I was able to take advantage of the sunshine this morning and head to Mill Cove in Ledyard, CT for my walk and photo session with Providence & Worcester train NR-2. I also got a couple extras – an Acela down on the Thames River drawbridge, and a jellyfish. Yep, a jellyfish…read on.
I got to Mill Cove as NR-2 was reporting they were south of MP12 and about 15 minutes from the sub base. That gave me enough time to take my walk and get into position for NR-2s arrival. This time I took not only the scanner with me, but also my camera gear.
It seems that the normal August/September jellyfish population surge is a bit late this year, and it was evidenced by a couple beached jellies at Mill Cove. One in particular caught my eye, near the water’s edge. So of course I snapped a couple pictures of it.
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OK, pretty cool. Back to the walk. But as I was walking towards the car I heard horns to the north. Only this time they were quite loud – not the usual faint in the distance horns at Dow Chemical, but rather quite loud at Red Top. So I ran back to the car, and made a quick sprint to the south end of Mill Cove. As I dove out of the car, NR-2 was already around the bend at the north end of the cove, and heading for the Harvard boat house.
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One thing caught my eye, though – an EMD as the second unit! So I grabbed a shot of the power heading past me
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And again going over the inlet to the cove
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Then I swapped lenses to the wide angle and got a shot of the trailing GE heading over the inlet
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As the train headed for the sub base, I got back into the car and headed for the overlook south of the Thames River drawbridge. I got there as NR-2 was about to get the signal to head west to Old Saybrook. I didn’t have to wait long for the train to get onto the bridge heading west. Of course I got some of the normal series of shots.
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Not bad. A fishing vessel was heading north on the other side of the channel, so I grabbed a shot of that
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And a couple other boats were heading north & south in the channel
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And this one of the last boat also includes NR-2 as they snake their way through New London
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Just then Acela horns rang through the air. An eastbound Acela was heading for the station. I waited another minute, and got a few shots of the Acela heading over the drawbridge
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And that was it for the morning. As the train sped up and headed for the Midway detector, I packed up my gear and headed for the office for the remainder of the day.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
