Presidents Day at Palmer

CSX ES44DC No. 5373 at Palmer, MA on Feb. 18, 2008.

I took a break from modeling last Monday to take in the railroad scene at Palmer. The weather was terrible, and I only had 4 hours until I needed to be at work, but CSX, NECR and Amtrak made up for all that by providing plenty of eye-candy. The train above is a CSX merchandise freight switching the Palmer yard. It sat on the second main for a good hour or so waiting on Amtrak’s Westbound Lake Shore, which came through almost on time. A couple more CSX freights came through after the lake shore, and then the train above blocked the diamond for a half an hour with an NECR local and Amtrak’s Vermonter stacked up to the north. At that point I had to go to work, but found out later that once CSX finally cleared the diamond, and NECR entered the yard, the Vermonter moved onto CSX trackage only to have the lead unit die. Glad I wasn’t on board :-).