It was very windy, and I spent the whole morning standing around along the old Boston & Albany mainline reading about 19th century industrial practice while waiting for trains to pass.
I posted the photos I made of an eastward Norfolk Southern detour train near Middlefield, Massachusetts yesterday evening.
My goal was to catch the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Train, that was rumored to be on the move.
But, after 8 hours standing in the cold, I decided to head downgrade.
Nearing Westfield, the scanner came to life, ‘clear signal CP109’.
Time for a U-turn.
I’d scoped a location near Huntington.
Unfortunately this neatly coincided with a fast moving cloud. Bad luck.
A dark dirty cloud covered the sun at precisely the wrong moment. (It lifted in time for me to grab a wide-angle view on Fujichrome.)
A bit of hard driving got me to Washington Summit ahead of the train. The clouds stayed at bay.
All of these images were exposed with my FujiFilm X-T1 mirror-less digital camera.
Slides from the event remain latent.
Near Washington Summit at the location known as ‘Muddy Pond’.The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Train is a long consist.Containers and trailers were at the back.
One of my favorite places to experience railroading and expose photos is on the old Boston & Albany ‘West End,’ Washington Hill grade.
On this legendary grade, one of the most interesting places is the 1912 line relocation between mileposts 129 and 130, west of Chester, Massachusetts. This includes a very deep cutting, while the right of way of the original 1839-built line is nearby and features three large stone arches dating from the time of construction.
Bob Buck first showed me this cosmic piece of railroad back in 1982.
I visited this hallowed ground last week and exposed these views with my FujiFilm X-T1. To accentuate the autumn foliage and make for more pleasing scenes, I set the white balance to ‘shade’ which warms up the scene.
New York Central abandoned about a mile of the original Western Rail Road grade when it completed its line relocation in 1912. This one of three extant stone arch bridge on the abandoned section.Like the ruins of an ancient empire, this historic stone arch looms above the West Branch Westfield River deep in the forest near Middlefield, Massachusetts.An eastward doublestack train, probably Q022, descends the 1912 line relocation near milepost 123.3. The stone arch bridge pictured above is just out of sight to the right.
CSXT was kind enough to send an eastward stack train down grade mid-morning.
I’ll feature this territory in my Boston & Albany book, which I hope to complete writing in the coming months.
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 1839 trains were working over Washington Summit.
Over the last 30 years I’ve made countless trips to photograph this line and it remains one of my favorites. Yet, I rarely come up here in the winter.
On Friday, February 7, 2014, my father and I went up to Huntington to catch Amtrak’s westward Lake Shore Limited, train 449. Not far behind was CSX’s Q427.
This freight runs daily between Portland, Maine and Selkirk, New York via Ayer and Worcester, Massachusetts. This day it had a pair of General Electric Evolution-Series diesels of the type that have come to characterize modern freight operations on the Boston & Albany route.
Since the train wasn’t making great speed, we pursued it on Route 20, stopping to make photos at opportune locations. At CP 123 (where the line goes from single track to two-main track) Q427 met an eastward freight holding at the signal. We continued upgrade ahead of the train.
I remembered that there’s a gap in the hills at Chester which allows for a window of sun on the line that lasts late in the day. So we zipped ahead of the train.
Working with my Canon EOS 7D and 200mm lens, I exposed a series of vertical images of CSX Q427 (Portland to Selkirk) as it passed through a window of afternoon sun.The dappled light on the trees and the dark shadowed hillside beyond made for a dramatic painterly back drop, while tree shadows on the foreground snow minimized the effects of glare and provided texture.
At Chester, Pop set up his tripod to make a hi-resolution video of the train climbing. I positioned myself with my Canon EOS 7D with a telephoto lens to make use of the window of sun against a dark background.
As the train grew closer I also exposed more conventional views with my Lumix LX3. The heavy train took more than two minutes to pass.
Exposed on Kodachrome 25 color slide film using a Nikon F3T with 28mm Nikkor lens.
This was a favorite location of mine on the old Boston & Albany west end. The curve and cutting were built as part of a line relocation in 1912 aimed at reducing curvature and easing the westward climb toward the summit at Washington, Massachusetts.
There are several commanding views from the south side of the rock cutting near milepost 129, west of Chester, Massachusetts. My friend Bob Buck had showed me these locations back in the early 1980s, and I’ve made annual pilgrimages ever since.
Conrail was still going strong in 1996, although the forces were already in play that would see the line divided between CSX and Norfolk Southern. In less than three years time, this route would become part of the CSX network, and has remained so to the present day.
Conrail’s SD80MAC were new locomotives and several pairs were routinely assigned to the B&A grades east of New York’s Selkirk yard.
What makes this image work for me is that the foliage has just begun to turn and has that rusty look. Also, the train is descending on the old westward main track, which allows for a better angle.
After Conrail reworked the B&A route in the mid-1980s, bi-directional signaling on this section allowed them to operate trains in either direction on either track on signal indication. The result is that moves such as this don’t require unusual attention on the part of either dispatchers or train crews.
This photo appeared in my article on Conrail’s SD80MACs that was published in RailNews magazine about 1997.
Exposed on Kodachrome 25 color slide film using a Nikon F3T with 28mm Nikkor lens.
