Rockingham Junction in Newfields, where the current Portsmouth branch goes off to the right and the former Portsmouth Branch grayed out of the left going to Epping, and beyond. Note the former Fremont branch heading south from Epping as well as the present Hampton Industrial on the remaining portion of the Eastern Route in NH that is still used.

This section of the map, above, shows the line from East Kingston into Haverhill. Not shown is the former Merrimac Branch that left the Western Route in Newton Junction and headed south to Merrimac Mass. Note the branch to the Paperboard company in Bradford. That was originally the Newburyport RR which went from Bradford to Newburyport via Groveland, Georgetown, Byfield, Newbury to Newburyport.

This map (above) shows the Western Route from Haverhill to Lowell Junction which is in Andover. You can see in North Andover the former Machine Shop branch which was originally the Essex Railroad which ran from Salem to Lawrence via North Andover, Middleton, Danvers, and Peabody.

Currently, most freight traffic bangs a right when it gets down to Lowell Junction and "stretches 'em west" to Lowell and beyond. Passenger service continues straight towards Boston.

The track from Lawrence heading north is the former Manchester and Lawrence branch.

The above map shows the Western Route from Wakefield to Lowell Junction. The Boston and Maine was known as the Western Route, as opposed to the Eastern RR which was known as the Eastern Route. The line from Wakefield to Newburyport was called the Middle Route when it was first introduced. The Western Route and the Boston and Maine Mainline are one and the same.

* The line went through a tiny  (feet) portion of Tewksbury, I am including Tewksbury in the list for consistency.