Tag Archives: #Boston & Albany

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Palmer Local—February 1979.

In early February 1979, my father drove my brother and me to Palmer, Massachusetts. A visit to the old Palmer Union Station alerted us to a train working in the old Boston & Albany yard to the east.

I encouraged Pop to drive us over to the old B&A freight house, which was adjacent to Haley’s Grain Store. Here we found a former Penn Central SW1500 and a freshly painted Conrail caboose. This was the local which had just finished up its switching and would soon head west to the yard at West Springfield.

My pre-war Leica 3A was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 200, and during the course of our adventure, I exposed several slides.

I was in 7th grade at the time, and my photography skills were marginal. What I find remarkable is that my slides survived all these years. I recently found them mixed in a collection of my father’s slides and recognized them as my own.

Working with Adobe Lightroom, I made a variety of adjustments to the photos to improve their mediocre qualities and make them more interesting to look at.

Scan from original Ektachrome slide without cosmetic modifications.
Improved versions of the top scan. In this version, I’ve made a variety of adjustments to exposure, contrast and color.
Adjusted Ektachrome color slide.

Conrail was then in its infancy and would survive for another 20 years as a class I carrier serving Palmer.

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Christmas Day 1982

On this day 43 years ago, my father brought my brother and I to Warren, Massachusetts to roll-by Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited—Train 448—working its way east to Boston on Conrail’s former Boston & Albany main line.

Back then, there were no cell phones, no internet, and certainly no asm.transitdocs train tracker app with up to the minute train information. Instead, it was it a matter of consulting the timetable and waiting patiently trackside.

It was Christmas Day, so Tucker’s Hobbies—located up the hill to the right—wasn’t open for business. We stood patiently on the Rt 67 bridge over the tracks, where my friend Robert A. Buck—Tucker’s proprietor—had over the years made many photos of Boston & Albany and New York Central trains.

In 1982, the railroad was still double track (would remain so for another four years). Before Amtrak passed, a set of Conrail light-engines (engines without a train behind) rolled west on the No. 1 main.

Finally, we could hear the train as it came into view at the curve near the old Warren freight house. Using my Leica IIIA with f2.0 50mm Summitar loased with Kodachrome 64 film, I marked the passage of our Christmas train. This featured F40PH 208 in the lead, wearing its as-delivered ‘Phase II’ paint (although the modern-day ‘phase’ description was decades in the future.)

As I wound my camera, the train roared below us, its shadow chasing it up the valley.

On Christmas Day 2025, my old Leica sits on a shelf in my office where I can glance at it as I work. Its presence brings back memories of photographic adventures 40 years gone-by.

Long-time readers of Tracking the Light will remember that I posted this photo previously—thirteen years ago!

Merry Christmas from Tracking the Light!

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Eastbound on a Hazy Evening

The other night, Kris and I paid a sponaneous visit to my old stomping grounds at Palmer, Mass.

While the New England Central was switching the former Central Vermont Railway yard, we could hear an approaching eastbound freight on CSX’s former Boston & Albany.

I set up my 3pod tripod on the platform of the old Union Station (now Palmer’s popular Steaming Tender restaurant), and exposed a sequence of photos of the passing train using my Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.

These images were made at 1/15 second at ISO 1000. NEF Faw files were converted to DNG format pins DxO PureRaw software and then adjusted in Lightroom to alter color, contrast and exposure.

Wildfires in Canada contributed to haze that made for some interesting visual effects.

CSX M436 (Selkirk to Framingham) approaches Palmer, Massachusetts. Lights on the station helped illuminate the train.

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GP40-2s and the Billboard

Palmer, Massachusetts; then and now.

Since Spring 1999, CSX GP40-2s have worked the Palmer local.

I’ve paired two views of CSX GP40-2s on the local at CP83 (control point 83, as measured in miles west of Boston, Ma). In both photos, the lead locomotive is positioned in almost exactly the same place.

The first photo was exposed on Fujichrome using my Contax G2 rangefinder in June 2005, this is from the north side of the tracks; the second was made a few days after Christmas 2024 with my Nikon Z7-II, from the south side of the tracks. Both views feature the trackside billboard, which has been there in one form or another since at least the mid-1940s.

My friend Bob Buck had photographed steam locomotives at this same location with the billboard (or one of its early predecessors).

CSX local Palmer, June 2005.
June 2005.
Dec 28, 2024.

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Room with a View.

On a rainy December afternoon, Kris and I met my old friend Dan and his wife Mary at Palmer’s Steaming Tender for lunch.

We were seated by a window facing the Boston & Albany—today’s CSX’s Boston Line.

The rails were alive and freight trains were on the roll.

Some time after a very long westward manifest freight cleared the diamond (where CSX crossed New England Central at grade), a local freight arrived to work the yard with a set of three GP40-2s.

For more than 25 years these vintage EMD’s have be stalwarts on the Palmer local. I complimented the crew on their ‘antiques’, but they seemed unimpressed with the old diesels.

I made these images from our seat as the engines arrived.

More soon!

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December Dinner at the Steaming Tender

A few nights ago, Kris and I visited the Steaming Tender railroad-themed restaurant, located in the old Palmer (Mass.,) Union Station.

This historic building was designed for the Boston & Albany Railroad by noted Massachusetts architect Henry Hobson Richardson, famous for his romanesque Victorian style. It is one of a few surving Richardson-styled stations on the former Boston & Albany route.

ISO 100 f4.0 at 4 seconds. Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens set to 37mm, and mounted on 3Pod tripod.

Photos were exposed using my Nikon Z7-II with 24-70mm lens.

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Wicked Roar at Hovey Hill Road

In September 1984, I took a long walk.

I started in Palmer, Massachusetts and followed the old Boston & Albany west all the way to North Wilbraham.

Although, I remember the walk. Some of the details are lost to time.

Approaching the Hovey Hill Road overpass in Monson, Mass., I heard a wicked throbbing roar coming from the west.

Today, I know exactly what I was hearing. Back then I only knew a train was close. I scrambled from trackside up to the bridge. Just in time to make these photos.

An eastward Conrail freight passed by on Track 2 led by three former Erie Lackawanna SD45-2s and and an SD40-2 spliced between them. Wow. What I’d do to experience that again today!

So what was I hearing? EMD’s SD45-2, like its pre Dash-2 antecedant , the SD45, was powered by a 20-cylinder version of its 645 diesel. This engine produces a characteristic low-frequency sound; when two or more of the type work in tandem, the synchronizing effect of the exhaust from the valves creates a low throbbing sound that carries for many miles. This is especially noticeable when the engines are working in the middle throttle positions. Twenty years later I made a project of preserving that exact sound, but that’s a story for some other time.

Kodak 35mm Tri-X, exposed with a Leica 3A fitted with a Canon 1.8 50mm lens. Film processed in D-76.
Kodak 35mm Tri-X, exposed with a Leica 3A fitted with a Canon 1.8 50mm lens. Film processed in D-76.

This Conrail freight was one of several I saw that bright day, 40 years ago. Interestingly, I never did anything with these images until now. Pity I didn’t have a good tape recorder.

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Conrail SD45-2s at Bullards Road.

You know this must have sounded good! Former Erie Lackawanna SD45-2s lead a loaded ballast extra westbound at the summit of the Boston & Albany at Bullards Road near Hinsdale, Massachusetts.

I made this photo on the evening of August 23, 1984 using a Leica 3A loaded Kodak Tri-X.

In retrospect, I wish I had a slightly longer lens here and better exposure and processing skills. With in a few years, I had better cameras and my photography had improved dramatically, but catching scenes like this one of SD45-2s on the B&A route were a thing of the past.

And, I really wish I’d recorded the sound of this train. All those 20-cylinder 645 diesels in Run-8, wow!

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Palmer Yard—Spring 1985

Another choice image from my recently scanned roll of Ilford FP4 exposed in Spring 1985.

I made this view with a 50mm lens looking timetable west at the west end of Conrail’s old Boston & Albany yard in Palmer, Massachusetts. I had driven in behind Howlett’s Lumber to photograph a Sperry rail defect detection car that was stored near the B&A freight house.

Just about everything in this scene has changed. The freight house was demolished in Janaury 1989. The large building at right beyond burned down some years later. The code lines were removed after the B&A was re-signaled in 1986-1987.

I’ve posted two versions of this photo. The top is my unaltered and uncorrected scan. The bottom reflects a series of nominal adjustments using Adobe Lightroom.

Unadjusted sca&W negative. Back in the day, I suffered from a propensity to tilt my camera to the right, leaving many fine photos flawed by being off-level. I also had a tendency to over process my negatives, which led to ‘white skies’ and excessive highlight contrast.

In this view, I leveled the image by rotating it about 2 degrees clockwise. I then adjusted sky density and contrast and make overall changes to image contrast and density to improve tonality and detail..

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Boston & Albany Sunset

On this day five years ago (November 12, 2016), I made this sunset view at CP64 in East Brookfield, Massachusetts with my first Panasonic Lumix LX7.

Tonight, I am scheduled to present My Conrail, a multimedia slide presentation of my Boston & Albany photography to the 25th Beecherfest in Milwaukee.

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AMtrak E-Units at Brookfield.

Labor Day weekend 1978: my dad brought my brother and me out to roll by Amtrak’s westward Lake Shore Limited at the route 148 overpass in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

Working with his ‘motorized’ (mechanical wind-up) Leica 3A, I made a rapid fire sequence of the train as it roared west behind E-units.

I processed the film in the kitchen sink and made a few prints, then for the next four decades the negatives rested quietly in the attic.

I used this Epson scan of one of the negatives from that day as one of the opening photos in my program titled ‘Tracking the Light’ that I presented live last night to the Massachusetts Bay Railroad Enthusiasts at the Pearl Street Station in Malden, Massachusetts.

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GP35 Works East at Warren

There was a thrill of listening to an eastward freight ascending the Boston & Albany grade on approach to Warren, Massachusetts and wondering what locomotives would round the corner.

In February 1984, I was in my final term of high school. It was a warm weekend morning when I visited Bob Buck’s Tucker’s Hobbies. Bob advised me of an approaching Conrail freight and I walked briskly to the Route 67 bridge east of the old passenger station, where I made this photo.

The freight was led by an eclectic collection of EMD and GE diesels. It was one of only a very few times that I caught a GP35 leading a freight on the Boston & Albany.

Exposed on Kodak black & white film using a Leica IIIA.

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Amtrak’s Lake Shore in 2003

I’ve been reviewing 40 years worth of Amtrak photos for an article I’m writing for a German magazine.

In the mix of old chromes was this 2003 view of the eastward Lake Shore Limited east of milepost 129 between Chester and Middlefield, Massachusetts on CSX’s old Boston & Albany mainline.

Relatively few of Amtrak’s P42 Genesis diesels were painted in the short-lived Northeast Direct livery, making this a relatively unusual photo.

Working with a Nikon fitted with an f2.8 180mm telephoto, I was trying to make the most of a heavily backlit situation in early October. In situations like this I’d typically use my notebook to shield the front element of my lens to minimize the effects of flare. Backlighting autumn foliage helps accentuate the colored leaves.

On this day Amtrak was the booby prize; I was really after the Ringling Brothers Circus Train that was coming east from Selkirk Yard. And that photo is stored in a different file.

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Milepost 129—August 1982

In August 1982, Bob Buck of Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, Massachusetts brought Doug Moore, John Conn and me on a memorable Boston & Albany West End tour.

We started at Westfield and worked our way across the railroad, making it all the way to Amtrak’s Albany-Rensselaer station.

It was my first experience photographing Washington Hill—B&A’s big grade over the Berkshires.

We caught several Conrail freights, including one that we chased from Pittsfield east up toward Dalton.

Earlier in the trip, Bob drove us in his green Ford van along the right of way of the third track to Middlefield Station. When we reached milepost 129, we inspected one of the remaining 1830s-era stone arch bridges.

Here I made this view looking eastbound to show the GRS search light signal. Among the quirks of New York Central-era signaling was displaying a staggered ‘green over green’ for ‘clear’ on intermediate automatic block signals in graded territory. ABS Signals on the B&A Westend grades were continuously lit, while those on the East End tended to be approached lit.

You can see Bob at the wheel of his van.

I wasn’t good a picking my exposures and this frame of Kodachrome 64 was a full stop underexposed (too dark). For years this image was in my ‘3rds file’ (junk), but with modern scanning technology and Adobe Lightroom, I was able to make the image presentable again.

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Top of the Boston & Albany—May 1985.

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In the mid-1980s, my friends and I would convene at Washington Summit on Conrail’s former Boston & Albany mainline.

Located in the Berkshires, several miles timetable east of the old station at Hinsdale, the summit offered a good view in both directions and a pleasant, quiet place to wait for trains.

On this May 1985 afternoon, the chugging of an eastward freight could be heard for several miles before it came into view. I opted to frame the train with the Top of the B&A sign.

This sign was replaced in the 1990s; Conrail was divided by CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999; the old Bullards Road over bridge (seen in the distance) was removed in 2003; and the trees have grown much taller. So there’s not much left of this scene today, although the tracks are still there.

Exposed on black & white film using a Leica 3A with Canon f1.8 50mm lens.

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Conrail 6619 on the Boston & Albany.

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I made this image while hiking the line toward Middlefield, Massachusetts from Chester. The freight was descending the grade near where the 1912-line relocation joined the original Western Rail Road alignment (seen to the left of Conrail 6619) at milepost 129 (as measured from Boston’s South Station).

Conrail’s ten General Electric C32-8s were delivered in September 1984 and in their early years largely work out of Selkirk Yard on the old Boston & Albany route.

GE assigned these unique pre-production DASH8  prototypes to Conrail for evaluation in preparation for wide-scale DASH-8 production that began a few years later. 

I had countless encounters with the C32-8s on the Boston & Albany during the mid-1980s, but never had the opportunity to travel on one.

Later this year Kalmbach Media will release my new book titled Conrail and its Predecessors.

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