Indiana Jones and the Temple of Essex

Well, today I didn’t take my normal walk – in fact I didn’t shoot the P&W or Amtrak at all. I saved it all for a longish lunch in Essex. Yep, Paramount Studios was filming the next Indiana Jones movie today at the Valley Railroad, so I headed down there at lunchtime to get a few photos.

Actually, I swung through Essex in the morning to make sure things were happening. As I got off of Route 9, and onto 154 it was evident things were hopping around the Essex station. The train was in position, with #97 on the point, the crew took over the neighboring parking lot of the Iron Chef restaurant to set up their carpentry and mechanical areas, and the entire grounds were buzzing with folks planting flowers, setting up lights and props. So I headed back to work and decided on a lunchtime trip back to Essex.

I got there a little before noon, and there was a small crowd gathered by the Route 154 crossing. So I parked nearby and headed to the crowd. Looking around, this was about the only angle available – everything else was guarded tightly by private security and Connecticut State Police troopers. So I stuck with the ad-hoc photo area.

While milling about, the regular steam train excursions were still on schedule. Since #97 was in the movie, #40 had the honors of pulling the northbound train (being recently rebuilt), while #0901 pulled the train back south (this eliminated the need for a runaround at either Deep River or Essex since the main was being used by the movie crew in Essex). I got a couple shots of one southbound trip.

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And of course a few shots of the filming

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I’ve got a few more, but I can’t post ’em yet – the magazines got dibs on them. Watch for one in Railpace soon.

Thanks for looking!
Tom