In July 1984, I was only a few weeks out of High School. My Pal TSH and I were on one of our photography adventures. Bob Buck of Tucker’s Hobbies in Warren, Massachusetts had alerted us to the fact that Amtrak’s southward Montrealer had suffered a locomotive failure, and had been brought down by a borrowed Canadian National M-420.
At that time seeing a Canadian National locomotive in Springfield was an event, and the M-420s were a rare catch. Over the coming years CN M-420s would become increasingly common on the Central Vermont, but that was in the future and at this time I was very keen to catch this rare bird in home territory.
![](https://i0.wp.com/briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SPV_and_M420_at_Springfield_Station_July_1984_©Brian_Solomon_53600140.jpg?resize=474%2C288)
I made this photo of the foreigner on track 2A at the east end of Springfield Union Station (Massachusetts) along side a row of Amtrak /CDOT Budd-built SPV2000s that were assigned to work the Springfield-Hartford-New Haven shuttle service in the early/mid 1980s. The SPVs would only survive on this run for another couple of years and were relative rare machines.
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