I actually got out of the house early this morning, so on the way in I was hoping to come across New England Central train 610 working around the Franklin area. Only catch was the weather was starting to go south, and there was limited light to work with. Well, the good thing with shooting digital is that I can bump the ISO up on the camera – it’s like dropping a new roll of film into it. So on the way down Route 87, the scanner came alive as I was decending the hill into Franklin – it sounded like 610 was working in the area.
A quick left onto Murphy Road broght me closer to the action, and as I crossed over the tracks, looking to the north I saw 610’s train tied down. So that meant they were working somewhere to the south – and a quick look the other way revealed they weren’t working Kofkoff, that that meant they were working either at Cargill or the siding that Ryan Ready Mix Concrete uses. So it was onto Route 32 to check out where the train was working. Turning into the parking lot next to the new Dunkin’ Donuts gave me that answer – they were working the Ryan siding to the south. So I snapped a few pictures of them shuffling cement hoppers around before heading into work. The first one I kinda like – the black & white with really high noise (hey, it was shot at ISO 1600!) really give it a gritty feel. But that’s just me…you may hate it. And if you do, too bad. 😉
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At the cafeteria this morning while paying for my breakfast I noticed one thing – I didn’t have enough cash on me for lunch. So after eating my pancake & sausage (hey, Thursday is pancake day around these parts!) and then getting some things done at the office, I headed towards the ATM. But that led to a little surprise – as I walked out I noticed the traffic was backed up on Eastern Point Road because the Providence & Worcester Railroad was running an extra to the Electric Boat Shipyard here in Groton. I caught them as they were finishing up, so after I got my cash out of the machine, I headed up to my car, and took a ride over by the Groton/New London airport. I got well ahead of them – the Old Groton Main is 10MPH if I remember correctly – and set up at the Tower Road crossing, just south of the wye that connects the track to Amtrak’s Shore Line. A couple minutes later, and of course as the rain really started to come down at that point, the extra came by with only the PW 2216.
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And to top things off, aparently NR-2 was working the Tilcon plant nearby at the same time. From the sounds of things, when NR-2 was finished with their switching, the extra would tag along for the ride up track 4 to the wye in Groton, then head home, while NR-2 rolls west to Old Saybrook. No pictures of that – hell, I didn’t even set eyes on NR-2, only heard them on the radio. Plus it was only a quick jaunt out and I, and the camera, were a bit wet.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
