Tag Archives: #Massachusetts

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Dark December Day—Greenfield, Mass.

I have a few notes from December 16, 1984. Not as many as I wish I’d taken.

I’d started the morning in Springfield, Massachusetts where I met my friends and we continued north to Greenfield. It was pretty dark when we caught this eastward freight, passing the old Greenfield station site. The Connecticut River Main Line is in the foreground.

It was lightly snowing/sleeting. Pretty bleak conditions for photography.

This was early in the Guilford era, at a time when it was common to find Maine Central and Delaware & Hudson locomotives working Boston & Maine trains. In this instance, Maine Central GP38 262 was leading a former D&H General Electric U23B that had been transferred to Maine Central. At the back of the train was a Delaware & Hudson caboose.

Decades later, while working at Conway Scenic in North Conway, NH. I became familiar with Maine Central GP38s 252 and 255, so I find it fascinating to review these photos that I made 40 years ago of sister locomotive 262.

Greenfield MA Dec16 1984

These are thin negatives exposed on Kodak Tri-X using my Leica 3A with a Canon f1.8 50mm lens. Back then, my understanding of black & white processing was pretty basic, and I used a straight mix of Kodak D76 for the standard time. Live and learn.

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MBTA HSP-46 at Norfolk, Mass.

On our recent New England trip, Kris and I visited Norfolk, Massachusetts.

The Norfolk station, which is served by MBTA’s Franklin Line.

The double-tracking project that has been underway during our previous visits to Norfolk seems to have stalled. There’s a modern signal gantry in place with new signals, and while the right-of-way has been cleared and some ties laid down, heavy track work is still pending.

We waited for westward MBTA train 1709 that runs from South Station to Forge Park/495 station. This was led by one of the distinctive HSP-46 diesels that are unique to MBTA.

Using my Nikon Z7-II, I exposed a rapid sequence of photos as the train entered the station at speed and then came to a complete stop on the platform. This was a good show!

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Empty Yard at Palmer

Deep blue sky, fluffy white clouds, Spring-green trees, three locomotives and not a car in the yard nor a wheel turning on the New England Central at Palmer, Massachusetts.

That was the scene when we passed through last Thursday, May 12, 2022.

Exposed digitally using my Nikon Z6 with 24-70 Z-series Nikkor lens.

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GP9 at Ware—1987.

The other day I was digging around for some Boston & Albany negatives that I’d exposed back in the 1980s in preparation for a program that I’m putting together for the Mass Bay RRE.

Among the negatives I found was a roll of Kodak TMY (T-Max 100) black & white film that I’d exposed with my father’s Rollei Model-T on December 28, 1987.

I’d followed the Mass-Central freight from Palmer up to Ware in a light snow fall. The train had stalled on Ware Hill, but eventually got where it was going.

In this view Mass-Central’s GP9 7015, a former Conrail unit, was holding the mainline, while Mass-Central’s CF-7 2443 switched at the southend of the yard.

It was a gray day, but well suited to the subtle tonality of the Kodak black & white film. I scanned the negatives using my Epson V600 flatbed scanner powered by Epson Scan 2 software. I made some nominal adjustments to contrast to improve presentation here.

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Energy Train Crosses the Canal

We saw buzzards in the sky.

Hmm, so that’s why its called Buzzards Bay!

On Thursday afternoon, Kris Sabbatino and I arrived on the Bourne, Massachusetts side of the enormous Cape Cod Canal lift bridge just as the Massachusetts Coastal Energy train was approaching to cross.

Fortuitous timing considering we had left Center Conway, New Hampshire after 930am.

I exposed these photos using my Nikon Z6 digital camera and modified the color, contrast, and level using Adobe Lightroom.

April 22, 2021, Cape Cod Canal.

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Then & When: Rices 15 Years Apart.

In scanning my vintage Kodachrome slides, I found two color views at Rices near Charlemont, Massachusetts that I exposed nearly 15 years apart.

The top view was made looking east from a Mystic Valley Railroad Society excursion to the Hoosac Tunnel in May 1982. We had just over taken a short Boston & Maine local freight heading for North Adams. Interestingly this was my first photo at Rices.

The second photo was made of an empty coal train following a late-season heavy snow in April 1997.

Exposed on Kodachrome 64 using a Leica 3A with 50mm Summitar in May 1982.
Kodachrome 25 exposed with a Nikon F3T fitted with an 80-200mm Nikkor Zoom lens. April 2, 1997.

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Odd Couple at Springfield Station.

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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.

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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Charlemont in the Snow!

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Guilford GP40 353 was leading an eastward at Charlemont, Massachusetts in this December 2000 photograph.

I exposed this image on Fujichrome using a Nikon with 180mm Nikkor prime telephoto.

Diffused winter sun made for soft colors.

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