Railfanning

"Along the B&A".We enjoy presenting clinics for model and prototype rail enthusiasts and have finally prepared a handout to accompany Jim's Boston & Albany show.  Please join us for a history and description of our favorite railroad.   Including new photos, heralds, and a system map.

You know you're a railfan when...
 1.     Your car has a bumper sticker that says "This vehicle stops at all railroad crossings.".
2.     You've considered contacting the police to obtain permission for using flashing red lights and siren during a train chase. 3.     Your scanner is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
4.     You don't realize how stupid or suspicious you look to passing motorists as you stand out in the middle of nowhere with a camera around your neck.
5.   Great moments in your personal history: Learning to ride a bike, graduating from high school, and your first photograph of foreign motive power.
6.     Your wife threatened to divorce you because you wanted to dye (the dog's)  fur Conrail blue.
7.      Its hot as hell out, the lead unit doesn't have AC, and you still don't understand why the crew has to leave the front door open.
8.      People want to know if you have supernatural powers, because the sun is always shining in your photographs.
9.     You go around imitating Conrail's defect detectors.
10     .You have faithfully written down the shutter speed and f-stop of every shot you've taken for the past zillion years, yet you've really never used that data afterwards.
11.     You've established a large enough network of connections to know every move of the "Office Car Special" and Ringling Brothers' Circus Train throughout the system.
12.      Your fiancee left you at the alter when she saw the scanner attached to your cummerbund.
From DS and Ian
 

We are delighted to have the opportunity to display some of Jimmy's prototype photographs on TTTrains. He's been out along the Boston & Albany from the time he could walk and we feel he's produced some fine images. The color photographs are reproduced with permission from the pages of Railpace Newsmagazine. We've printed and scanned the B&W photographs ourselves; black and white printing is an art and craft every photographer should experience.  Click here to view thumbnails of these photos.
 

• Quite an engine lashup in this photo.  CSX train Q-423 today only has a B&M Mogul in it's consist, along with idler cars.  The tiny steamer has had its main rods removed for the trip from Hyannis, Mass to the Danbury Railroad Museum, where it is planned to restore the engine to operating condition.  Seen here at West Brimfield, Mass.
• It may appear as though we only visit passenger railroads, but it is true that the Northeast Corridor offers some excellent photo locations that are safely away from the high speed mainline.  Here Amtrak train 172 crosses the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey at Trenton.
• Amtrak holds its own "Super Sunday" every year during Thanksgiving weekend with a number of extra holiday trains.  For the past few years we've experienced cloudy and rainy weather, but 1999 gave us a perfect photographic day.  Evem as this is being written, final testing for electrification of the Shore Line (New Haven, CT-Boston) is being completed and by next year we'll be seeing Acela service equipment pulled by AEM-7s or maybe even something more exotic.  Guilford Interlocking in East River, CT is almost one half mile in length, with long,  movable point crossovers.  Amtrak train 173 negotiates the crossover at 70 mph.
• In other "Super Sunday" action , Amtrak train 99 crosses a stone arch bridge just west of Guilford.  This train is on the first leg of a 644 mile journet to Newport News, VA.  Diesel locomotives will still power this train south of Washington.
• Since the Conrail split-up, both CSX and NS have supplied coal for the Bow, NH power plant, but it appears that NS has won the day (see test train photo below) and handles all of the Bow traffic via Harrisburg- Sunbury- Binghamton- Mechanicsville and the Hoosac Tunnel.  We were at a local train show and stopped in Shirley, MA just moments before this train went over the hotbox detector a few miles west.  The lead unit now belongs to NS- note the white number decal on the cab
• Some of the most interesting B&A traffic in 1999 has been the heavy equipment for a new power plant in Charlton, MA  This large turbine from GE was the last and the largest move.  The special car has twenty-two axles and special equipment to permit shifting the load sideways to avoid close clearances.  The portable crane.was assembled over a MOW spur that had been rebuilt for this traffic at CP57.
• The vicinity of Bear Mountain, NY offers several opportunities for photographing the broad vistas usually found only in the west.  As far as we can tell, this high angle picture made at Middlefield, MA is the only place similar photos can be taken along the B&A.   Train TV-8W has passed the summit and slowly drifts downgrade to the Connecticut River.
• CSXT has been operating the Boston Line for almost half a year now, and train schedules are beginning to return to normal.  A primary rationale for the Conrail break-up was the possibility of increased intermodal traffic between the south and New England.  TV-174 is one of these new trains, running from Atlanta to Boston, and helping to reduce the number of trucks on I-95.  The train is seen here just west of Chatham, NY crossing High Bridge Road.
• Norfolk Southern had promised a presence in New England after the Conrail break-up.  For now, about half of the traffic formerly carried on the B&A is now being routed via Guilford lines to a D&H connection in Albany, then to destinations along NS routes.  Train MOED (Mohawk Yard- East Deerfield) is over two miles long this day in Charlemont, MA.
• Time is runnning out for Amtrak's F-40 locomotives on the Shore Line.  At Stonington, CT, new catenary poles are already in place, and by the milennium electric motors will replace diesel power on Train #164, The Narragansett on its 100+ mph sprint to Boston.
• New England Central turn #608 passes Northeast Lumber in Monson, Mass., a wholesale distributor for lumber yards throughtout southern New England and a major customer for the railroad on September 9, 1998.
• On June 6, 1998 the Providence and Worcester Railroad ran a fantrip from Worcester, Mass. to Gardner, to Groton, CT. and return.  The trip included rare mileage on the rarely used Versailles Branch.  The train is seen here at Gales Ferry, CT along the banks of the Thames River Estuary.
• The Conrail office train, led by two immaculately maintained E-8 engines is now a memory, with the equipment divided up between CSXT and NS.  Shortly before the Conrail breakup, Norfolk Southern Railroad officials used the CR office train on a tour of the Amtrak Shoreline with an eye towards starting piggyback service along that route.  The train is seen here at Rocky Neck State Beach (near Niantic, CT) on February 2, 1998.
• Train UBO (Unit{coal train}BOw {NH}) speeds through Shirley, Mass. led by a quartet of Norfolk Southern and Canadian National locomotives.  The train carries a load of test coal from a mine along the Norfolk Southern system., hence the foreign power.  The quaint little depot is NOT vintage- it was recently built by the MBTA to serve commuters.
• Guilford Transportation System train EDPL (East Deerfield, MA- Plainfield, CT) crosses the Connecticut River in Holyoke, Mass. this 1997 Easter Sunday with a surprise.  New Haven RS-3#529 has just been restored and is being delivered to the Naugatuck Railroad Museum in Waterbury, CT.
• The depot at East Brookfield, Mass. was part of a large number of new stations built in the late nineteenth century by the noted architectural firm of Sheply, Ruttan, and Coolidge- successors to H. H. Richardson.  Scenes such as train TV-10B being led through Brookfield Flats by a solid lashup of blue C30-7A units will soon become a memory.
• In keeping with Amtrak's mandate to become profitable, train #40, The Three Rivers, is carrying more express and mai  than passenger cars.  Seen here crossing the Connemaugh River at Viaduct, just east of South Fork, PA.
• Conrail purchased the first order of SD80 MAC locomotives in the winter of 1996. Engine 4106 is shown pulling train SEBO at Charlton Hill when only a week old.
• A year and a half later, the MACs are still the largest power in the east. Seen here at Huntington, Mass with train FRSE, a merchandise train terminating in Framingham, Mass.
• Not far from the location of the shot before is train NESE with some older C30-7A units. The Boston Line crosses the Westfield River several times as it climbs Washington Hill.
• Although train RESE no longer runs and the Guilford SD40s are sold, they live on in this 1992 photograph taken at Palmer, Mass, a local railfanning Mecca.
• A twenty four hour work stoppage allowed us to travel to Chatham, NY in time to catch Train TV10-B, often past our house by the time we wake up.
• Although the Inland Route had no service a short time ago, Amtrak train #145 now hurries passengers between Boston and Washington via Springfield, Mass. Seen here at West Warren along the Quaboag River at Wright's Mill.
• Although Conrail eliminated helper service at Chester, Mass more than thirty years ago, this coal tower and the adjacent roundhouse are a reminder of Berkshire days on the Boston and Albany.
• The Rockville, PA stone arch bridge is the longest in the world. Although part of the National Historic Register, it still carries some of the heaviest traffic on the entire Conrail system.
• We don't spend all our railfanning time along Conrail. The once abandoned Housatonic Railroad now operates daily freight service to Caanan, New Milford, and Danbury, CT. Traffic is light today as only one GP-35 heads north today with interchange traffic for Pittsfield, Mass.
• The Central Vermont no longer operates this line, but they live on in photographs. A Sunday extra switches out hopper cars filled with fly ash from the Montville, CT power plant. The cars will take a roundabout route out of New England via the Green Mountain (former Rutland) Railroad.

*** TOP 10 REASONS RAILFANNING IS BETTER THAN DEER HUNTING: ***

• 10. Train lovers don't get mad at you for shooting "Thomas The Tank Engine".
• 9. You can't use a scanner to tell when deer are getting close.
• 8. No arguments when two people shoot the same train at the same time.
• 7. No boring Deer Hunting stories.
• 6. Nobody cares if you use a railroad crossing sign to "sight in" your camera.
• 5. Three words: "Hunting License Fee".
• 4. SD90MAC's don't need to be field dressed.
• 3. Working models of deer? Yeah, right.
• 2. There's no limit on how many trains you're allowed to shoot.
• 1. Unless they're really dumb, your buddies won't mistake you for The Southwest Chief.

When we are railfanning, we often change photo locations before a train arrives. It wasn't long before Jimmy decided a chart of travel times would be of help. The times in this table were derived mathematically (speed times distance) and they list employee's timetable running times (revised 1995) between various points on the Conrail's Boston Line. While a train keeping to the speed limits (they almost always do) cannot arrive earlier than the projected times, they often arrive much later. This way, when we learn of a train's location from our scanner, we know how long we have before that train can reach locations along the railroad. We have used these tables for quite a while and they appear to be quite accurate. If any reader would like to create new tables for other railroads, we would appreciate seeing them and including them on this page. The links below will bring you to the different pages we have calculated. These will each fit on a piece of paper. We feel these will be most useful if they are printed on paper and included in your camera bag.

CP175 (Selkirk Branch) to MP 178 (Boston Line)

CP176 to CP 109

MP 103 to MP 25

MP 25 to CP 4 .