![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nanosphoto.com\/gallery\/albums\/wpw-20080303\/thumb_20080301-_MG_1297.jpg?resize=99%2C149\")
Part two of the catching up – I got out of the house early on Saturday March 1st to chase New England Central train 608 out of Willimantic during the snow storm. I was only able to be out a couple hours, but as things worked out, those two hours were quite productive.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I left the house near dawn with about 3″ of snow on the ground, and it was still falling in earnest. At that point I hadn’t decided where I’d go – it was down to either Willimantic to chase NECR train 608 south, or make the trek up to Palmer to catch some CSX action on the B&A. As I was heading down the hill nearing Hosmer Mountain, the scanner woke up on the NECR frequency – 608 was working the Willimantic yard. I guess that iced my decision for the morning’s activities.<\/p>\n
My first stop was Bridge Street to see if they were actually in the yard, or working up by Willi Waste. A quick look at the crossing gave me my answer – the flangeways were clear, and a quick look down into the yard showed me a blinking marker on the end of a train. So I headed down Main Street and across the Frog Bridge to try to catch the train pulling under the bridge adorned by a a quartet of copper amphibians, propped on spools of thread.<\/p>\n
From the sounds of the scanner chatter, they were wrapping things up in the yard, and preparing to head south. So I parked the truck and made my way up the sidewalk, and into position. A few moments later, 608 began heading south in the heavy snowfall.<\/p>\n
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And a going away shot<\/p>\n
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OK, now can I get ahead of them without sliding off the barely plowed road? Let’s find out…<\/p>\n
I did end up getting ahead of them at the old Rogers Corp factory along Route 32, and I didn’t slide once! Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t even come close to the speed limit…anyways, I ended up shooting a couple shots of the train coming at me, and here’s the keeper of the bunch<\/p>\n
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And a going away shot, with a snowy Christmas tree looking shrub…<\/p>\n
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Judging by the consist, their next stop was CC Lonsbury just down the road – so that was my next stop.<\/p>\n
I got there just as the conductor was getting off at the switch, and preparing to split the train.<\/p>\n
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A little bit later, they cut off the rear cars, and the power pulled forward through the mostly snow – rain was starting to mix in.<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6269] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6268] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6267]\n
One the switch was lined for Lonsbury’s siding, they started to shove back<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6266] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6265] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6264]\n
Then my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so I set my sights on the Dunkin Donuts in Franklin. I figured the train would be working here in South Windham for a while, so I had time.<\/p>\n
Once I got my coffee & sandwich, I started back north. But this time I went up Route 87, hoping to catch 608 at the Pound Hill Road crossing, where it should look really pretty with the snow clinging to the trees.<\/p>\n
Well, apparently I took about a half a minute too long in Dunkin’ Donuts because as I rounded the bend in the road, and the crossing came into view, I saw 608 blast through a snow bank that the plow had left. Damn!!!! So a quick turnaround was in order so I could get back down to Franklin.<\/p>\n
I got to the parking lot south of Cargill just in time to catch 608 rounding the bend with their train<\/p>\n
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And as they pulled past me, the way the lead wheel was throwing the snow off of the rail head caught my eye.<\/p>\n
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Then I swapped to the wide angle, and got a blur shot of a pair of hoppers going past the switch stand<\/p>\n
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And a pair of old timers came by – two covered hoppers still sporting Delaware & Hudson markings!<\/p>\n
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Then finally a shot of the 3851 ducking behind the snow covered pine<\/p>\n
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As the train shoved back into Cargill, I took a little stroll down the tracks to get a few shots with the Cargill silos in the background. At this point, it was raining at a pretty good rate, with no snow falling.<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6258] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6257] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6256] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6255]\n
Getting somewhat wet, I decided to head back to the truck and scout out other locations to the south. As I got close to the truck, I turned around and something struck my eye – the snow covered brush, with the train in the background. So I went with a shallow depth of field shot, focusing instead on the brush, and leaving the train out of focus.<\/p>\n
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Not bad…so I climbed in the truck and headed south, looking for interesting angles along the way.<\/p>\n
While scouting around, of course I still had the scanner on. It sounded like 608 was still working around Cargill, and even getting ready to switch out Kofkoff – which they usually don’t do until they’re heading north. So I abandoned my scouting mission and made my way to Murphy Road to check out what’s going on.<\/p>\n
As I pulled across the Murphy Road crossing, I saw that now the 3840 now had its ditch lights on – it looked like the engineer switched ends – that meant they were heading back north. I guess they didn’t have any work south of Franklin that day.<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6253]\n
So I hung out at Murphy Road and got a few more shots.<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6252] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6251] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6250]\n
And here came those D&H hoppers again – apparently they’re headed for Kofkoff<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6249] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6248]\n
Finally, I got some shots of the train heading down the Kofkoff lead<\/p>\n
[cpg_imagefixthumb:6247] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6246] [cpg_imagefixthumb:6245]\n
As 608 shoved into Kofkoff, I decided to call it a morning and head home. Not a bad 2 hours on the road…<\/p>\n
Thanks for looking!
\nTom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part two of the catching up – I got out of the house early on Saturday March 1st to chase New England Central train 608 out of Willimantic during the snow storm. I was only able to be out a couple hours, but as things worked out, those two hours were quite productive.<\/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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-rail_photography","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","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=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanosphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}