Passing Thru Pittsfield
CSXT West Springfield to Selkirk train M425 rounds the bend on Main 1 as they come out from beneath the East Street / Route 9 overpass right at MP 147 (note the milepost partially obscured at right) on modern day CSXT's Berkshire Subdivision, the one time Boston and Albany Railroad mainline. Freshly rebuilt CM44AH 7577 sparkles in the low afternoon light as they pull down so they can go pick up the outbound Housatonic Railroad interchange traffic off the west end of Track 3.
Looming beyond is the the last remaining building from the once massive former GE plastics plant. General Electric was once the dominant industry in town dating all the way back to 1903 when when it purchased the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Co., which had been established in Pittsfield in 1890. In addition to its plastics division, GE manufactured transformers in town and operated an aerospace division. At its peak during the 1940s, the GE plant employed 13,000 people - in a city of just about 50,000!
The transformer division shut down by 1987 and took 2000 jobs with it, followed by the sale of aerospace to Lockheed Martin leaving only about 500 employees working for the plastics division. That last operation was closed and the remains sold off in 2005 and since that time many of the buildings on the 324 acre site have been removed, and for the past two decades GE has been working to clean and remediate the area from decades of PCB contamination. In fact I thought this scene looked different from the last time I photographed off this bridge and turns out I was right: flic.kr/p/2nqsYeE
In addition to being a major employer it was once a huge rail customer though today what little trackage remains on the property is rusty and unused and there is so little rail served industry left that CSXT has long since abolished their last local freight crew in town.
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Thursday January 23, 2025
Passing Thru Pittsfield
CSXT West Springfield to Selkirk train M425 rounds the bend on Main 1 as they come out from beneath the East Street / Route 9 overpass right at MP 147 (note the milepost partially obscured at right) on modern day CSXT's Berkshire Subdivision, the one time Boston and Albany Railroad mainline. Freshly rebuilt CM44AH 7577 sparkles in the low afternoon light as they pull down so they can go pick up the outbound Housatonic Railroad interchange traffic off the west end of Track 3.
Looming beyond is the the last remaining building from the once massive former GE plastics plant. General Electric was once the dominant industry in town dating all the way back to 1903 when when it purchased the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Co., which had been established in Pittsfield in 1890. In addition to its plastics division, GE manufactured transformers in town and operated an aerospace division. At its peak during the 1940s, the GE plant employed 13,000 people - in a city of just about 50,000!
The transformer division shut down by 1987 and took 2000 jobs with it, followed by the sale of aerospace to Lockheed Martin leaving only about 500 employees working for the plastics division. That last operation was closed and the remains sold off in 2005 and since that time many of the buildings on the 324 acre site have been removed, and for the past two decades GE has been working to clean and remediate the area from decades of PCB contamination. In fact I thought this scene looked different from the last time I photographed off this bridge and turns out I was right: flic.kr/p/2nqsYeE
In addition to being a major employer it was once a huge rail customer though today what little trackage remains on the property is rusty and unused and there is so little rail served industry left that CSXT has long since abolished their last local freight crew in town.
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Thursday January 23, 2025