A westbound Pan Am train consisting of empty coal hoppers
Yesterday my friend Tom and I spent a day wandering around the Pioneer Valley. I started the day at Palmer, waiting for Tom to arrive from Connecticut and caught two CSX trains, eastbound and westbound autoracks (wasn’t paying enough attention to catch the train ID’s). NECR also moved some cars into the CSX yard, but I decided to head home for breakfast before they returned.
Once Tom arrived we headed north to East Deerfield where a brace of power was being moved onto the service tracks to have a ditch light repaired on one of the units. Not expecting much else to happen for awhile we headed back across the Connecticut River to try and catch the southbound Vermonter. We might have caught it too had the road we were planning to take been maintained during winter, but unfortunately the mound of snow the plows had piled up at the entrance was too much even for my truck.
Though we missed the Vermonter we heard on the radio that a northbound NECR freight was stopped at Northfield waiting for the conductor to walk the train to check on an issue with the EOT. We’d never been to Northfield, but decided north would be a good direction to head in. We crossed the tracks a few times, but never did find the train, though we did manage to locate Hinsdal, N.H. at that point we decided it wasn’t worth backtracking and continued north to Brattleboro, VT. Once there we located the tracks again and headed south till all of a sudden there was our train inching north. We got a few shots then headed north again to wait for it at Bridge St. in Brattleboro where it was scheduled to re-crew.
A northbound NECR train waits for a new crew at Brattleboro, VT.
We took a few shots then headed back south on I-91 to East Deerfield. An eastbound was waiting at the yard limits without it’s power. A switcher was shuffling about and we caught our westbound coal train finally pulling into the yard. By now though the light was getting pretty bad, and we decided we’d better get home while our girlfriends were still in decent moods.
Anyway, I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit lately, but the holidays were keeping me occupied. Nevertheless I did get some good work done SNCT #101 and should have photo’s up soon.
Chris
MILEPOST 15 