This is the transmitter building at the base of the tower. The Boston Herald Traveler lost its license for WHDH-TV (Channel 5) in 1972 when a court ruled that the newspaper's ownership of the TV station was illegal. When a new company, Boston Broadcasters, Inc.,was granted a license for Channel 5 as WCVB-TV, the Herald refused to sell it the tower or transmitter building, and shortly afterward went bankrupt (the current Boston Herald doesn't own any radio or TV stations). The site was used only by WCOZ (the former WHDH-FM) for many years afterward.
Here is the WCRB transmitter room. The blue box on the left is an RCA transmitter built in 1971; it is kept as a spare.
WCRB's main FM transmitter was built by Broadcast Electronics of Quincy, Illinois, in 1997. It produces twelve kilowatts of power but is capable of twenty.
One of the other rooms contains spare transmitters for stations that normally transmit from the Prudential Center in Boston's Back Bay; this equipment is kept ready should that site become unusable.
This is yet another transmitter room.
Here is WCRB's "HD Radio" transmitter, which I installed in January, 2006.
The transmitter for WBPX-DT (Channel 32) is in the room behind this door.
A multistation FM combiner built by Electronics Research, Incorporated of Chandler, Indiana, allows several FM radio transmitters to feed a common antenna. The pipes are coaxial transmission lines carrying radio-frequency energy.
This is the base of the tower. This structure is some 120 stories tall; there is an elevator car visible just above the point where the bridge from the building joins the tower. The railroad track runs on the embankment behind the tower.
Continuing down the track past the tower site, one comes to Otis Pettee Square, named for the mill owner who brought the railroad to Newton Upper Falls. The red wooden building is the original 1852 depot, now a coffee shop.
Here's another view of the depot. A freight agent was stationed here until 1980.
Looking past the depot, the remains of a second main track, now overgrown with trees, appear on the right.