Monthly Meetings
Every month, we hold a meeting online via Zoom that is open to members and guests alike. These are usually held on the first weekend of the month, unless it is a holiday weekend. Each meeting begins with a brief business portion, which includes MBTA current events, followed by an entertainment presentation on a transit-related topic.
Virtual Meeting Link
Our April 2026 Meeting will be held on April 4 at 7:30PM EST.
BSRA Members and guests can access the meeting live via Zoom using the button below. Regular Members should also review full reports at this link before the meeting, as they will be voted on for approval.
Dial in by phone (audio only):
Call 1-646-558-8656 (Outside the US? Find your local number here) and enter the below details when prompted:
Meeting ID: 873 5453 0049
Passcode: 248219
Upcoming Meeting & Entertainment Schedule
Below you will find dates and scheduled entertainment programs for our next virtual meetings. Interested in being a presenter? Let us know!
APRIL 4, 2026
Chicago Transit Fans Do Boston; Behind the Scenes at Lotus Place; and a Green Line Potpourri from 1980
Donald Nevin returns to treat us to three mini-shows. First will be a Boston fan trip by a Chicago transit group on June 25, 1978, in which the group chartered a former Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway gasoline bus from the 1930s that had been painted in Boston Elevated Railway colors for the 1978 film The Brink’s Job (for footage that never ended up being actually used for the film), together with a larger and newer ACF Brill bus owned by Peter Sheinfeld and painted in MTA livery. This fan trip visited many bus to rail transfer stations on the T, and includes many photos that can no longer be taken.
Next, Donald takes us on a brief tour of the Lotus Place heating plant in 1962, showing us where he worked behind the scenes during the MTA days, in infrastructure that is now gone.
Finally, he will present a potpourri of Boston Green Line equipment from 1980, Boeing LRVs, including two of the three visiting CLRVs, ex-Dallas car #3344 (made into a work car), Type III snowplows, and other work equipment at Riverside, and the move of vintage Boston Elevated Railway cars #475 (pre-Type I Newburyport-built, 1903) and #5736 from Watertown Carhouse to Riverside, as well as views (again including two CLRVs) at Arborway.
May 2, 2026
Heading West by Trolley: The Boston & Worcester and Beyond
The Boston & Worcester railroad once provided service not only to Boston and Worcester, but many points in between, as well as some branch line services. In the 1920s to 1930s, this service was replaced by buses along with the Worcester Turnpike (Massachusetts Route 9), and has now mostly disappeared, with only a few scattered fragments of some routes providing a pale shadow of the former service in a few areas. Leo Sullivan returns to show the interurban service that once ran here, along with views of the Worcester Consolidated Railway, and interurban trolley service from points beyond.
JUNE 6, 2026
Douglas Kydd’s Primer on the Boston & Maine RR: Postwar Years, 1945 till their demise in the late 1980s
The Boston & Maine Railroad (1845 – 1986) was once a household name, recognized all over Massachusetts and northern New England. Its 1,400+ mile network extended as far west as Rotterdam Junction, NY, as far east as Portland, Maine, and as far north as Sherbrooke Quebec. At its North Station terminus in Boston, one could board Pullman sleeping cars for Montreal, Halifax in Nova Scotia, or Chicago, or one could take a commuter train to Saugus, Stoneham or South Sudbury. Until the 1980s, its name was as recognizable as Coca Cola or Bell Telephone. Today, 90% or more of the thousands of MBTA Commuter Rail and Amtrak Downeaster riders passing through North Station each day have never even heard of the B&M. This Month, retired engineer Douglas Kydd of the Boston & Maine Railroad (1978 – 1986) and (1997 – 1993) Amtrak will show us a view of the B&M in its final decades, from 1945 until it became a fallen flag in December 1986.
Save the Dates!
Additional meeting dates for 2026 include July 11, August 1, September 12, October 3 (Annual Meeting), November 7, and December 5. Entertainment information to come!
BSRA Zoom Meeting Guidelines & Tips
We use the Zoom platform to conduct our virtual monthly meetings. At 7:30PM on the day of the meeting, you can join by clicking the link posted on this page, or by dialing in using your phone to the number listed on this page. Please note a few basic rules:
- All attendees will enter a “waiting room” before being admitted into the meeting by the host
- All attendees will be muted on entry, and are asked to keep themselves muted for the duration of the meeting
- Attendees are asked to use the chat feature in Zoom to raise any questions, rather than speaking, to allow the meeting to run efficiently and minimize cross-talk
- Anyone wishing to raise any items of New or Old Business, or any Current Events items, should also post them using the Chat feature when prompted during the meeting
Note: You do not need to install the Zoom software to join the meeting, though it does provide a better experience. Instead, you can click “join in your browser” after clicking the meeting link, or you can dial in by phone. Note: dialing in by phone will only provide meeting audio, and does not allow for viewing slides, voting in polls, or participating in the meeting chat.