Haverhill Line Trains at Wakefield

MBTA Commuter Rail (operated by Keolis) Haverhill Line Trains No. 213, 214, 293, and 294 at Wakefield station. The Haverhill Line is the former Boston & Maine Railroad Western Route running between Boston and Portland, Maine via Haverhill and Dover, New Hampshire. During the last days of the B&M, the Western Route was actually proposed to be abandoned and replaced with an extended Orange Line rapid transit service between Boston and Reading. However, local opposition to the conversion of the line to rapid transit (primarily in Melrose) resulted in the new subway service been truncated at Oak Grove station in Malden, and the Western Route remaining a commuter rail operation, albeit with significantly reduced capacity. The B&M envisioned routing all northward traffic via the New Hampshire Main Line (today's MBTA Lowell Line) with services to Haverhill and points north splitting from services to Lowell and points west in Wilmington. The legacy of these unfulfilled plans is that the Haverhill Line is a predominately single-track railroad north of Wakefield and south of Malden, and even the double-track section through Melrose has not been fully upgraded to modern standards (though PTC has been installed on the line). The combination of the less-than-ideal condition of the tracks, and the extreme close proximity of some of the station stops, means that service between Boston and Reading is notoriously slow. Additionally, because of the single-track nature of the line north of Wakefield, only about half of the total operations on the Haverhill Line actually run to and from Haverhill; the remainder terminate at Reading station which is one stop north of where the double track ends. This makes the Haverhill Line the only MBTA Commuter Rail Line to lack clockface regional-rail style service as of 2023, with departure times scattered about throughout the day.
In recent times the MBTA has embarked on a project to double track the remainder of the line from Wakefield to Haverhill, a project that has been delayed multiple times due to budget cuts and has been completed gradually in non-continuous segments. However, because all of the stations north of Reading (except for Bradford and Haverhill) only have one active station platform, even locations where the double track has been installed have not seen increases in commuter rail service, with the second track largely used by Pan Am Railways to run freight trains around commuter rail trains (most freight operations occur overnight and on weekends, though there are a few on weekdays running to and from a classification yard in Lawrence).
All trains on the Haverhill Line operate in the 200-series, with the lower numbered trains being the through trips between Boston and Haverhill, and the higher numbered trains being the short-turns that operate only between Boston and Reading.