New England
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New England Steam: 7470 SundayS and MondayS this Summer!
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Through July and August, Conway Scenic Railroad plans to assign steam locomotive 7470 to their North Conway to Conway Valley Train every Sunday and Monday.
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Gilbertville: Mass-Central, the old Mills, and the Boston & Albany Station.
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It was a scene made for black & white; Monochrome in the Ware River Valley.
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New England Central 611 at Three Rivers, Massachusetts.
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New England Central’s clean locomotives in parent company Genesee & Wyoming’s orange, yellow and black paint, make for handsome subjects, and a welcome change to the days when patched faded liveries of the locomotive’s various former owners predominated.
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CSX at Warren, Massachusetts—Lessons in Composition Revisited—Six views.
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Yes, I’ve done this before. Warren, Massachusetts is a favorite place to photograph, but also a tricky one. I used Warren as an example for a similar compositional conversation in Trains Magazine, published about two years ago and featured photo…
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The Lost Waterfall at Bernardston.
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You never know what’s going to change. I exposed this view twenty years ago using a Speed Graphic with 120 size roll film back that I’d borrowed from Doug More. A decade earlier, fellow photographer Brandon Delaney had showed me…
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CSX Intermodal catches the First Rays of Sunshine—Middlefield, Massachusetts.
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Last May (2016), I made this view of an eastward CSX stack train descending the old Boston & Albany grade over Washington Hill. I was just east of the old Middlefield Station (long defunct), where my late friend Bob Buck…
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Conrail versus CSX; West Warren on the Boston & Albany Then and Now.
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Ok, how about then and when? (click on the link to Brian Solomon’s Tracking the Light to see the modern view). These photos were exposed 28 years apart from essentially the same place in West Warren, Massachusetts. One view was made…
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Pan Am Railways on the Boston & Albany—February 2016.
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In the last few months I’ve been lucky to catch a variety of the more obscure operations on the Pan Am Railways system. Last week, Mike Gardner and I spent the afternoon around North Adams, Massachusetts. EDRJ arrived with two…
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CSX Monday Traffic: Snow, Cold and Being There—a Dozen New Photos.
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Back to the old, ‘f5.6 and be there’. (While paying close attention to the signals and scanner). Lately CSX’s freight operations on the old Boston & Albany have been largely nocturnal. Mondays on the other hand can prove busy…
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Boston & Albany West End-Conrail in the Berkshires.
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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…
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Thursday Extra Post: Follow up view!
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In relation to this morning’s post; Mass-Central on Ware Hill; Boston & Albany’s Ware River Branch in a Modern Context, I’ve received several comments (and email) suggesting that a view in between the two I originally presented might be a superior alternative….
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Amtrak 449 with Autumn Foliage
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I exposed this view of Amtrak 449, the Lake Shore Limited, from a favorite field off Route 67 near Palmer, Massachusetts. Since 1980, I’ve made hundreds of views from this field. If I put up one new image every day, we’d still…
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Ware River Valley Vignettes‑Mass Central at Gilbertville.
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Early November is a great time to explore the Ware River Valley. The trees are largely bare, yet a few colored leaves still cling to higher branches. Vestiges of old industries survive, as the old Boston & Albany branch meanders…
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Boston & Albany: November Morning 2015
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November light in New England; fleeting shafts of low sun, heavily textured skies; images with brown, burnt and amber hues mixed with shades of slate and blue. It was always tough with film because of the subtlety of light, but…
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Pan Am Heritage Locomotives Cross the Connecticut—July 9 2015
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In the early 1980s, I made trips to Boston & Maine’s East Deerfield Yard to catch the waning days of the old GP7s, GP9s, and GP18s. More than 30 years later, some of those old goats are still on the…
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Boston’s Coolidge Corner—Sunday Afternoon in mid-May.
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MBTA’s Beacon Street line to Cleveland Circle is a classic median running trolley route. Coolidge Corner is situated on a gradient and a gentle curve with a traditional traction shelter and lots of trees that help make it a cool…
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May 23, 2015; Clear Morning on the old Boston & Albany.
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I’d learned via Facebook that it was Railroad Illustrated’s annual ‘Day in North America.’ The day dawned cloudless and bright, and while I had a full schedule of events for the day, I opted to make the most of the…
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Canadian National Caboose passing Monson Semaphore.
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This old upper quadrant semaphore was located in Monson, Massachusetts about a mile from the Palmer diamond. It served as a fixed distant to the absolute signal protecting the crossing and was always in the diagonal position indicating ‘approach’. I…
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Grab Shot: Conrail November 1984.
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Here’s another gem from my Conrail files. I have tens of thousands of Conrail photos, many of them exposed in black & white. This image caught my eye. November 1984 was a busy month photographically, and I exposed almost all…
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Foggy Morning, East Deerfield, Massachusetts, June 24, 1989.
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Then, as now, east Deerfield was a favorite place to make photos and begin a trip to somewhere else. To make the most of the long days of summer, I had an early start. At 6:19 am, I made this…
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Lots of Locomotives at East Brookfield Four Years Ago Today.
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On this day in 2011 (January 31), I exposed this view of a CSX light-power move rolling westward through East Brookfield, Massachusetts on the former Boston & Albany mainline. I used my trusty Lumix LX3, a camera with which I…
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Vermonter at Three Rivers.
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Only a Few Months to go. Soon, Amtrak’s Vermonter will be detoured back to the traditional passenger route north of Springfield, Massachusetts, leaving the New England Central’s former Central Vermont line between Palmer and East Northfield, Massachusetts freight only for…
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Autumnal Massachusetts Saturday.
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October 18, 2014. We had a late start, the weather was a bit iffy, and there wasn’t much running, but my father and I set out anyway to make a few railroad photos in the fall foliage. Since Amtrak’s Vermonter is…
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Being There; Don’t Hate Me for My Luck!
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Palmer, Massachusetts, June 22, 2014. A wise photographer once wrote, ‘The secret to making photographs is f8 and be there.’ Back in the 1990s, my friend and fellow photographer Mike Gardner said, ‘All good trips begin and end in Palmer.’ Sunday,…
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Amtrak’s Vermonter on New England Central
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Federal Street in Belchertown, May 25, 2014. Since 1995, Amtrak’s Vermonter has operated via Palmer and Amherst, Massachusetts. This requires a 13-mile jog over CSX’s former Boston & Albany from Springfield to Palmer, where the train reverses direction and heads…
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Freight among the Bricks—Haverhill, Massachusetts.
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Guilford—May 1997. It was a clear fresh May morning when I met my friend George S. Pitarys for a day’s photography. We were aiming to photograph the New Hampshire North Coast’s rock train, however, George said to me, ‘lad, we…
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DAILY POST: Maine Central Alco in the Rain at North Walpole, New Hampshire
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Taking in the Whole Scene. My father taught me to make railway scenes, and not merely images of equipment. I did just that on this cold, wet, rainy day, when I photographed Maine Central Alco RS-11 crossing Route 12 in…
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DAILY POST: Maine Central at East Deerfield Yard, September 1984.
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An Unconventional View of the Ready Tracks. I was interested to find this collection of Maine Central locomotives at Boston & Maine’s East Deerfield Yard in September 1984. At the time, Guilford’s gray and orange livery was still a novelty….
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Daily Post: Westward Freight in Wink of Sun
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CSX Q427 Claws Upgrade at Chester, Massachusetts. For me the old Boston & Albany West end is hallowed ground. This was the first true mountain mainline in the modern sense. The line was surveyed in the mid 1830s and by…
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DAILY POST; West Warren Contrasts; 2010 and 2013
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Difficulties of Photographing in the Spring and Summer. That’s just what you want to read about right now, isn’t it!. Gosh, those awful warm months with the long days, soft sunlight and thick foliage. Well, here I have two views,…
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DAILY POST: Campaign Train, Aug 2010.
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New England Central at Montpelier Junction, Vermont. A freshly scrubbed GP38 led a pair of Pennsy passenger cars in a classic old-school whistle-stop campaign tour of Vermont. On August 28, 2010, my dad and I drove to the Georgia high…
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DAILY POST: Vermonter at Dusk
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Ethereal View at Millers Falls, January 2014. Tim Doherty asked me a few weeks back, “Have you ever tried a shot from the north side of the Millers Falls high bridge?” I’d looked a this several times, but was discouraged…
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DAILY POST: Amtrak Heritage P40 at West Warren, Massachusetts!
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Light! Camera! Action! Here we have an instance where everything came together nicely. On Friday January 24, 2014, I’d got word that Amtrak’s heritage locomotive number 822 was working the westward Lake Shore Limited, train 449 This was the second…
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DAILY POST: Palmer Freight House Demolition
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25 Years Ago, Conrail Demolished Palmer’s Boston & Albany Freight House. During the 1980s, Conrail demolished many disused structures along the Boston & Albany line. The East Brookfield freight house went in 1984, Worcester’s went in 1986. In January…
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Amherst Railway Society’s Big Railroad Hobby Show—Part 1
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West Springfield, Massachusetts, January 25, 2014. This past weekend (January 25-26, 2014) was the annual Big Railroad Hobby Show sponsored by the Amherst Railway Society. It fills four buildings at the Eastern States Exposition grounds at West Springfield, Massachusetts and…
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DAILY POST: Kodachrome Afternoon at West Springfield, February 1986
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Making and old Slide Even Better. Here we have a typically New England scene; a fresh blanket of snow has fallen and the sky has cleared to a clear blue dome. Perfect light right? Not exactly. The great contrast between…