24-03-23 PHOTOS: East Deerfield

In part two of my trip to Greenfield, Mass I check out the Boston and Maine's former East Deerfield yard, which has become a significant railfan hotspot in the Guilford era and beyond. I then work my way up the Connecticut River valley to catch some New Englande Central action at the town of Putney, VT before catching Amtrak back to Philadelphia. You can catch part 1 of this two part trip here and see the full set of photos for part 2 of the trip here ( mirror ).

After a morning spent getting photos of searchlight signals, but no trains at CPR-33, I made the short hop to East Deerfield yard, which was a major hub on the old Boston and Maine with extensive shop facilities and connections to both the Connecticut Valley and east-west main line between Boston and Mechanicville, NY. After parking I saw crews warming up a familiar face, Ottawa Valley Railway GP40-2LW #3029 and ex-CN GP40-2 #6409 that I had caught the previous day in downtown Greenfield. They were sitting next to former CSX C40-8W #7875, which was part of a bevy of power purchased by Guilford from CSX in the 2010's that then found itself back in CSX ownership when Guilford decided to sell out in 2022.

With the western end of the Guilford system spun off into a G&W owned regional railroad, most of the Guilford's bargin bin fleet seemed to be sitting idle while G&W brought in units from across its empire to handle the remaining tasks. OVR #3029 and CN #6409 seemed to be on local freight duty for customers on the Boston and Maine's Connecticut Valley Main Line and I got photos of the pair rolling past WX tower and then under the railfan bridge to begin the day's flat switching. While taking these photos I got a notification that my reservation on the following day's southbound Vermonter was being cancelled due to a freak snow storm that was about to drop a foot of snow across Vermont, but little to the south. Fortunately I was able to book a seat on an earlier Valley Flier out of Greenfield, which was actually the more expensive option when I had first planned the trip.

That morning the East Deerfield engine terminal help a mix of former Guilford equipment (nee Maine Central, Boston and Main and Springfield Terminal), former CSX -8 units and Bay Line Geeps brought in by G&W. Those with a sharp eye might also notice some old B&M MoW snow ploughs.

WX tower at East Deerfield was closed as an interlocking station many years ago and now sits adjacent to the present day CPF-384.

Bay Line units included GP40-2's #3018 and #3019, which might be a commentary on the condition of the former Guilford power.

Former CSX C40-8W #7875. #7655 and #7898 were still in a hastily overpainted YN scheme while #7797 was in Dark Future. Note Guilford #350 is a former B&M GP39-2.

24-03-22 PHOTOS: Greenfield

For years I was aware that my cousin lived in "western Mass", but I always assumed it was somewhere inaccessible and didn't press further. It was only in 2024 that I discovered it lived only 8 minutes from downtown Greenfield, home to a Vermonter stop and terminus of Amtrak's new Valley Flyer service, which extends some Springfield Line trains. With three round trips per day I quickly arranged a visit as his location would also allow access to a cache of vintage Boston and Maine signaling that I had confirmed on a COVID era Vermonter trip to White River Jct. In this set of photos ( mirror ) I will travel up to Greenfield with a short layover at New Haven and then catch some freight action at the Crossroads of the B&M.

During my wait for the 7am northbound Acela at the BWI airport rail station, I happened to catch northbound MARC Penn Line train with SC44 #80 and split level cab car #8055 and a late running 5-car Amtrak Train 67 en-route to Newport News with ASC-86 #663.

BWI has pretty poor Acela options with 7am and 3pm as the two daily northbound departures, which usually has me going to DC as the first leg of my trip, but this time the 7am met my schedule needs and price point and dutifully arrived with power car #2013 leading.

Not much to say about the trip up except I got this photo of HAROLD tower in Sunnyside, NY that somehow managed to avoid getting demolished in the whole East Side Access debacle.

Here we see power car #2012 on the end of my train after I got off at New Haven. This Acela trainset is one of only a few that have sequentially numbered power cars.

Metro North M8 #9222 hanging out on the New Haven station through track.

Despite the advertisements, I was going to have to leave riding the CTRail Hartford Line for another day. Instead I walked over to Church Street for some view of Amtrak's motor storage yard while waiting for the northbound Vermonter. In the yard were a trio of MP15DC cab end switchers, including #539 and #537, used for Springfield Line MoW service along with several P42DC's including #123.

Hiding back under the Church St bridge was Amtrak 40th anniversary Phase 2 heritage unit #130.

My northbound Vermonter train 56 arrived with ACS-86 #651 on point. 

On board the Vermonter I caught a Hartford Line train laying over north of Hartford with Mafersa cab car #1705.

Reactivation of the downtown Windsor Locks station was ongoing with a new high level platform under construction. This will replace the AmShelter that has been in service since 1981.

In other Springfield Line news, the single main track over the Connecticut River bridge has been switched from the south to the north side of the bridge. Future plans are call for full double tracking all the way to Springfield.

24-03-14 PHOTOS: Carrollton

For the better part of a decade I have been enjoying the privilege of a yearly trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area for arts event with friends and during that time I have been checking off parts of the DART/TRE/TexRail system that serves the region. By 2024 I had traveled all of the routes except one, the Green Line to Carrollton, TX and, by extension, the A-Train extension to Denton. Anyway, it seemed like an easy enough task to ride from downtown to Denton and back in a morning, but things didn't quite work out that way. You can find all the photos from this adventure here ( mirror ).

We begin at the Love Field station with LRV #130 heading outbound on an Orange routing. 

Arriving downtown after dark I encountered McKinney Ave Trolley car #754 at Olive and San Jacinto. The McKinney Ave Transportation Authority is a heritage streetcar operation that connects DART with the McKinney Ave arts district.

The next day I tried to get up early to get out to Carrollton, and by extension Denton, before the arrival of the Texas Eagle. The first Green Line LRV that showed up, #216, was heading in the opposite direction to Buckner and although Carrollton-bound LRV #145 showed up ad wrapped windows I had no choice but to take it due to the 15 minute headways and my own time constraints.

Because of the window wraps I didn't get any outbound photos. Also, I forgot to mention that the Green Line doesn't make an A-Train connection at Carrollton, but the penultimate station, Trinity Mills. This creates another hole I'll need to fill in the DART network. Here we see the wrapped LRV #145 at Trinity Mills just before LRV #101 arrives from Carrollton.

Opened in 2011 , the Denton A-Train makes a cross-platform connection at Trinity Mills. The 21 mile line operates with 11 Stadler GTW 2/6 DMU's. Here GTW 2/6 #107 lays over at Trinity Mills.

Unfortunately with needing to meet a surprisingly on-time Texas Eagle and getting out of bed later than anticipated I did not have enough time to make the run to Denton as a round trip would take about 90 minutes including a prolonged layover at Denton. The deciding factor was ultimately bulkhead cabs providing minimal forward view and turning the ride into little more than a time sink.

Back in the 70's and 80's the powers that be in the Dallas area implemented a very forward looking policy of purchasing defunct or lightly used rail corridors for future transit conversion. Many of these were used by DART's light rail system, but others like A-Train and the new Silver Line are being used for FRA regulated services in conjunction with the local Denver, Garland and Northern short line freight operator. As such the Denton A-Train makes use of railroad type signals and signaling. Here we see #107 departing Trinity Mills just as the DART LRV train with #216 and the wrapped #145 return from Carrollton. #107 continues on past the DART Carrollton station, taking an Approach Diverging indication on the Milepost 107 intermediate signal there.

24-03-09 PHOTOS: Power Director Office Powered Up

In the spring of 2024 it had been over a year since I had been able to get out to the Harrisburg Power Director's office, which had been between 1939 and 2013 in service to manage to manage the PRR's western traction power network. In 2022 the office had been taken over by the Harrisburg Chapter NRHS as an adjunct to their operation at HARRIS tower, however due to staffing considerations it is open much less frequently. The first time I had been there, pretty much only the room lights were functioning with the Big Board and control consoles all dark and lifeless. However in the 18 months since that first visit, the team of volunteers had managed to reactivate a substantial portion of the equipment and today's photos ( mirror ) will cover both the trains passing by on the adjacent Harrisburg Lines and the condition of the power office, with a few surprises mixed in.

The occasion of this Power Office open house was the train show the Harrisburg Chapter organizes in March of each year. Although HARRIS tower has ample free weekend parking, the power office is located inside the current Amtrak station and does not. Therefore, despite the drizzle, I parked at HARRIS to walk over. This put me in the position to catch a westbound NS doublestack intermodal train lead by SD70ACC #1850 and AC44C6M #4012.

Due to the train show, the power office saw healthy crowds all day.

The biggest change since 2022 was that the status lamps on the Big Board were now all lit.

However the more surprising development was that some of the SCADA panels had also been activated.

By "activated" I don't mean that the lamps had been turned on, but that the elements that drive the lamps and respond to the switches had also been restored to functionality. The office contains banks of relays that store state from the field equipment and encode/decode messages to/from said equipment. While the real field equipment no longer exists, the chapter volunteers were able to replace it with virtual equipment run off an Arduino type setup.

As of the spring of 2024, only the Westinghouse supplied "Visicode" equipment had been reactivated as its pulse code communications protocol was both dead simple and easy to reverse engineer. What makes this restoration extra surprising is that most of the Westinghouse consoles had been deactivated around 1983 when Conrail threw in the towel on electrified operations, as opposed to 2013 when Amtrak replaced its portion.

I'll probably write up a much more detailed post about this equipment on my dedicated signaling blog, but for a quick summary, the consoles function by first pulling a knob to select a module. This is sort of like taking a phone off hook and results in the back end relays taking action to accept the command. One then moves the switch to the desired position, activating the "out of correspondence" light. Then one chooses "Master Trip" or "Master Close" depending on the action and the message is coded out to the field equipment. If that didn't make sense, hopefully this video can make things clearer.