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| PHOTOS: WALPOLE (1644772) | |||
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PHOTOS: WALPOLE |
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Posted by Jersey Mike on Wed Oct 29 23:18:39 2025 The second part of my whirlwind Columbus Day Weekend tour of the Connecticut River valley wasn't just about fall foliage as the Vermonter Route re-signaling project was accelerating and I still had a couple key locations to visit in the Bellows Falls area. This set ( mirror ) will also cover my return trip back south with stops at Springfield and New Haven.Driving in from Keene I passed by the Green Mountain Railroad backlot, which is ironically across the river in New Hampshire as opposed to Vermont. Visible from the car was former New York Central RDC #M-453 and Bangor and Aroostook painted private car #101.   A previous track configuration created some phantoms in the signaling system with an Approach Medium at the north end of the Walpole siding leading to a Medium Clear over a straight route at the south end. These southbound signals along with the one at the BELLOWS FALLS diamond were displaying a route for that day's Vermonter.    Passengers were already waiting inside the Bellows Falls station, which is shared with the Green Mountain Railroad's excursion trains. Vermonter Route stations are staffed by a volunteer station host program.    That days southbound Vermonter Train 57 was pretty much on time and lead by P42DC #112. The valley the station is located in creates a pretty neat horn echo effect.   I was booked on a 4pm Amtrak Springfield Shuttle train out of Springfield, so after a quick lunch I got dropped off and walked through the new Bus depot built on the location of Union Station's old baggage office, which included the New York Central's TOWER 96. You can see the new bricks patching the side of the main Union Station building.   Shuttle Train 465 was departing from low level track #8 and featured Phase III Heritage P42DC #145 and Metroliner Cab Car #9646.   I was connecting to a southbound Acela so I had time to linger on the platform and catch various Metro North and Amtrak action. Walking over to the Amtrak New Haven engine terminal I managed to catch "Phase L" 50th anniversary heritage P42DC #100 along with #145 and sibling Ps42DC #89 and #95.  While waiting for my Acela on platform A, Springfield Regional Train 140 arrived on platform B and began the process of swapping out its electric ACS-86 #603 with diesel P42DC #95.   On track #3 was MNRR M8 #9200, which was the first of the 150 MTA owned cars.  It was too dark for a photo of Acela power car #2031 at New Haven, but I snagged one at Penn Station.  That's it for my Fall 2024 Connecticut Valley trip. Next time I'll be in DC to say Farewell to the WMATA 2000-series railcars. |
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