12-08-31 PHOTOS: New Hampshire Funspot

Over Labour Day I took my annual trip up to New Hampshire to visit a friend in Portsmouth and this year we decided to head up to the Funspot Family Fun Center and American Classic Arcade Museum, which thanks to attrition is now the largest video arcade in the world. In order to get up to New Hampshire I of course had to take an Amtrak Regional train up through New York and then transfer to a Downeaster train in Boston so most of today's photos are going to cover what I saw making the self transfer between Boston South Station and Boston North Station.

You can find the full set of photos here.

We begin at Penn Station and although I know there are some rather large gaps in the LIRR section it is really necessary to festoon every door with four warning stickers?

Here we see some M2's in the motor storage yard in New Haven. Across the way Amtrak has taken to keeping an MP15DC switcher over in their engine terminal.

At BOS I found Amtrak AEM-7 #918 ready to lead a Regional southbound sitting next to an Acela Express trainset.

At the other end of the platform AX #2029 was playing the role of rear power car.

Messerschmidt cab car #1502 head of a split level K-car. All they need now is something from Fiat or Breda and the MTBA can start running "axis specials".

Standing in for the allies was Hawker Orange Line car #1210 at the Sullivan Sq. From all the corrosion it seems that Hawker would have been better served had they stuck with fabric construction instead of Aluminum.

I had a bit of extra time in the connection so I took a bit of a joy ride on the Orange Line. Here my train back to North Station arrives headed by car #1228.

MTBA GP40MC #1130 sitting on track 10 at North Station. 

Amtrak P42DC #122 on the 5:30pm Downeaster departure sitting next to MTBA F40PH #1008.

12-08-04 PHOTOS: SONOTOMO

I really wish I had something Christmas-y to post, but even though I have chopped my processing backlog down to 2 months from 11, that's not close enough to get in my photos from the Baltimore Streetcar Museum Santa Special or anything with the Nostalgia train which I didn't bother to ride this year. So everyone is going to have to sit back and yawn as I dig up some photos from August when myself and an all-star cast of Subhcatters including Chuchubob, Fred G and Alex converged on South Norwalk, CT for a visit to the preserved New Haven Railroad interlocking tower there.

Now this is not my first trip to the museum, but with the M-2's due for retirement I needed to get out on the New Haven Line anyway and this was probably the best destination available. For those of you looking for an in depth description of how turn of the century electro-mechanical interlocking machines functioned I am going to save that for another essay in the future, but there are plenty of non-signaling related visual treats available.

We start off with a string of classic M-2 railcars departing Stamford inbound towards New York City. I took Amtrak to Stamford and then got a ride from Alex there instead of trying to make the 1 minute transfer to Metro-North.

Enter the bag guy, track left as an outbound train of M-8's pulls in.

Inbound Stamford local train with M-2 #8832 in the lead.

Roof shot of M-2 #8832.

Video of 8832 and friends departing Stamford from above.



MNRR BL20-GH #115 pushing at the rear of an outbound Danbury shuttle train. The Beeps have been suffering from some overheating problems which is why one of the side doors is open.

Amtrak Acela Express #2039 in the push position as it heads through the Norwalk truss bridge.

Brand new Metro North catenary structure bolted to the original 1918 New Haven gantries is at least a nice consolation prize after the original catenary was removed.

The original New Haven electrified wire warning sign needs to be updated as voltage was raised to 12,000. At least its better than the "High Voltage SEPTA" signs.