From The Courthouse Steps
This was an angle I always wanted to try but it doesn't work on a sunny day so figured with it being overcast it was now or never because after this there was only one more train to go!
CSXT's ex Pan Am local BO-1 cuts thru Peabody Square on the South Reading Branch with MEC 516 trailing only two cars, a spacer and the last loaded inbound car of hydrochloric acid for the Rousselot plant in Peabody which is closing later this year after operation in some form for 206 years and with rail service for 173 of those! They will pull five empties this day then return two days later to pull this one drawing to a close rail operations thru this unique and famous location forever.
I'm standing on the steps of the Peabody District Courthouse and the train has just cleared Central Street and is about to Cross Lowell Street in the center of town. Rising in front of the loco is the 50 ft tall Soldiers and Sailors monument built in 1881 and inscribed with the 71 names of local residents who died in the Civil War. Prior to 2016 if you'd taken this same shot the monument would have been behind the train in an island in the middle of traffic at the center of the square. However in early 2016 a more than $3 million project to reconfigure the square led to it being moved 30 ft back to this new plaza in front of the courthouse that the train cuts right through. This is such a unique and remarkable location and it is truly a loss that trains will no longer travel through here.
Peabody, Massachusetts
Tuesday August 29, 2023
From The Courthouse Steps
This was an angle I always wanted to try but it doesn't work on a sunny day so figured with it being overcast it was now or never because after this there was only one more train to go!
CSXT's ex Pan Am local BO-1 cuts thru Peabody Square on the South Reading Branch with MEC 516 trailing only two cars, a spacer and the last loaded inbound car of hydrochloric acid for the Rousselot plant in Peabody which is closing later this year after operation in some form for 206 years and with rail service for 173 of those! They will pull five empties this day then return two days later to pull this one drawing to a close rail operations thru this unique and famous location forever.
I'm standing on the steps of the Peabody District Courthouse and the train has just cleared Central Street and is about to Cross Lowell Street in the center of town. Rising in front of the loco is the 50 ft tall Soldiers and Sailors monument built in 1881 and inscribed with the 71 names of local residents who died in the Civil War. Prior to 2016 if you'd taken this same shot the monument would have been behind the train in an island in the middle of traffic at the center of the square. However in early 2016 a more than $3 million project to reconfigure the square led to it being moved 30 ft back to this new plaza in front of the courthouse that the train cuts right through. This is such a unique and remarkable location and it is truly a loss that trains will no longer travel through here.
Peabody, Massachusetts
Tuesday August 29, 2023