The train we missed

Only a lunatic would come before state legislators every year for 30 years, begging them to approve a passenger train service — elevated in some stretches — through Burlington on the way from Quincy Market to Lowell.

That’s exactly what Massachusetts lawmakers thought of E. Moody Boynton of West Newbury, MA. They finally charged him with “lunacy,” A jury acquitted him, however. And he ultimately did manage to get the Legislature to vote on his proposal in 1896. It didn’t pass.

See the word “bicycle” above? You might be imagining something like this:

But no, in this case, “bicycle” refers to Boynton’s patented propulsion system:

It was a narrow, lightweight passenger train with a rail below and above, hence a “bicycle.” The invention debuted at the 1889 World’s Fair and made the cover of Scientific American in 1894. Massachusetts lawmakers obviously thought Boynton was off the rails, but New York lawmakers thought he was on the right track. They put his train into service in the 1890s on Coney Island, boasting impressive specs:

• 60 mph
• Double-decker layout
• Weighed only four tons
• Entire train was four feet wide
• Narrowness allowed it to use a two-way track on a single railroad right-of-way, doubling return-on-investment

Here’s the lunatic, Eben Moody Boynton (1840-1927). Born in Ohio to Massachusetts parents, he settled in West Newbury.

He was actually a very smart serial inventor, responsible for advances in watercraft and even hand tools. He had made a fortune with his “lightning saw,” which had patented M-shaped teeth. It really worked! It was the first hand saw to displace crude instruments like axes in the agricultural world. The American Agriculturalist said the lightning saw saved American workers about $1M in labor. A genuine lightning saw is still valuable today.

But Boynton blew his entire lightning-saw fortune on developing and pitching this bicycle railroad idea. Even on Long Island, it didn’t last more than five years. Why? Because it was way ahead of its time. Rail transport was a newfangled thing at the time. And this particular train was simply too radical and too fast. At the time, doctors feared high-speed movement might damage human anatomy.

And so Boynton is all but forgotten nowadays. A little street in Brooklyn called Boynton Place (center of the image) commemorates his old bicycle railroad right-of-way.

Turns out, Boynton’s notion of rail transport along the future 3A corridor wasn’t so crazy after all. Note the Lowell to Boston Street Railway of the early 1900s.

So why did this wimpy electric trolley succeed where Boynton’s superior train failed? Maybe because nobody could stomach the prospect of high-speed travel after getting smashed at Ma Newman’s in Pinehurst Park.

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