After years of discussion and planning and more discussion and criticism and a bit of arguing and yet more discussion followed by what amounted to only a few months worth of work (spread out over a number of those years) Pan Am’s Connecticut River Line is almost ready for it’s first revenue passenger run in 25 years. The work peaked in July when Norfolk Southern’s camp train and a small army of track workers arrived. Continue reading “Norfolk Southern’s camp train visits Northampton.”
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any trackside shots. I’ve been getting out though when I can. Here are a few from New England in 2012 and 2013 that I haven’t shared yet. Continue reading “Trackside in New England: May 2012 – March 2013”
I spent some time over the last couple of weeks browsing through my trackside photos from 2010. Though I didn’t get out nearly as much as I had in previous years, I did manage to get some decent shots. I think I’ll probably make a tradition out of this post as it’s a nice way to put the previous year into perspective and provides a good deal of inspiration to get back outside and shoot some more. Continue reading “2010 Railfanning Retrospective”
With nothing planned for the weekend, and no desire to hang out with the usual suspects all day (CSX, PAR & NECR) I decided it might be nice to go for a bit of a drive (or a lot of a drive depending on how much driving you consider 460 miles in one day to be) to watch the Conway Scenic Railroad move a rare high and wide load along their line in the shadow of Mt. Washington. So, on Saturday (June 20th as I’ve been a bit neglectful of updates to this site) Tom Murray and I loaded the truck up with scanner, antenna, cameras, lots and lots of batteries, cold drinks, and not a single map of the area we were traversing before grabbing a rather unsatisfying breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts and charging northwards into the White Mountains. Continue reading “High and Wide!”
On August 30th, following a complete waste of a day spent on the B&A, Tom and I headed up to E. Deerfield early enough to catch this loaded slurry train heading east into E. Deerfield with #621, on of only 2 EMD SD26’s that Pan Am operates, on the point. Continue reading “Encountering a relic”
I got some slides developed recently, that have shots from as far back as January. I don’t exactly miss all that snow and sub-zero temperatures, but there are some good memories here from my last 8 months of railfanning. Continue reading “The year so far…”
While prepping a project for painting this afternoon, the scanner picked up a an empty P&W coal train heading north to E. Deerfield from Mt. Tom. The dispatcher had the crew copy out a Form D instructing them to wait at S. Deerfield for ED2-X which was shuffling some hoppers out of an industrial siding. Seeing as how the rain had stopped, I hopped in the truck and headed up to Deerfield to try and get in on some of the action. Continue reading “Mt. Tom Coal”
I took advantage of Helene being out of town, to get some time trackside today. It was generally sunny, but quite cold and windy. I met up with Tom at Palmer where I was just in time to catch an empty string of autoracks headed west. NECR did a little switching, and then an eastbound general merchandise train came through. It didn’t look like the rest of the day was going to be very eventful, so we headed north to E. Deerfield. Continue reading “Only a bit of snow left…”
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. Continue reading “Out in the Snow”
Pan Am power moves onto the service tracks at East Deerfield
as an inbound CP train waits on the main.
After hours of waiting around the Pan Am yard at East Deerfield, MA back in July, we caught this set of power being moved onto the service tracks, just before a train from Pan Am’s interchange with CP heads into the yard. This of course happened quite late in the evening when the excellent light we’d had all day had disappeared.
– Chris
MILEPOST 15 