Historic vs. Contemporary

A big question early on was whether to implement the line as the historic Cambridge Dorchester line of the 1960's or today's line complete with the various extensions. Initially I even made provisions such as allowing for 6 car length stations but then abandoned that as too much of a compromise - I should either do one or the other.

Reasons for doing the contemporary version:

• probably of more interest to others if/when I post the route to one or more of the Train Sim libraries.
• Easier to get information, photos, excuse for field trips :)
• Activities would be more interesting as there are multiple destinations - Ashmont/Braintree/Alewife/Cabot Yard

Reasons for doing the historical 1960's version:

• More interesting to me
  
• In a small way preserves a piece of history
• Easier to do (no Braintree extension or "malfunction Junction")
• Get to run the cool old equipment
• Implications of doing the comtemporary version make it likely to have to include Old Colony commuter line, expands scope of project - see below
  

In the end I chose to go with the historical version

What would be needed to modify the current version into the contemporary version. Basically everything the T had to do over the last 40 years:

• Add the Braintree extension between the Andrew portal and South Braintree. This involves reducing the former NH Old Colony to 1 track.
  
• Add "Malfunction Junction" as the 4 way junction just south of the Andrew portal was known to the T employees - this is a fairly complex junction with flyover tracks allowing movement from either the tunnel or Cabot Yard to either Ashmont or Braintree branches, with all the grades and turnouts it would be challenging (but cool to do).
• Extend all platforms to handle 6 car trains
• Modernize the stations i.e. cover up the cool mosaics and tile with tacky plastic looking stuff that cracks and falls apart after 10 years (yes I'm biased here)
• Redo Harvard so that the track now heads north-northeast from Harvard Square rather than west under Brattle St. Abandon the Bennett / Eliot comples and build the Kennedy School of Government over it (well actually you coudl remove all scenery in this area as the line stays in a tunnel all the way to Alewife.
• Add the Alewife extension including new stations at Porter and Davis.

One implication of this is for realism you would have to extend the Old Colony at least as far as South Braintree and north alongside Cabot Yard almost all the way to South Station, including adding at least a rudimentary Southampton St. MBTA/Amtrak yard alongside Cabot. If you are going to all this trouble you might as well finish it all the way to South Station so that as well as AI traffic as scenery for the Red Line trains you can have actual T commuter rail activities. So as you can see you have what we call in the software development industry "scope creep".

I am still thinking this is something I might do once the existing project is completed, except that I will be sick of it and have to do something else in between.