Sunday, September 22, 1985.
This photo was product of one of dozens of trips I made to the old Boston & Albany west end in the mid-1980s.
The west end is the railroad west of Springfield over the Berkshires of Massachusetts toward Albany, New York.
On this morning I waswest of Chester, Massachusetts perched on the top of an rock cutting that dated to the time of the line’s construction circa 1839-1840.
This Conrail eastward train was slowly making its way east. It was serenely quite in these hills and I’d hear the freight making its descent of Washington Hill miles before it finally appeared.
Imagine this setting one hundred and forty years earlier when it was the old Western Rail Road (precursor to the Boston & Albany). A time when one of Winan’s peculiar vertical boiler 0-8-0s would have led a train of primitive four wheel freight cars over this same line.
Fewer trees then. And no cameras!
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