Sterling Jct., Mass.

Was the building now standing at Sterling Junction, Mass. REALLY an original depot?

This is an old black and white postcard view of this Depot in its heyday. (Circa 1915.)

For some time I had wanted to compare this view with what exists on the site today.

My pal Gary Lapointe had taken this image,

, from the Rte. 12 Overpass. (The overpass is visible in the background of the vintage postcard.)

I wanted to confirm that the extant structure was in fact the original freight depot, and not just a related building. (Here is a link to Gary's amazing site, "Railroad Depots in Massachusetts and New Hampshire".)

The only time I myself had seen this building up close was at night, as I was hiking the line. Looking at Gary's photo and the vintage postcard view of the same site, I had some question as to whether this really WAS an original depot, and not just a rail-related structure. (It looks so different in Gary's pic that I was not at all sure it was the same building shown in my vintage postcard.) Sometimes it will be said that a certain building was once a railroad depot, but it turns out that although it was related to the railroad, it was not an actual original railroad depot. (For example, there can be a building that was once part of a lumber yard, and it was where lumber was once unloaded from freight cars. It may look like a depot, but was not owned by the railroad itself. I suspected that this might be the case at Sterling Junction.

So it seemed like an interesting early Sunday morning adventure. (The only time fellow rail historian Alan LePain and I could meet in person, given our conflicting schedules. Alan and I had been e-mailing for some time, and we wanted to meet in person and and check out some local rail mysteries.) So....

I finally got to meet Alan in person one winter morning before the sun came up in Sterling Junction. We sat in my car waiting for it to get light out enough to get a good shot showing the same vantage today. Alan showed me his amazing collection of Central Mass RR photos. (It would seem I am not the only one fascinated by this line.) I showed him some of my Central Mass RR postcards and vintage photos, and gave him an original Central Mass glass insulator.

The sun never did come up per se- instead it started to snow. Here is Alan's photo taken the day we visited, edited in Photoshop by me to show as close an approximation of the view in the old postcard as possible.

Our conclusion? Yep, that is in fact the original freight depot at Sterling Jct. Mass. The east side has an addition on it now, which hides the roofline visible in the 1915 image. The passenger depot which can be seen just to the right of the tracks is long gone.

We overlooked it at the time, but there is a milemarker right next to the freight depot which serves as orientation. As you can see in this photo, it is still there today

.

WN&P no doubt. "W12", means "Worcester 12 miles". This milemarker can be seen in all the images on this page.

Pretty neat. That was fun. Nice to finally meet you in person, Alan. Shall we see if we can find the exact spot of the elusive "Canada Mills Depot", said to have existed prior to 1903 in Holden?

-Steve Fisk, January 2004

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