Train takes a detour into the past

ABOARD THE GREENBUSH TRAIN - It was an hour-long, 18-mile trip from Scituate to South Station. But for the Heavey family, the ride yesterday aboard the newly reopened Greenbush commuter line was also a journey to the past.

The trip was the family's tribute to railroad baggage master Alfred E. Heavey, who took his wife and three children aboard the last Greenbush train on June 30, 1959, the day before Massachusetts officials discontinued the line. Heavey died of heart disease in 2004 after working on the trains for 50 years.

Yesterday, Heavey's family stared out the windows of the Greenbush commuter train again, this time on board for the first public ride of the $513 million line, which will serve an estimated 4,000 commuters along the South Shore. "If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have been on the last train," said Alfred E. Heavey Jr., 55, the oldest of Heavey's six children.

"He would have loved it," said his widow, Margaret, 78.

The Greenbush line formally reopens Wednesday. Yesterday's ride was a special run to raise funds for the Scituate library. The seven-car train accommodated 1,100 passengers who had paid $10 per ticket for the round-trip.

The trip had a special meaning for many passengers.

Sorcha Maeve Sullivan, 21-months-old of Scituate, marveled at the maroon seats and the steep stairs of the double-decker car on her first train ride ever. Hugh Willis, an environmental engineer, recalled growing up in Winslow, Ariz., where his father worked on the Santa Fe Railroad.

For the Heavey family, the ride through the South Shore woods and towns brought back memories of Alfred E. Heavey and of time spent around trains.

"There, there!" Alfred pointed at the sprawling green golf course of the South Shore Country Club, where the Heavey children used to sled in the winter.

"Remember this?" said his sister Colleen Heavey O'Hea, 49, when the train passed the crossing where the siblings used to lay coins on the tracks.

And then there it was, in the distance, behind the receding golden lattice of fall foliage: the momentary yellow blur of the house where Alfred E. Heavey had moved his family from Brighton in 1958 to live closer to the tracks.

"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed Kathy Murray, 54, Heavey's oldest daughter. "We saw a glimpse of the house!"

A year after the Heaveys moved to Hingham, authorities closed down the Old Colony line, which included Greenbush and two other lines. On June 30, 1959, Heavey and other railroad workers were allowed to ride the train with their families one last time.

That ride "was very serene, very quiet," recalled Margaret Heavey. "People were reminiscing, thinking of what will become of them without the train."

None of her children could remember that ride.

Many railroad workers lost their jobs then. Heavey - "a tough, stubborn old Irishman," as Murray called him - kept his and worked on other trains, commuting to Boston.

He survived three heart attacks, two quintuple bypasses, an eruptive abdominal aortic aneurysm, and skin cancer. He worked as a baggage man, conductor, and signalman. He dreamed of becoming an artist but never did.

The Heavey children grew up and moved from home to other parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Florida. The family sold that yellow Hingham house.

As the train pulled through morning drizzle yesterday, the Heavey children shared mementos and memories of their father. Alfred, who lives in New Hampshire, brought along a deck of New York, New Hampshire and Hartford Railroad Co. playing cards that his father had given him years ago. Colleen examined a tiny "Prayerbook for Children" someone had given her father in 1934.

Murray, wearing a pair of pearl earrings her father gave her for her wedding 33 years ago, strolled up and down the train car, showing fellow passengers a yellowed photograph, taken by a Globe reporter, of her parents, her brothers, Alfred and Shawn, and herself seated aboard that last Greenbush train of 1959.

Margaret Heavey, 78, smiled blissfully as she sat between Shawn Heavey and her grandson, Keegan Heavey, 27, Alfred's son.

"I'm enjoying the clan," she said. "We hardly ever get together like this."

A band of Irish troubadours walked through the car, playing "The M.T.A. Song," better known as "Charlie on the M.T.A.," on accordion, banjo, and guitar. "He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston," the Heaveys sang along. When the musicians left, Colleen discreetly wiped the corner of her eye with her fingertip.

"He'd really like this," she said.