405 At The Diamond
Due to a group of VRS geeps being temporarily OOS for painting the Vermont Railway has been using ancient Green Mountain Railroad Alco RS1 405 for daily freight service on the Bellows Falls switcher assignment (train DASW). Normally this unit only sees service on the VRS' passenger excursion trains and perhaps use on revenue freights once or twice a year at most. So any time she's used for revenue service is special, and I'm hard pressed to think of anywhere else in the country an RS1 is used to haul freight anymore. For these reasons, any time she is out and I can swing it I make the nearly 3 hr trip north to see her.
What is even more special is that this unit is very much on home rails having been built for the Rutland in November 1951. So that means she is approaching her 71st birthday in a few months and has never left the Green Mountain state!
Having handled a few switching chores in North Walpole she is now headed headed out toward Riverside Yard for their day's work and to await the arrival of road train 263 from Rutland. She is seen here thumping across the NECR diamond (former Boston and Maine Conn River main) beside the Bellows Falls depot that is just out of sight to my left. The are at about MP B0.3 at the end of modern day VRS' Falls Running Track of the Bellows Falls Subdivision which is the original Rutland Railway Green Mountain mainline.
They are about to cross the truss bridge over the Bellows Falls Canal, one of the nation's first canals, which opened in 1802 to allow navigation on the Connecticut River to bypass the 52 ft high Great Falls. By 1858 the canal was no longer used for navigation, having been supplanted by the railroads, but instead provided water power to six adjacent mills. Eventually the lower end of the canal with the locks was filled in and the upper end here was widened in conjunction with the opening of the Bellows Falls Hydroelectric plant in 1928. The 49 megawatt station continues in use today and since 2017 has been owned by Great River Hydro LLC which owns 13 hydroelectric power facilities and 3 storage-only reservoirs along the Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers.
Village of Bellows Falls
Rockingham, Vermont
Friday August 19, 2022
405 At The Diamond
Due to a group of VRS geeps being temporarily OOS for painting the Vermont Railway has been using ancient Green Mountain Railroad Alco RS1 405 for daily freight service on the Bellows Falls switcher assignment (train DASW). Normally this unit only sees service on the VRS' passenger excursion trains and perhaps use on revenue freights once or twice a year at most. So any time she's used for revenue service is special, and I'm hard pressed to think of anywhere else in the country an RS1 is used to haul freight anymore. For these reasons, any time she is out and I can swing it I make the nearly 3 hr trip north to see her.
What is even more special is that this unit is very much on home rails having been built for the Rutland in November 1951. So that means she is approaching her 71st birthday in a few months and has never left the Green Mountain state!
Having handled a few switching chores in North Walpole she is now headed headed out toward Riverside Yard for their day's work and to await the arrival of road train 263 from Rutland. She is seen here thumping across the NECR diamond (former Boston and Maine Conn River main) beside the Bellows Falls depot that is just out of sight to my left. The are at about MP B0.3 at the end of modern day VRS' Falls Running Track of the Bellows Falls Subdivision which is the original Rutland Railway Green Mountain mainline.
They are about to cross the truss bridge over the Bellows Falls Canal, one of the nation's first canals, which opened in 1802 to allow navigation on the Connecticut River to bypass the 52 ft high Great Falls. By 1858 the canal was no longer used for navigation, having been supplanted by the railroads, but instead provided water power to six adjacent mills. Eventually the lower end of the canal with the locks was filled in and the upper end here was widened in conjunction with the opening of the Bellows Falls Hydroelectric plant in 1928. The 49 megawatt station continues in use today and since 2017 has been owned by Great River Hydro LLC which owns 13 hydroelectric power facilities and 3 storage-only reservoirs along the Deerfield and Connecticut Rivers.
Village of Bellows Falls
Rockingham, Vermont
Friday August 19, 2022