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The Orange Line is one of the four subway lines of the MBTA. It extends from Forest Hills in Jamaica Plain, Boston in the south to Oak Grove in Malden, Massachusetts in the north. It meets the Red Line at Downtown Crossing, the Blue Line at State, and the Green Line at Haymarket and North Station. It connects with Amtrak and Commuter Rail service at Back Bay and North Station, and just the commuter rail at Ruggles station in Roxbury. Originally known as the Main Line of the Boston Elevated Railway and later the Forest Hills-Everett Elevated Line, the current name is derived from Orange Street, an old name for the section of Washington Street immediately south of downtown under which the Washington Street Tunnel, forming the center of the line, still runs. (Cars throughout the Boston rapid transit network were formerly painted orange or with orange stripes by MBTA predecessors, and restored streetcars on the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line wear their historical orange livery, but this is largely coincidental.) In 1975, the Charlestown Elevated to Everett was shut down and replaced with a rerouting to Malden. During the conceptual stages of the modern Orange Line in the 1970s, extensions to the beltway Route 128 were proposed by the Boston Transportation Planning Review, with termini at Reading in the north and Dedham in the south. In April 1987, the Washington Street Elevated south of the Essex (Chinatown) station was closed. The Orange Line was rerouted into a modern subway along the Southwest Corridor from Back Bay to Forest Hills. The corridor had been cleared for the construction of I-95 into downtown Boston, but this routing was cancelled in 1971 after significant local opposition. The right of way is also shared by Amtrak as part of the national Northeast Corridor. Transit service along Washington Street itself was ultimately replaced in 2002 with Silver Line bus rapid transit. The old Orange Line El was the train seen in the opening sequence of the television program St. Elsewhere.
Station listing Trains/Equipment The Orange Line's current fleet is the 01200 series, built 1980-1981 by Hawker Siddeley Canada Car and Foundry (now Bombardier Transportation) of Fort William, Ontario, Canada. They are 65 feet (20 meters) long and 111 inches (2.8 meters) wide, with three pairs of doors on each side. They are based on the PA3 model used by PATH in New Jersey. There are 120 cars, numbered 01200-01319. These units are expected to remain in service until 2015.* Accessibility All stations on the Orange Line are handicapped accessible, though State is not fully accessible on the Blue Line. Notes | ||||||||
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