MA: Historic station out of new Palmer rail plans, but boosters focus on getting service close to downtown

There isn’t enough room at Palmer’s historic 1884 Union Station for either the new tracks or the high-level platform required of a new station for west-east rail.

It’s also located in a spot where passenger trains would interfere with CSX freight traffic, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and its consultants.

MassDOT’s focused now on six sites that do meet criteria, Andy Koziol, director of west-east rail for MassDOT, told residents this week.

But the elimination of the historic station, now home to the railroad themed Steaming Tender restaurant, touched a raw nerve in Palmer, a place that bills itself as the “Town of Seven Railroads” and that aspires to be a park-and-ride hub on the proposed west-east passenger rail expansion with bus links to Amherst and Connecticut and frequent trains to Boston.

‘My belief is there is a lot of political pull going on behind the scenes,” said Scarlet Lamothe, general manager and marketing manager for her family’s Steaming Tender restaurant. “To not have the stop at the diamond downtown, the crossroads, ruins the potential ridership, revenue, and economic development.”

The “diamond” here is a railroad junction of that shape.

The Lamothe family owns and restored the historic H.H. Richardson-designed Palmer Union Station, established the restaurant there and hopes to add passenger rail to the property.

“There was an uproar, because all their alternatives don’t make sense for the economic growth of Palmer,” Lamothe said in a phone interview.

Lamothe is also part of the Central Rail Coalition, a group which seeks to add not just more east-west but more north-south passenger service through Palmer.

But the state’s Compass Rail Plan emphasizes Pittsfield, or Albany, to Boston through Springfield and north-south from New Haven, Connecticut, to Greenfield through Springfield as well.

“All of it was expected by those of us who were part of the process,” said Ben Hood of Citizens for a Palmer Rail Stop.

Proposed sites that survived the cut are:

• East end of Crane Hill Road in Wilbraham.
• Palmer Department of Public Works lot.
• The north side a of the Palmer rail yard.
• The south side of the Palmer rail yard.
• On Route 20, east of Nipmuck Street on the south side of the track.
• And, on Boston Road to the south side of the track.

Hood said it’s his priority, too, that the rail station is as close as possible to downtown but also that its economical and technically feasible.

That leaves the Palmer rail yard as the best location, particularly on the south side of the yard where it would be closer to parking and there wouldn’t need to be a pedestrian bridge over the tracks

“We just want it to be the closest to downtown as possible,” he said.

But the site needs to meet with environmental regulations and have a section of track straight enough to accommodate today’s trains.

A curve doomed the similarly historic station H.H. Richardson station in Holyoke to disuse.

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