Infrequent move

In May of this year Pan Am Railways made the first revenue move over the new Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, crossing the Piscataqua River, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire into Kittery, Maine. On that trip they delivered an empty 12 axle DODX flatcar to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Last week they made the second move over the bridge to retrieve the flat car. Working roughly 25 minutes away from Portsmouth, I tried to time my drive down to minimize waiting time. The railroad made a quick trip over to grab the car, but had to wait a couple hours for a barge to go up river and a ship to go down river before the bridge was finally lowered into the rail position. Rail movements to Kittery were always rare in the modern era, but have become even more rare recently. Purportedly this will be the last trip for a couple years. I'm standing on the abutment for the rail deck of the old bridge and the pier in the foreground is the last remnant in the river of the old bridge.

 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

August 28, 2019

Done