Mark June 20, 2020 on your calendar. On that day, Conway Scenic Railroad will commence its 2020 operating season!

Yesterday, I was down in the yard making photos of 470 Club’s F7A 4268 that Louis and Jordan were transferring from stall four in the roundhouse to its new location behind stall 1, where it now sits back to back with sister B&M F7A 4266 (for continued restoration work), when I heard this news:

The State of New Hampshire is planning to lift the conditions that have restricted Conway Scenic Railroad from operating public excursions.

These were posted to: covidguidance.nh.gov.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been assisting with planning for our delayed reopening, including mapping the seating arrangements for our passenger cars, helping to draft training materials, working on schedules, and learning some nuts and bolts of real railroading, along with marketing activities.

Among the complications of our reopening are the conditions that still remain in place to minimize the spread of Covid-19 that require us to limit passenger car capacity, enforce social distancing, maintain sanitary conditions etc.

These have resulted in much longer boarding processes, and at least initially we will need to begin boarding guests 30 minutes prior to scheduled departure times.

We have to limit the numbers of guests in our station, and set up new procedures for our crews.

I’ll be a busy guy over the coming days. Since we only received the particulars of the new ruling yesterday many of the details still need to be worked out.

Tracking the Light is Brian Solomon’s Photography Blog.