Parking Lot Running
Just a wider take on this scene cause it's so cool!
There isn't much left on my bucket list to shoot in my home state (Rhode Island is pretty small after all!) but this was the big one that had eluded me. While I did shoot a train here back in the 1990s before I left for two decades after school, I had yet to photograph anything in the six years since I'd been back. But this day, thanks to some intel I knew that Providence and Worcester's Valley Falls based local PR-3 had a car for Safety-Kleen in their consist so most likely were going to head out here. I followed them out the Harbor Junction to the port but once they wrapped up their work their they rearranged their power with their two locos bracketing the one car so I knew they were going!
This is the Warwick Industrial Track which to quote Daria Phoebe Brashear:
"began life connecting the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, now generally known as the Amtrak main between Providence and the Connecticut shoreline, with the former Warwick Railroad, a lightly constructed line that started with steam dummies before being converted to electric trolleys, and which was gradually extended to Oakland Beach and then, via trestles across the inlets, around to Buttonwoods.
The urban and suburban trolley operations around Providence were consolidated under the same ownership as the New Haven under the auspices of the Rhode Island Company, with the mainline connection and a short portion of the original Warwick RailROAD surviving past the end of streetcar operations to service industrial customers in Cranston and Warwick as newly-incorporated Warwick RailWAY, although encroaching residental development kept service from actually being meaningfully offered past the Alrose Chemical plant, later Geigy, where the line crossed the Pawtuxet River.
After the chemical plant closed in the 1980s, the line ended up going fallow before being resurrected for new customer Safety-Kleen Systems circa 2015. The backyard trackage now services only them, in the building which formerly housed Atlantic Tubing and Rubber on Cranston's Mill Street."
PW GP38-2s 2006 and 2008 which were built new for the then only 7 year newly independent road by EMD in Feb. and Dec. 1980 respectively and have spent their entire careers working the rails of the Ocean State bracket a lone loaded tank for Safety-Kleen as they do a little parking lot running approaching the busy Elmwood Ave. / U.S. Route 1 crossing
If you want to learn more here are some links I recommend:
As always, Edward Ozog's site should be your first stop for all things Rhode Island railroading:
sites.google.com/site/rhodeislandrailroads/home/east-prov...
The fine folks at Classic Trains magazine also featured both of Rhody's little independent pikes in this piece:
www.trains.com/ctr/railroads/railroad-operations/smallest...
And here is something nice from the Rhode Island Historical Society:
navigator.rihs.org/rhode-island-a-bibliography-of-its-his...
Cranston, Rhode Island
Monday June 17, 2024
Parking Lot Running
Just a wider take on this scene cause it's so cool!
There isn't much left on my bucket list to shoot in my home state (Rhode Island is pretty small after all!) but this was the big one that had eluded me. While I did shoot a train here back in the 1990s before I left for two decades after school, I had yet to photograph anything in the six years since I'd been back. But this day, thanks to some intel I knew that Providence and Worcester's Valley Falls based local PR-3 had a car for Safety-Kleen in their consist so most likely were going to head out here. I followed them out the Harbor Junction to the port but once they wrapped up their work their they rearranged their power with their two locos bracketing the one car so I knew they were going!
This is the Warwick Industrial Track which to quote Daria Phoebe Brashear:
"began life connecting the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, now generally known as the Amtrak main between Providence and the Connecticut shoreline, with the former Warwick Railroad, a lightly constructed line that started with steam dummies before being converted to electric trolleys, and which was gradually extended to Oakland Beach and then, via trestles across the inlets, around to Buttonwoods.
The urban and suburban trolley operations around Providence were consolidated under the same ownership as the New Haven under the auspices of the Rhode Island Company, with the mainline connection and a short portion of the original Warwick RailROAD surviving past the end of streetcar operations to service industrial customers in Cranston and Warwick as newly-incorporated Warwick RailWAY, although encroaching residental development kept service from actually being meaningfully offered past the Alrose Chemical plant, later Geigy, where the line crossed the Pawtuxet River.
After the chemical plant closed in the 1980s, the line ended up going fallow before being resurrected for new customer Safety-Kleen Systems circa 2015. The backyard trackage now services only them, in the building which formerly housed Atlantic Tubing and Rubber on Cranston's Mill Street."
PW GP38-2s 2006 and 2008 which were built new for the then only 7 year newly independent road by EMD in Feb. and Dec. 1980 respectively and have spent their entire careers working the rails of the Ocean State bracket a lone loaded tank for Safety-Kleen as they do a little parking lot running approaching the busy Elmwood Ave. / U.S. Route 1 crossing
If you want to learn more here are some links I recommend:
As always, Edward Ozog's site should be your first stop for all things Rhode Island railroading:
sites.google.com/site/rhodeislandrailroads/home/east-prov...
The fine folks at Classic Trains magazine also featured both of Rhody's little independent pikes in this piece:
www.trains.com/ctr/railroads/railroad-operations/smallest...
And here is something nice from the Rhode Island Historical Society:
navigator.rihs.org/rhode-island-a-bibliography-of-its-his...
Cranston, Rhode Island
Monday June 17, 2024