It's been a while since this particular group had assembled but this trip was put together and done in relatively short order. It meant we took off before much prep work had been done, but
between all of us, we had a pretty good idea what to look for. "The Wheelman" knew the area,
"The Fiddler" and I knew roughly what rail operations were around. "The Videoman" was pretty much at our mercy but knew we'd find trains for his camera. We all figured this was a great use for Boxing Day.
We left Hebron at about 7:30am or so. We made a stop in Ayer and drove through Gardner. No noise on the scanner so we
worked our way to E. Deerfield Yard and "Railfan Bridge". There we immediately spotted the B&M heritage unit.
There was a coal train that recently pulled up from Mt. Tom so the power was in the process of changing ends. That gave "Videoman" something to photograph. I wandered around to get some marginal shots of the B&M unit too.
We wandered a bit south to see what we could find on
CSX but nothing squawked. The power was sitting idle in the W. Springfield Yard but nothing was moving.
After a shot of the power, we headed west along Route 20 until it got to the Mass Pike. From there we went straight to W. Coxsachie and our hotel. The Fiddler was traveling up from PA so we met him there.
Not much in the way of photography happened the rest of the evening but after a dinner at Yan's Chinese Buffet, we wandered over to Selkirk Yard, Feura Bush and finally CP VO to watch some trains. "VO" in Voorheesville is where the D&H Albany main used to cross the Selkirk Branch. Rail was still in place but the diamonds were long since removed. The Wheelman got his smart phone hooked up to Ken Buckman's scanner feed and he also set up a Wi-Fi "airport" in the car for Fiddler and I to get access for our IPod's. We saw about 3 or 4 trains at "VO" before calling it a night.
The next morning we headed down the River Line, not far from the motel. The
weather was cold and breezy so hypothermia was going to be near and rain was coming in. We planted ourselves in New Baltimore at an overpass and waited. It was a moderate wait and we got a visit from a NYDOT sign crew who wondered who these crazy people were. They chatted with us as they worked by "Fiddler" and later by me and the "Wheelman". Luckily they moved on before their truck and flashing lights could invade this photo. That's "Fiddler" in the distance on the road. The train turned out to be northbound Q161.
We moved along after this train and soon heard a Q2?? headed at us before we got far south. A U-turn caught us up to the train but it beat us to the old spot. We followed it until R
oute 9w climbed over CP SK. The train had long since slowed and stopped. Q161 was still waiting it's turn to go through the junction. Everyone was held up for a welding crew working on a switch in the middle of everything as it turned out. A westbound Boston line autorack train was waiting too and it was the first one to head through SK as seen on the right.
After plenty of waiting we saw the welding crew go back to work, so nothing
would move for a while
. We thought it was time to move on. We decided that we'd head in the direction of Saratoga, via Mechanicsville. None of us had done more than drive by in the old days after the yard had been removed, so we didn't know
our way around. But, it's hard to hide tracks and a little study of the map gave us ideas where to find the Mechanicsville yard. We knew exactly where we were when we encountered
XO Tower. We checked out the new track arrangements and the old yard area, at least all we could legally. The new intermodal ramp had two yellow, four-wheel, winch type loaders ready to go. The area was full of NS construction equipment building trackwork. Not much to photograph but enough to confirm that something big was happening.
From t
his point we moved on to Saratoga Springs. The idea was to see the
Saratoga and North Creek Ry. tourist operation and hopefully their recently acquired ex-
BAR BL-2. No joy on
BL-2's but we saw plenty of other things. Amtrak #69 to Montreal was headed to town so we moved to the depot after a tour of the area. There the S&NC was still running
"Polar Express" excursions and today's 6pm departure was getting
ready at the depot area. We also had some time to check out the other equipment parked at the other end of the depot. Before long #69 strolled in on the main track and the passengers ventured into the cold to board. I had to get another shot of the steam era signals left over from the
D&H and the
8-39B painted in a neo-D&H sc
heme for the S&NC. At the other end of the platforms was the
"Polar Express". The train was a mix of former
MARC,
Alaska and other equipment
with several full domes. A bunch must have come from the
SLRG and still had their lettering. The head end was worth the trip though. This was the
Arizona Eastern E8 unit. The CPU (Caterpillar?) was working hard. As the fiddler and I approached the head end the crew tested the lights. That included the fully working
Mars light, which I managed to catch too well in the photo.
The weather was turning colder, grayer and rain soon began to come down. We decided to head over to Amsterdam and the Mohawk Sub. The former
D&H was awfully quiet to bother with. With flood damage and other things in the way we simply moved over to Fonda and CP 188. We sat in the rain for a while and caught 3
trains. The signal bridges looked like they won't be around much longer so I took my shots to catch them in the scene. The new signals were in place but turned away. Some of us had been here years before with
Ken Buckman who lives about 10 miles away (sorry we didn't call Ken!). The spot was fine until the light gave out so we moved to the courthouse in Fonda. Amtrak was due in a while so we waited it out. The rain was quite miserable but the "video duo" got their "3 seconds of video" after all the wait. It looked good and it was a few more than three seconds. The day was pretty much done. We did an express run down the thruway
to W. Coxsachie and had
dinner at Reds. Nice seafood place with lots of local character.
Our final day meant we packed the cars and "Fiddler" trailed along since he'd head south when we headed west. We started to follow a southbound
down the River Line. It apparently got stopped around Athens. We kept going to Catskill and found the big trestle there with a good place to park and view trains on the bridge. It turned out to be good for a cloudy day. The morning sun would normally be in our face. We caught two northbounds and a southbound before we called it good.
Catskill turned out to be a neat spot. We had a good view of the entire trestle
and good scanner warning. Northbounds set off a detector nearby at MP 110 and they had to blow for crossings. I wanted to show the arched road bridge and muddy water on the first shot and then the length of the trestle on the second. The third with the southbound was just a plain old silhouette. The final shot is through the trestle to an old narrow gauge bridge. That line turned out to be a
"Rip Van Winkle" line out to the
Catskill mountains.
We crossed the
Rip Van Winkle Bridge to the other side of the Hudson River and saw an Amtrak or two pass. We were generally headed to the
State Line Tunnel on the Boston line but poking around toward Castleton too. As it turned out we saw the tail end of a local in the town of Hudson. It was stopped but before we got very far we heard it move. So we gave chase to see where it was headed. The Wheelman got us ahead of it and we bailed out of the car for a fast grab shot. It turned out to be an SD60 widecab
on the point and looking the other way I saw the
Iron Horse Bar. We'd just stumbled into an old
Railpace article. Well I recovered fast enough to grab the shot at the top of the page. I don't know what the video will look like since there was no time for tripods.
We decided to hunt down the destination of this local. We seemed to recall the articles enough to know it was a dead end branch but where? We eventually found the
ADM milling plant at the end of the line. After the returned to town we headed down to see what Amtrak had to offer at the depot. It was windy and cold so I hid in the depot after finding good angles to shoot from. Fiddler drove down a bit to a good vantage
point and Videoman posted himself by the overpass. The southbound was first. Then a wait
for the northbound. The last southbound was minutes after that. That last one was a lucky shot from inside the depot where I was watching the proceedings with no intention of shooting. The old winch derrick was in the old warehouse yard across the street. CSX
was using he yard for MOW equipment and the winch apparently had use recently for a crossing gate mechanism. The yard area was full of cool old building from the era of water transportation and rail freight houses. If it was a nice warm day it might have been worth exploring.
Onward to
State Line Tunnels. We grabbed sandwiches in Hudson and headed to
Chatham to meet up with the
Boston Line. We paused across the street from the depot and listened to the
scanner to see if anything was moving. Nothing. So we headed east. We only got to the edge of town where we heard Q425 call a signal. We had remarked about how cool it would have been to catch a train in town so the Wheelman took us back to the depot. We didn't have tons of time but enough to set up where we wanted to. Pretty good luck once again. I managed to get that classic belltower in the shot. I think the Videoman had the same idea further down the line.
From here we headed to
State Line Tunnels where we used up the rest of the light but didn't see anything moving. Besides it was getting really windy and hypothermia was close by. We bid farewell to the Fiddler and headed east to
Worcester Union Station for a "summit". Skull met us at the old "Amshack" parking lot
where we mostly stayed in our cars and shot the breeze. Of note was the suggestion that we grab dinner before leaving. Skull took us to
Coney Island Hot Dogs. Another great local institution and not too hard to find from the station. Those great dogs (with sauce, mustard and onions, yum!) certainly got us home in good shape!
Another HAPT adventure in the history books.
BC
