#boston line

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Room with a View.

On a rainy December afternoon, Kris and I met my old friend Dan and his wife Mary at Palmer’s Steaming Tender for lunch. We were seated by a window facing the Boston & Albany—today’s CSX’s Boston Line. The rails were alive and freight trains were on the roll. Some time after a very long westward manifest freight cleared the diamond (where CSX crossed New England Central at grade), a local…

Room with a View.

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Conrail in Worcester—1997.

Here’s another photo from my Classic Conrail Kodachrome Files.

Photographer Mike Gardner had spent December 2, 1997, photographing Conrail operations around Worcester, Massachusetts.

Early in the day, we dropped E6 slide film at E.B. Luce for processing and then occupied our time documenting the parade of Conrail trains on the former Boston & Albany line.

In this view at CP44 at the east…

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Conrail C32-8s August 13, 1988.

Conrail C32-8s August 13, 1988.

On the evening of August 13, 1988, I visited Conrail’s West Springfield Yard (Massachusetts) after a day on the old Boston & Albany ‘West End’.

At the time, General Electric six-motor diesels were standard power for road freights on the Boston Line.

Among the locomotives common to the Boston Line in the 1980s were the ten pre-prototype GE C32-8s that featured the ‘Classic’ curved roof cab…

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Conrail’s CP83 Palmer, Massachusetts—October 1998.

This was just an ordinary scene at CP83 in Palmer, Massachusetts in October 1998.

Amtrak’s Vermonter was holding on the interchange track as C30-7A rolled east on the mainline, and a westbound with SD80MACs waited at the end of the controlled siding.

I made this view on Fujichrome using a Nikon N90S with 28mm lens.

At the time I made this image, Conrail’s class 1 operation had less…

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Sound of Power: Conrail Ballast Train June 1984

Sound of Power: Conrail Ballast Train June 1984

Just imagine the roar! Conrail C30-7 6600 leads three former Erie-Lackawanna 20-cylinder EMDs!

So far as I can remember, this was the only time I caught an SDP45 (second unit) hard at work on the Boston Line.

I made these views of an uphill BAL (Ballast train) at Middlefield, Massachusetts on a day’s photography with my old pal TSH on a beautiful spring evening in June 1984. I was a…

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On the Roll with CSX’s Q264—Five Photos.

On the Roll with CSX’s Q264—Five Photos.

CSX Q264 is a unit autorack train that terminates at East Brookfield, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, November 26, 2019, I was waiting at CP83 in Palmer for fellow photographer Mike Gardner to arrive. To the west, I could hear the distant roar of a heavy eastward train.

Long ago I learned to use my ear. Listening, and knowing what you are hearing can make the difference between finding a train…

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CSX Q022 on the Roll at West Warren—November 25, 2019.

CSX Q022 on the Roll at West Warren—November 25, 2019.

November sun and a little elevation is a good start.

I’d spotted CSX’s Q022 rolling across the Palmer diamond as I departed the old union station, where I’d pulled in to see if anything was happening!

(No scanner and poor timing on my part!)

Not a bother. I drove post haste west on Route 20 and Route 67 to West Warren.

CSX’s Q022 had a decent size train, but with nearly 9,000 hp…

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