Alco Hauling
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!
Here is the ancient veteran at MP B2.5 on modern day VRS' Falls Running Track of the Bellows Falls Subdivision which is the original Rutland Railway Green Mountain mainline. She is lugging more than 30 cars and the dead VTR 207 (headed to the North Walpole paint booth) down track 1 as she assists with yarding train 263 which just arrived from Rutland in this view looking west from the Riverside Road crossing.
Rockingham, Vermont
Friday August 19, 2022
Alco Hauling
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!
Here is the ancient veteran at MP B2.5 on modern day VRS' Falls Running Track of the Bellows Falls Subdivision which is the original Rutland Railway Green Mountain mainline. She is lugging more than 30 cars and the dead VTR 207 (headed to the North Walpole paint booth) down track 1 as she assists with yarding train 263 which just arrived from Rutland in this view looking west from the Riverside Road crossing.
Rockingham, Vermont
Friday August 19, 2022