I made this photograph at Windsor Locks, Connecticut showing a southward Amtrak SPV2000 making its station stop.
The Budd SPV2000s only worked this Amtrak ‘branch’ for about six years and during that time they were rarely photographed.
Lets just say, I’ve seen more of my own photographs of these cars on the Springfield-New Haven run than all other published views of the cars. (And I only have a few photos).
It’s too bad. I thought the cars looked pretty cool. And they were fun to ride on. Plus, you never knew when one might show up hauled by an Alco RS-3 or some other locomotive!
Tracking the Light Posts Daily!
One of my greatest adventures of all time when I was working for Amtrak was being part of an SPV rescue at Hartford. I volunteered to be a “special duty brakeman” and drive the engineer up to the Hartford enginehouse – there was around 5 inches of snow on the ground and Conductor Robichaud was only a few weeks away from retirement, had only regular shoes on so I told him and engineer Tony Stabile I was a qualified brakeman so I could throw switches. Had to clean out and throw 3 switches, got the RS3 to the train , conductor made the hitch. Tony said he didn’t like running long hood forward as he couldn’t see a couple of signals on curves so I volunteered to be a “fireman.” Rode to Springfield, came back on the last train, stopped at the yard and walked over to get my car. Said to myself “I’ll never get a chance to do that again.” I was correct.