2020-11-16, Trolley and Railroad Routes, Cheshire and Prospect, CT

 On 2020-11-16, I visited an abandoned trolley route, and also an abandoned railroad route, on the border between Cheshire and Prospect.  Here's a link to an interactive map I made on which I put location numbers that I will refer to below. http://arcg.is/a81bH . 

Below is a static screenshot of the interactive map.



1.  Where I parked in the main Mixville Park parking lot in Cheshire, CT.

2.  I walked from the parking lot to the top of a sledding slope.



3.  I walked along a path on the old trolley route to Notch Road where there was still a bridge over Notch Road that used to take the trollies over Notch Road.  On www.OpenStreetMap.org, there is a route visible on some platforms that is named, "Waterbury-Cheshire Trolley Line."


3.  About 100 feet north of Notch Road, the trolley route crosses Mountain Brook.


3.  Mountain Brook.


3.  David Reik with Mountain Brook.


4.  A cut through the rock on the trolley path.


5.  The trail along the trolley route left the trolley route and turned northerly.  It kept going northerly from the point where I turned around.

6.  I followed a path off the trolley route over to what was labelled as a railroad route on www.openstreetmap.org.  The name on www.openstreetmap.org is "Meriden Waterbury & Connecticut River Railroad."

Near 4.  I followed the railroad path westerly to Plank Road, and easterly to the end of an embankment that occurred near 4.  On LIDAR, one of the layers you can turn off and on on my interactive map, you can see that, at one time, there were some sort of structures that apparently supported the railroad tracks through a wet area.


Near 4.  Here's a screenshot from the interactive map with the LIDAR layer turned on.  I put in an "A" to show the trolley route, and a "B" where I took the picture above.




7.  Someone had been maintaining the trail on the trolley route.


8.  I followed the trolley route to here, where the trolley route went over a brook and continued easterly towards Mixville Road.


9  To follow the trolley route southerly from here, where the trolley route crosses a brook, I had to use a set of trails that allowed me to get around houses that had been built on the trolley route.


9.

Some links to more information

https://archives.rep-am.com/2014/05/04/tracking-the-mwcr/

http://www.vizettes.com/kt/ct-rr-maps/ct-1893.htm

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Trolley-Trips-Through-New-England.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBby_dX8zgc

https://bridgehunter.com/category/railroad/cheshire-street-railway/

David Reik

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