On Sunday October 11, 2015, my father and I drove over the Berkshires to travel and photograph’s Berkshire Scenic’s Hoosac Valley excursion that is now operating on a short portion of the old Boston & Albany branch between Renfrew in Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts.

This presented an opportunity to travel in an old Budd RDC and ride a rarely used portion of the Boston & Albany. This new excursion service had only begun on the previous day, and should run over the next few weekends.

At Renfrew I met my friends Otto Vondrak, and Kevin Chittenden. Kevin was the engineer for the day.

The weather was nearly perfect—clear polarized sunny skies.

On the only hitch was that a day or two earlier the RDC had developed an electric fault, and as a result was being towed/propelled by a vintage EMD SW8 switcher.

My Irish friends will note that this 800 hp locomotive is remarkably similar to CIE’s Class 121s (also built by EMD).

I made this selection of photographs with my Lumix LX7 and FujiFilm X-T1 digital camera. However, I also exposed a few colour slides with my father’s Leica M4 with 35mm Summilux lens.

Thanks to everyone at the Berkshire Scenic/Hoosac Valley for making this an enjoyable day out.

For details on the new excursion service see: http://hoosacvalleytrainride.com/

Or look at: Hoosac Valley Service on Facebook.

 

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