Ahhh, finally caught up. Well, almost. Before our trip to Hershey, PA this past Tuesday, I was able to head down to Groton to get a few shots of the drawbridge as the contractors were preparing to pull the old bascule span out. Unfortunatley, it took them longer to pull it, so I didn’t get any shots of the span actually being pulled out. Oh, well, you can’t win ’em all, I guess… At least I got a few shots of the old bridge before it was changed out.
I got down to Groton early – about 8am – to find a nice calm Thames River, so I got a couple reflection shots right off the bat from the closest parking lot to the bridge.
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Even at this hour there was a handful of people there for the day’s events, so I got a shot of a couple of them.
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And one shot with some of the wildflowers in the foreground
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Not long after that, a tug brought a barge north from Electric Boat to the Mohawk shipyard north of the drawbridge
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Throwing the telephoto on, I got a closeup shot of some Amtrak workers on the bridge preparing to lift the span out
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Then the tugboat came back south
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And an unusual Blackhawk helicopter buzzed overhead
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A couple more bridge shots
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Then a US Coast Guard cutter came into the scene, but if you look aboard, you’ll notice that there’s a photographer (probably from the New London Day) on board.
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And a quick shot of some of the flowers I was stepping on
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But as we were waiting for the span to be pulled out, apparently they hit a snag on the hinge side, and contractors were cutting some of the metal, so I got a telephoto shot of some of the billowing smoke
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Not long after that, another tugboat came along, but this time with a videographer aboard taking some footage.
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Then the cutting went to the other side of the span, but it sounded like they were having issues with the oxygen tanks, and I got a shot of one of the tanks venting a bit of O2
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Just then I noticed what time it was, and had to head out. So I got one last shot of the crowd watching the action. Also, to the left of the frame were two Groton fire engines watching the action as well.
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And that was it for this day. As it turned out, the span didn’t get pulled until early afternoon, so there was no way I would catch it. Next post, though, you’ll see the new span in place, and the old span being taken away on its final journey – to the scrapper.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
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