P&W NR-2 at 3 spots

Well, I was looking for a change of pace today when I headed out for my walk. So I headed a bit further north into Preston to check things out. Change of pace was the word for the day, that’s for sure.

As I was driving past the old Norwich Hospital on the Preston/Norwich town line, the scanner came alive with NR-2 reporting that they were clear of MP12 and 15 minutes from the sub base. Well, that put them fairly close to me. One shot came to mind that I’d always wanted to try and get – an overview of the Thames River with the train and Mohegan Sun in the same frame. Well, without going into details on how I actually got it, I did end up snagging the shot. Too bad it was cloudy.

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Once I got that shot, I headed back south – I figured I could get ahead of them and make it to Mill Cove in time. Well, I barely did that (thanks to a dump truck and a couple red lights that got in the way), and snagged a shot of the lead power heading over the causeway.

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Then something caught my eye – a locomotive in the middle of the train!

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No, it wasn’t a mid-train helper, but rather it looked like the crew was going to split the train up with one going to Tilcon, and the other possibly heading over to the NECR. I also noticed that they were slowing down at this point – maybe I could get lucky and get ahead of them at the bottom of Fairview? What the hell, it’s worth a try.

By the time I got to the light at the south gate of the sub base, I realized why they were slowing down – they hadn’t raised the dispatcher yet to get permission into Fairview. While I was waiting for red to change to green at the light, the train rolled through the Sub Force Museum heading for the yard. I guess they got a hold of the dispatcher on the phone instead of over the radio. Well, it was still worth a shot getting ahead of them.

Yep, I made it there with enough time to get a shot of the train passing the switch in the middle of Fairview.

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I decided to call it a day at that point. Not a great walk today, but I think I got a pretty good picture to start things out.

Thanks for looking!
Tom