{"id":320,"date":"2008-01-07T23:57:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T03:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nanosphoto.com\/blog\/?p=320"},"modified":"2008-01-07T23:57:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T03:57:45","slug":"a-new-train-presenting-pw-nr-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/a-new-train-presenting-pw-nr-4\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Train – Presenting P&W NR-4"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Providence & Worcester railroad recently moved their interchange with the New England Central from New London to Willimantic, CT. Up until now, the interchange was worked by the P&W with extras from Plainfield, 3-4 times a week, running at various times of the day. As of Sunday January 6, 2008, it became a regular job, sporting the symbol NR-4. But as I hinted to Saturday<\/a>, it wouldn’t run in daylight. Rather NR-4 did their work under cover of darkness. But that didn’t stop me from catching the debut of the train and photographing it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was in Willimantic to run a couple errands Sunday evening when I realized what time it was – NR-4 was on duty at 9pm, and it was now about 10:15. So I started heading east along the P&W’s Willimantic Branch with the scanner monitoring the P&W, NECR and marker frequencies, hoping to hear something. I went all the way to Versailles without hearing a thing – no marker, no contact with the dispatcher, no nothing. At Amgraph, I checked out the tracks – it looked like something may have been by. But it was odd that I didn’t hear at least the marker – the road isn’t that far from the tracks, so I should have picked something up…unless they went out as light engines – if that was the case, the marker wouldn’t be armed & transmitting information. So on that hunch, I headed back to where I started.<\/p>\n

As I was traveling down Jerusalem Road in South Windham, someone was toning up the NECR dispatcher. Hmmm…at this hour, there’s usually not a NECR job around, so that meant it was NR-4. As I rolled down Route 203, nearing the P&W grade crossing, I got my confirmation – the P&W was asking permission into the yard to get their 22 cars. Next stop was the yard by the foot bridge.<\/p>\n

As I neared the Frog Bridge, I saw NR-4 pulling under it – a pair of locomotives running light. So that was the reason why I didn’t pick up the marker. Taking the scenic route to the yard, I went down by Bridge Street to make sure they weren’t coming onto the main – which in hindsight was pretty dumb – they only got permission to come down the runner from the NECR dispatcher. After seeing the power stopped near where the Saturday extra dropped their two cars, I then made my way to the middle of the yard to try to get some shots before they move again.<\/p>\n

With tripod, camera & lenses in hand, I made my way into the yard for a couple shots. There was a light fog in the air, so that added to the mood of the shots. First was a head-on shot of the power sitting on the track, with the crew members walking along, looking for their cars.<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5900]\n

Moving a bit further to my left, I got a vertical shot with the old Capitol Theater in the background<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5899]\n

And a horizontal, but this time I went with a black & white treatment, giving it a nice eerie feel with the fog hanging in the street lights.<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5898]\n

With the locomotives still sitting there, I figured it was worth a try to go up on the foot bridge and get some overhead shots. I got a couple shots of the power, cars and Bridge Street in the background. One went to Railpace, and one is here.<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5897]\n

Not long after that, the crew got back on the train and headed my way. They stopped below me, and the conductor got out, and we chatted for a couple seconds before they headed back east – again as light engines. Apparently the NECR didn’t have the cars ready for them. As he got back on the engine, I got a shot of the pair heading under me<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5896]\n

As they continued into the darkness, I swapped lenses to the telephoto and tried to thread the needle between the wires on the east side of the foot bridge to get a couple streak type shots. Here’s what I came away with as the train rolled across the Willimantic River and under the Frog Bridge<\/p>\n

[cpg_imagefixthumb:5895] [cpg_imagefixthumb:5894]\n

At that point, I packed things up, went back to the car and headed for home. Not exactly what I had hoped for, but I think I did rather well…<\/p>\n

Thanks for looking!
\nTom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Providence & Worcester railroad recently moved their interchange with the New England Central from New London to Willimantic, CT. Up until now, the interchange was worked by the P&W with extras from Plainfield, 3-4 times a week, running at various times of the day. As of Sunday January 6, 2008, it became a regular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-night-photography","7":"category-rail_photography","8":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}