Today (4 May, 2008) my son and I took a hike along the G&U ROW in Upton from Station Street south/east (toward Hopedale) in hopes of finding how far the Pettibone brush cutter had made it. A previous drive-by of the Chestnut street crossing had shown that it had not made it that far yet. And yes, we did find the brush cutter.
(Later in the day, we took a drive through Hopedale to see how things were there; a few photos are available here.)
We started from this point and walked east/south, passing the Grove Street crossing. It turns out that there's a paintball facility here which has parking on the left side of the tracks, and the field is on the right side. They've dragged a lot of mud and dirt across the tracks where they cross. In fact, we came across a small bucket loader which was driving along the ROW, presumably doing work on the paintball facility.
We did discover the brush cutter here and took several photos. The brush was still cut for a few hundred yards past (south/east) of the brush cutter, so they must have backed it up a bit before they parked it for the weekend. Presumably they backed it up to be near the paintball facility, the nearest convenient street access to the ROW.
We continued south/east, but not much after we passed the brush cutter we ran into very soggy conditions. In fact, there was a stream actively running between the rails, and the wetlands water level was above the level of the ties on either side at points. I was just wearing sneakers, so at this point it got too soggy to continue any further south/east. We never made it to the Chestnut street crossing on foot.
This section of track is shown near the center of this map, which shows a wetlands area at the south edge of the tracks.
