Mass Central Rail Trail. Waltham MA

After leaving off in Belmont, the Central Massachusetts Railroad remnant picks up at Beaver Street in Waltham where Beaver Brook threads through it at several points.

If the Somerville and Cambridge segments are showcases for state of the art linear park sections, the Waltham portions are more mysterious.

From Beaver Street to the eastern edge of Bentley, the line is an overgrown bush whack.

As it heads west from there, one finds varying degrees of trail conversion but very little in the way of information as to who its parent is.

Despite these minor momentary provenance issues, this promises to be one of the great rail trail systems when it assumes its working form.

The rails are mainly intact with a few breaks along public grade crossings.

There is a great old bridge crossing at Linden Street and the main Waltham part ends at a fence just beyond the southwestern edge of Prospect Hill Park.

From there, it resumes beyond a gravel pit, crosses 95/128 and heads west through Weston where it meets little enthusiasm for trail conversion thus far.