(The Boston Globe posted the following column by Mac Daniel on its website on July 27.)
BOSTON — Riding into town on the MBTA’s Haverhill commuter rail line earlier this year, we suddenly experienced blurry vision. No, wait. Sorry. Our eyes were fine. We were just looking out of an amazingly unclear window.
The portals on this and many other MBTA commuter trains are scratched and cloudy beyond your standard scratched and cloudy. And that’s being kind. Landmarks along the route were so indecipherable that we thought Malden was Melrose.
Tim from Middleborough, a railroad enthusiast, reminded us of this in a recent e-mail. He was on the Franklin line as part of a sightseeing trip. But because of the deteriorating condition of the windows, the trip was a murky bust. ”I have also seen this window situation on other series of cars both from North and South stations. Thankfully, most windows on my Middleborough/Lakeville cars are fine . . . the cars are newer.
”It isn’t washing and maintenance. It just seems as if the windows supplied with the car have simply failed much as a mirror goes blind. Has the T ever looked into the quality guarantee of this glass?”
It’s not the glass quality, said T spokesman Joe Pesaturo. ”It’s just been too long,” he said.
Amtrak, the old commuter rail contractor, did little about the foggy glass, he said. Now the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, the new operator of T commuter lines, is on the case and plans to replace almost all the windows on T trains during the next two years.
The consortium has purchased 200 coach windows of each type found on the trains — 600 windows total — as part of the program. The worst windows will be replaced first during this on-going maintenance program.