Adventures Down South

You have to be a bit familiar with "Maine Humor" to understand the title. From what I understand, we ventured to only a few miles from the "snow line", referring to the beginning of the "mid-atlantic snow crisis of 2010" zone. That's backwards. Maine usually get the brunt of the snow and you drive south to get well out of it. Well, over the weekend, the DT&I fan and I hit the Portsmouth, NH region; Palmer, Mass and of course Worcester. No snow problems, just a cold wind.

Our first real stop on Saturday was Neal's N Gauging Trains in Hampton, NH. With plenty of daylight left, but no maps, we struck out toward the freight main. The East Kingston depot was where we made our first contact with the tracks so we followed them back toward Portland. We dropped in on the Durham depot but didn't expect to see much there and couldn't find reasonable parking. Apparently UNH was having some kind of big event and there wasn't any place to park. Onward and upward. We found our way to Dover. A quick check of the schedule pointed to only a short wait. This gave us time to plan shots in this crowded spot. The shot at the top was the best I could do and I had to use the wide-angle lens for it. We followed tracks and the old Sanford & Eastern line back as the light faded. We attempted to find relics in Sanford but didn't have the bearings close enough to linger.

On Sunday, we pretty much made a bee-line to Palmer, MA. Not much CSX action other than Amtrak but we saw 3 of the 4 daily passenger trains. We also watched an NECR unit switch the yard over on Dublin St. Only dull place shots and a couple of detail shots there. Plenty of odd equipment around though.

As you can see by the chronological Amtrak photos on the right, we caught the westbound Lake Shore Limited fairly soon after we arrived. It is gliding by on the main just before it bounced everyone around on the NECR crossing diamond.

Next came the southbound Vermonter. They pulled up on the controlled siding as two westbound units of light power came by on the main. Later on L437 pulled into the yard but had to clear the controlled siding and provide headroom for the northbound Vermonter. The conductor looked mighty cold tramping back and forth between the crossover switches. L437 still had work to do apparently and our time was running out, so we moved on to Worcester. Besides, I've got dozens of shots of trains in Palmer already.

Skull showed up after we had dinner and a few other W.F.P.T. folks made an appearance. It was a bit too cold to stay very long but we put in a couple of hours. Besides the "T" we got to see the Q427 come down and meet the eastbound Q426. That makes about 3 visits in a row that I got to see the two round the curve by Worcester station. Apparently a P&W Bow coal train was sitting outside of town waiting on a crew. That would have made another form of hat trick.

BC