Northeast Corridor Memories

Here’s a post I wrote to a Yahoogroup I participate in. The moderator asked for recollections of your first visit to the Northeast Corridor in words. Well, here’s what I had to say.

Living in Connecticut my entire life, along with spending my childhood summers at our family’s summer cottage a couple miles from the NEC in Old Lyme, CT, I really can’t recall my first actual visit to the Shore Line. It’s more a rush of memories starting somewhere in the early 1970s – waiting outside of the laundromat on the tracks hoping for a train to pass by as mom was inside doing a couple loads, or pressing my nose to the back seat window as we crossed the Baldwin Bridge into Old Saybrook hoping ot see a train crossing the Connecticut River drawbridge to the south, or sitting at Dad’s diner on Route 156 in Niantic watching Amtrak speed by between us and Niantic Bay. I really didn’t photograph much of anything then – it’s all in my head.

My first actual railfan visit to the corridor itself was in Old Saybrook, CT on April 5, 2002, well after the route was electrified, Saybrook tower torn down, and of course in our post-9/11 world. I headed down there on a whim one lunch break to see what I could see & photograph. As I was walking around, a pair of Providence & Worcester trains showed up – NR-2 from the east and NH-1 from the west – sporting like painted locomotives on each end of the train. Fortunatley, the trains swapped their cars around the station area, giving me a nice show over lunch, which was in all railfan traditions, a Whopper with cheese value meal from the nearby BK.

When NR-2 first showed up, something odd happened. The lead locomotive slowed down near where I was standing on the station platform, and someone got off of the train. But this wasn’t an employee of the P&W – he was wearing camoflage BDUs and was armed with a pistol at his side. NR-2s trip south from Plainfield required them to pass through the US Sub Base in Groton. After 9/11, at least a pair of US Marines rode along with NR-2 when they passed south through the sub base, and for their entire trip on the corridor. NR-2 would drop the Marines back off at the base on the northbound trip back to Plainfield later in the day. This practice would end a few years later after the completion of a fence along the RoW through the base – NR-2 no longer stops to pick up the Marines. Today, only one of the Marines got off of the train and stood next to me as the two P&W jobs made their moves on tracks 1 and 3, and also using the Old Saybrook wye.

I had a pleasant, but brief, conversation with the Marine about the current situation in the world, and railfanning as a hobby (he thought it was a pretty cool sounding hobby). The only thing he asked me to do is to not photograph him. Of course, the request of an armed Marine gets heeded, so he stayed out of the vision of my lens. But I proceeded to shoot a roll or two of prints of the pair of trains doing their work before heading back to work further east. Yes, I was young & dumb and shooting prints at that time – I wouldn’t make the switch to slides until later that year. I don’t recall seeing any Amtraks pass through while I was there, so my first Acela experience wouldn’t come for another few weeks. But this was a nice intro to railfanning along the corridor.

Do I wish I started shooting earlier? Sure. Hindsight is always 20/20 – I missed the time when there were no wires on the corridor, as well as part of the PC and all of Conrail, and of course the handoff to the P&W. But such is life, and I’m happy to be doing what I am doing now. Luckily I’m in a job that not only is within a mile of the NEC in Groton, but also affords me the flexibility to photograph the railroads around the area frequently.

I know it was supposed to be a photo essay of words, but here’s one shot of OSB from my first trip there:

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Quite a bit has changed, even in the mere five years that have elapsed.

-Tom