The section of the Hartford, Providence, & Fishkill/ New York & New England right of way between Hartford and New Britain was pressed into service as the CTfastrak Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line in 2015. At present, this is one of only two places on the entire line (the other being a small portion of the Northeast Corridor) where one can actually ride mass transit on the line, albeit on a bus.
The busway has been controversial among railfans for the loss of railroad miles and among taxpayers for its cost. Personally, I think this op-ed by a UCONN student, Thess Johnson, gets it right. The busway exists, and for whatever trouble went on in building it, it works pretty well. My wife and I recently decided it would be fun to eat at a number of places in Downtown Hartford on a weekend afternoon, and parking in the suburbs and taking the bus in made it very hassle free. I'd rather have a train, but I like having good public transit.
All of the station sites listed on the map above were sited with information from the Tyler City Station site. Parkville's CTfastrak station appears to be in the same location as the former train station. There are two other Fastrak stops in this general part of Hartford. Between Hartford Union Station and Parkville Station lies Sigourney Street, which is very close to a number of Hartford buisnesses and landmarks like the Aetna Insurance Co or the cathedral.
At the other end of this area, in the shadow of I-84, lies the Kane Street station. Built on the site of the former Royal Typewriter factory and sharing a lot with a Stop & Shop, this station allows downtown Hartford residents to access a good grocery store via mass transit.
Parkville is a fascinating place. It is the most visible remanant of Hartford's manufacturing past, which has led to its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a culturally vibrant place wth great food, great architecture and great public transportation, which leads many of us to hope for its revival. But is also a place with many abortive starts and stops, where hopes for a better future hit hard realities. I'm a child of Hartford County, not Providence County, but it strikes me as a place facing the same hopes, dreams, and challenges as Harris Ave and Olneyville in Rhode Island.
I try and link and cite many sources on this page, but two really were essential in setting the narrative for me: A March, 2022 Hartford Courant article about Parkville development, and the nomination form to the NRHP for the neighborhood. The Connecticut Mills website also made idenfitying various buildings easy.
Click on the thumbnail for the full resolution image
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A mid-20th century conductor's cash form 3 ticket, sold between New Britain and Hartford and thus an artifact linked to this branch. It is undated, but does not list Crescent Beach, Sound View, or South Lyme as local stops along the Shore Line, so based on their dates of abandonment on the Tyler City Station site, this suggests this ticket is from the 1930s or later. |
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A paper Connecticut Transit all
day bus fare as it appeared in 2023. The QR code has been removed. I
bought this for service between Newington Junction and Hartford (and
ultimately used it at Flatbush Ave and Kane St, too.) |
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The Sigourney Street CTfastrak
stop. The Hartford campus of Aetna Insurance is visible at rear across
Sigourney Street. Just barely visible behind the Aetna building is the
St. Joseph's Cathedral. This image, taken from a CTfastrak bus, is
meant to show how well placed this stop is for a number of Hartford
workers (12/2023.) |
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The Capitol Archives/ Hartford Wire Mattress Co Building at 618 Capitol Ave. Connecticut Mills lists this building as the Hartford Wire Mattress Company, but as this article in the Hartford Business Journal reports, from 1981-2021 it was the home of a record storage company, Capitol Archives and Records.
A Facebook post on that company's page states that they were out of the
building as of January 4, 2022. The HBJ article further states that
it's been sold to the parent company of UHaul, Amerco Real Estate. I
hope good things lie in its future. As a kid it was always one of my
favorite buildings. My father worked on Capitol Ave and this building,
in use but boarded up, reminded me of the Wonka Chocolate factory-
closed to the world but very much alive. This was taken from a
CTfastrak bus(12/2023.) |
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The Gray Telephone Pay Station Company building as seen from a CTfastrak bus. I was able to identify this because of the Parkville NRHP nomination form. At
right is a UHaul building, just down the street from the Capitol
Archives building, and I wonder how the two properties are both part of
UHaul's plans (12/2023.) |
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The Underwood Computing Machine Company building as seen from a CTfastrak bus. Today it houses Real Art Ways. I was able to identify this because of the Parkville NRHP nomination form. (12/2023.) |
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Looking west along Park Street
towards the bridges carrying the railroad tracks and CTFastrak. The
depot is on the other side of the bridges on left side of Park St. The
left side is dominated by the former Hartford Rubber Works building at 1429 Park St. On the right side is Parkville Market. (1/2024.) |
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The Hartford Rubber Works building from a passing CTfastrak bus. For more information about the various US Rubber Buildings in Parkville, see the NRHP nomination form. (12/2023.) |
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The Parkville Station serving the CTFastrak busway. According to Tyler City Station, this depot is in the approximate location of the historic train station. This photo was taken from a CTFastrak bus; the train tracks are behind the camera (12/2023.) |
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The boiler building for the former US Rubber plant, located at 45 Bartholomew Ave.
This building still has the words "Spaghetti Warehouse" on the other
side because another former US Rubber building onsite briefly had that
restauarant, but today that smaller building is a pay what you can restauarant to support feeding the homeless (12/2023.) |
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Looking west along Hamilton St
in Hartford. The Hartford Line rail crossing is at front, the CTfastrak
crossing is behind. Just behind the left railroad crossing gantry the
steeple of Our Lady of Sorrows church can be seen (1/2024.) |
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Looking east at the Amtrak Hartford Line Hamilton St crossing from a CTfastrak bus. In the background is the Whitney Manufacturing Company mill. For more information about redevelopment in this area, see this interesting Hartford Courant article (12/2023.) |
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Looking north along the Hartford
Line tracks towards union station. At left is the Ringling Bros Circuis
train parked on the HP&F tracks, and behind that train is the Royal
Typewriter Factory. This image was taken by my father, Bernard Dowd, in
the 1970s. When you read the nomination form for the Parkville neighborhood to the NRHP, it's clear that the 1992 loss of the Royal Typewriter building, added in 1989 to the NRHP, was quite the loss for the historic nature of the neighborhood. Here is my father's description of his photo: "For
years, the line from Newington Junction north through Hartford Union
Station and up to the Hartford class yard was operated as a four-track
main. Hartford was a manufacturing town and many large RR customers,
like Royal Typewriter seen at left, depended on the NH for fuel,
factory stock and MRO supplies coming in and finished product shipping
out. By the time of this photo in the 1970's, one of the four tracks
had been removed. The circus train was parked on what was then the New
Britain branch and the tracks at right continued on to Springfield as
they still do. Today, the huge Royal factory is gone and the roadbed at
left has been paved over as a commuter busway. The remaining
right-of-way is still busy, though, with Amtrak, CTrail and some
freight." |
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A westward view from a similar location in 2023. The loss of the Royal, to which my family had deep ties,
was a shock and quite a loss for history. If any silver lining can have
come out of its destruction, it is that what replaced it was a grocery
store. One of the challenges of urban life in the 21st century is the
creation of the so-called food desert- a place where people can't
access decent food easily. The addition of the Kane Street station on
CTfastrak, which is basically onsite, means that not only Parkville has
a grocery store, but essentially anyone living in downtown Harford does
too. I don't think the importance of that can be underestimated
(12/2023.) |
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A view of the various signs on
New Park Ave, including the CTfastrak Kane St station and the Stop and
Shop sign. Note that the Stop and Shop sign has another sign, honoring
the Royal Typewriter factory, above it. Stop and Shop's corporate
branding has gone through at least one major change since this store
opened, so it's encouraging that the Royal sign has been retained (12/2023.) |
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A look to the southwest from a
bus departing the northbound CTfastrak platform at Kane St. Visible are
the I-84 viaduct, the southbound Kane St platform, and a fence
separating the Stop & Shop parking lot from the busway. This photo
makes the proximity of Kane St station and the grocery store obvious
(12/2023.) |
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Looking at the northbound platform at Kane St in the last dwindling light on New Year's Eve, 2023. The remains of a scrapyard are visible in the distance (12/2023.) |
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Looking at the northbound platform at Kane St in the last dwindling light on New Year's Eve, 2023. A Hartford Line train is visible on the two tracks behind the plaform. We can't see the locomotive, but the coaches are the reliable Brazilian built (1992) Mafersa cars formerly used on Shoreline East and the Virginia Railway Express. (12/2023.) |
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(c) 2016-2024 Timothy M Dowd. Last Modified @ 17:55 EST on 2024-01-13
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