Morning on the Grafton & Upton

I was off to a slow start in 2014, photographically speaking – my first outing to shoot railroads wasn’t until January 20th.  And as a result of the slow start, the old blog here has been a little stagnant of late.  But I’m trying to change that – first Monday’s post about my upcoming gallery exhibit, and now this.  With the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I as well as my kids had the day off.  Taking advantage of that, my younger daughter and I headed up to North Grafton, MA to spend the morning along the G&U.  Sure it was cold, and there was plenty of snow on the ground, but we both had a great time doing a little daddy-daughter bonding – both of us with cameras in hand.

Callie and I headed out of the house well before dawn to make the 2 hour trek to North Grafton, Massachusetts, which is the home base of the Grafton & Upton Railroad.  Having already given the operations manager a heads-up that we’d be up there (he’s a good personal friend of mine), we headed straight for the office to find out what the day had in store.  After checking in, we made our way outside just as the sun was rising over the treeline.  My first shot of the morning was of the 1801 sitting quietly

While getting the power ready for the day, it was determined that their F7A needed some water, so it was pulled off of the rest of the engine consist for the day, and shuffled back towards the shop at the north end of the yard to get the needed fluids.

After servicing the EMD, they put the train back together and headed south out of the yard, which meant one thing – the chase was on!  Callie and I only had until about lunchtime, so with the railroad’s plans for the day, we’d only get to chase them into the center of Grafton – which was fine with us!  Our first stop was Snow Road not far south of the yard.

After a short wait, the train came our way, and we got our shots at the pair of crossings there.

Our next stop was Carroll Road with a pretty neat crossing where the road and rail grades go in opposite directions vertically, giving a pretty cool perspective on the train and crossing.

We wrapped up our chase in the center of Grafton where we got a couple more shots of the train and the buildings of the center

With a very happy 9 year old and her camera in the back seat, we had our lunch and headed back home.

Here’s a self-portrait we did in the cab of the 1801 towards the start of our day of photographic bonding – yes we had permission to be on the equipment…

Thanks for looking!
Tom