I am very familiar with this route and hiked it with my bicycle (oufitted with dual heavy-duty newspaper carrying baskets in the rear) in 1967 from this point (now known as the Wollaston section of Quincy) to Bridgewater, MA which is about 25 miles south. I did this when the Western Union telegraph wires were being taken down. The poles remained, carrying later code circuits and a few wires for RR comms. The dismantling company usually threw the old crossarms on the ground with insulators and their ties intact. This was a real treasure hunt and feast for me although I never found anything rare (this was spring-summer 1967) although I came across my *first* purple insulator...a Whitall Taum No. 1...Yippeee!

This line was totally rebuilt in the teens employing new cedar poles and ten-pin crossarms. Double petticoat insulators were re-used (these were CD 145 crown-embossed Brookfields and some "B"s). This replaced the former aged 6-pin line (as you can see) built probably in the 1880s. It was aging and for more reliable telegraph service, WU was revaming most or all of their comm lines here in New England starting around 1910.

Many of those old cedar poles from the 1910s upgrade stood until the early 1990s when the current suburban transit service was built upon the same trackage. I had a lot of fun picking insulators off the ground in 1967 when the forementioned WU line was removed. Then in the mid-1990s a lot of that thrill was re-lived when I got to find and bring home some of the remaining old stuff (especially rusty hardware) given to me by the contractors. All of the latter graces my outdoor displays as well as collections of old crossarms and weathered-metal comms line stuff.

This line ran from Boston to Middleboro, MA with split connections to Cape Cod and Providence, RI (and points south from there).