NR-2 on the way in

Well, I’m in an online training class the first part of the week, so I’m tied to the office for the day. But luckily the class is on Pacific time, which is shifting my schedule at the office. With that shift, I now have a few hours in the morning before I hit the office. So this morning, despite the crappy weather, I decided to take advantage of it, and catch Providence & Worcester train NR-2 somewhere north of my typical haunts in Ledyard.

My plan for this morning was this – I’d head down to Norwich, and then get on Route 12, heading north, hoping to intercept NR-2 coming south. Of course, the entire time the scanner was on – I should get a heads-up as to their location at some point – hopefully when they left Plainfield, or at the outside, when they hit the Jewett City detector. So I headed south from home at about 8:30, stopped off in Franklin for a quick bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts, then made my way across town to Route 12, and headed north as planned. So far there wasn’t much on the scanner, which is typical on Monday – NR-2 typically is a decent size at the start of the week, so it takes them a bit of time to get out of Plainfield.

As I was rolling north on Route 12, past Home Depot near I-395, I heard a marker chirp on the radio. OK, NR-2 was within a couple miles of me – I must have missed their call that they were southbound. Not a big deal – I’ll just turn around and find a spot somewhere.

By the time I could find a spot to turn around, NR-2 tripped the detector in Jewett City – 60 axles were coming at me. So where to set up? I guess that would depend on where I could get ahead of the train.

While heading south through Lisbon, the tracks and Route 12 converge. At that point, I looked back down the tracks to see if I could spot NR-2’s headlights. Yep, there they were, right next to me – now would traffic cooperate so I could get somewhere?

As I was traveling along I decided on a spot – right on the Lisbon/Norwich line, where the P&W crosses the Shetucket River. I got there about a minute before NR-2, giving me enough time to get down to the river bank, and decide on the shot. I went with the wide angle lens here, and waited.

A few moments later, NR-2 came rolling into sight, and crossed the bridge spanning the Shetucket

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And as the trailing B40-8 rolled off of the bridge, I got a vertical, with the reflection of the locomotive in the river

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OK, now could I get another shot? I figured it was worth a try – we both were heading in the same direction.

Well, traffic was against me this time – not only slow drivers, but also an oversized load truck carrying an old underground oil tank were in front of me. I did catch up to NR-2 near where 12 and 2 intersect, but I wasn’t able to get ahead of them. But sitting in traffic, and seeing NR-2 rolling up behind me, I figured it was worth getting out and seeing what I could get along the sidewalk. So after parking the car (quite legally, BTW) I grabbed my wide angle and telephoto, and made my way to the sidewalk.

I did find one angle that struck me, but it would only work for the trailing power. So when the end of the train came rolling by, I snapped this shot.

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Might work better if it was brighter out – I might try it on a sunny morning, and perhaps with a little flash…we’ll see.

At that point, I got back in the car and was thinking about my next move. The scanner told me something – NR-2 had some work to do in Norwich yard. So that made my decision – it was time to head to work – I really didn’t have much more time to try to catch them south of Norwich. So I called it a morning. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. I’ve got this weird schedule until Wednesday.

Thanks for looking!
Tom