Tag Archives: #West Springfield

West Springfield at Dusk.

In July 1983, ,Bob Buck and I were attending a weekly summer gathering of the West Springfield Train Watchers, a semi-formal group consisting of mostly retired railroaders who assembled with permission of the railroad at the west end of Conrail’s West Springfield, Massachusetts yard.

I say ‘semi-formal’ because member Norvel Parker printed cards for all the members. Somewhere I still have mine.

Toward the end of the evening, I made this photo with my Leica 3A of a westward freight making a pick-up.

Adjusted photo.

In later years, I photographed some of the members, which was probably far more valuable as a record, than making photos of the trains.

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Conrail C32-8s August 13, 1988.

On the evening of August 13, 1988, I visited Conrail’s West Springfield Yard (Massachusetts) after a day on the old Boston & Albany ‘West End’.

At the time, General Electric six-motor diesels were standard power for road freights on the Boston Line.

Among the locomotives common to the Boston Line in the 1980s were the ten pre-prototype GE C32-8s that featured the ‘Classic’ curved roof cab and hump-back body style.

Significantly, these were among the first road-units with microprocessor controls.

I’ve covered these locomotives in several of my books over the years, and most recently in my new title Conrail and its Predecessors now available from Kalmbach Media.

https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/book/01309

These photos of Conrail 6618 were exposed on Professional Kodachrome 25 (PKM) color slide film and scanned using a Nikon Super Coolscan5000 digital scanner operated with VueScan software.

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20 NEW photos of the BIG Show—Friends and Trains.

On Day 2 of last weekend’s BIG Railroad Hobby Show in West Springfield, I spent more time making photos of the people than of the trains.

When I wasn’t meeting friends, fans and guests at the Conway Scenic Railroad booth, I took my Lumix LX7 and wandered the halls snapping away.

Here’s just a few views!

And yes, I’ve included a few photos of the models too.

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