Taking advantage of the beautiful weather on Thursday I headed out for a walk. I figured for something different I’d head to Stoddard Hill and try and catch Providence & Worcester train NR-2 heading south. Well, for once I didn’t catch NR-2, but I did catch a couple other things…
So I headed out just as the fog was starting to lift around the south end of the Thames River – with my sights set on Stoddard Hill up in northern Ledyard, I was hoping that the fog would also be lifting there. By the time I got up there, the fog was still quite thick. But I decided to head out trackside by the river when I saw fellow photographer Bob LaMay was already there. And something encouraging happened on my way up Route 12 – I caught a portion of the conversation between NR-2 and the dispatcher. I guess that they must have been southbound out of Plainfield, putting them a good 40 minutes from our position.
As I was walking down the tracks head for Bob’s position at the south end of Stoddard Cove, he whistled, and pointed behind me. I turned around and saw a P&W hyrail heading towards me. I let him pass, and I got a couple shots of him continuing south.
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8783] [cpg_imagefixthumb:8782]OK, the way things usually went, NR-2 was right behind the hyrail. So I continued out to where Bob was standing to prepare for NR-2s arrival.
After chatting with Bob for a while, and still no sign of NR-2, I heard something odd on the scanner. The dispatcher acknowledged NR-3 was heading south. Hmm, that’s odd. Still haven’t heard NR-2 hit Jewett City yet.
A little more waiting, and we hear NR-3 hit the Jewett City detector. So where the heck is NR-2? Maybe both were coming down together? Time would tell.
Now that we have a position on the train, I walked back to the car to get a little tool to improve things – a bow saw. Yeah, while we were waiting, we did a little “landscaping” along the river.
A little while later, we saw a set of headlights to the north – at least we’d get out answer if the trains were traveling together. As they came out of the brush up in Preston, we saw it was only NR-3.
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8781]Then a shot as they crossed into Ledyard
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8780]And finally into the sunlight near Stoddard Cove
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8779]Then rolling past a fisherman
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8778]And a vertical shot passing by us, and showing off our new clear view
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8777]Then finally a shot of the trailing power passing the fisherman
[cpg_imagefixthumb:8776]Satisfied with what we got, we headed back to the car – but still confused as to where NR-2 was. As we got closer to the car, an idea popped in my head. Since the P&W abolished the NR-4 job, which handled the NECR interchange in Willimantic, maybe NR-2 went to Willimantic. Since I have a job to get back to and Bob is retired, he went to Willimantic to check on things. As it turned out, NR-2 did head out to Willimantic to work the interchange. Too bad I couldn’t catch it – at least someone did.
Thanks for looking!
Tom
