Carnegie Tower
Here's another from my time out following the Mass Bay RRE's Narragansett Bay Special which made a round trip over the entire thirteen mile length of the Newport Secondary. The train consisted of two GE centercabs, Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad numbers 14 and 66 and the five car regular dinner train consist.
The latter is freshly repainted into the very attractive paint scheme featuring colors that pay homage to the state of Rhode Island and the omnipresent sea. It wears a newly applied logo for the Grand Bellevue Dinner Train for which it is the regular power. A GE 65-tonner, it was built in 1943 and was most recently numbered USN 65-00566 where it served with a sister unit at the Portsmouth Navy Yard until being replaced with a trackmobile several years ago. In 2024 she and sister unit USN 65-00308, two years her junior, were purchased by Eric Moffett and turcked to Rhode Island with the the 65-00308 being assigned to the Seaview Railroad freight operations at Quonset Business Park.
She is coupled to diner lounge BC-30 which a Budd RDC-3 built in 1956 for the Pacific Great East Railway. The self propelled car was one of seven the railroad bought which passed to BC Rail and remained in daily scheduled passenger service until discontinued by the province of British Columbia in 2002. It and sister BC-15 spent a couple years on the short lived Wilton Scenic Railroad in New Hampshire before coming to the island in 2007. The car is in the process of being remodeled into a dining car and bar with the headlights and horn operational and used as a shoving platform from the cab.
Pretty little number 66 brings up the rear crossing Willow Lane at the intersection with Depot Street so names because this is where the Portsmouth depot once stood here at about MP 9.2 which would have been about MP 20.8 as measured from Myricks and the junction with the New Bedford mainline back in PC and early CR days.
This was once named 'Coal Mine' station for the deep underground anthracite mines once located here. Anthracite coal was mined for more than a century from 1808 to 1913. Between 1867 and 1883 the coal fed the Taunton Copper works which operated a smelter adjacent the mine on Arnold's point off to the right. In latter years the mine site was the home of Kaiser Aluminum which operated from 1967 to 1987 and was the last major rail customer on the island. Today all the land which is still zoned heavy industrial has been redeveloped into luxury condominiums. The centerpiece of that development is The Tower at Carnegie Abbey rising in the background. The 22 story tower opened in 2009, and at 242 ft it is far taller than any other structure anywhere on the island. It is built exactly on the footprint of the former Kaiser Aluminum plant's extrusion tower where coated aluminum wire was produced and hence fell under the zoning variance for the former manufacturing facility. You can learn more about the site and development here:
portsmouthabbeymonastery.org/kaiser-to-carnegie
www.hoganassociatesre.com/blog/carnegie-abbey-and-the-kai...
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Saturday May 17, 2025
Carnegie Tower
Here's another from my time out following the Mass Bay RRE's Narragansett Bay Special which made a round trip over the entire thirteen mile length of the Newport Secondary. The train consisted of two GE centercabs, Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad numbers 14 and 66 and the five car regular dinner train consist.
The latter is freshly repainted into the very attractive paint scheme featuring colors that pay homage to the state of Rhode Island and the omnipresent sea. It wears a newly applied logo for the Grand Bellevue Dinner Train for which it is the regular power. A GE 65-tonner, it was built in 1943 and was most recently numbered USN 65-00566 where it served with a sister unit at the Portsmouth Navy Yard until being replaced with a trackmobile several years ago. In 2024 she and sister unit USN 65-00308, two years her junior, were purchased by Eric Moffett and turcked to Rhode Island with the the 65-00308 being assigned to the Seaview Railroad freight operations at Quonset Business Park.
She is coupled to diner lounge BC-30 which a Budd RDC-3 built in 1956 for the Pacific Great East Railway. The self propelled car was one of seven the railroad bought which passed to BC Rail and remained in daily scheduled passenger service until discontinued by the province of British Columbia in 2002. It and sister BC-15 spent a couple years on the short lived Wilton Scenic Railroad in New Hampshire before coming to the island in 2007. The car is in the process of being remodeled into a dining car and bar with the headlights and horn operational and used as a shoving platform from the cab.
Pretty little number 66 brings up the rear crossing Willow Lane at the intersection with Depot Street so names because this is where the Portsmouth depot once stood here at about MP 9.2 which would have been about MP 20.8 as measured from Myricks and the junction with the New Bedford mainline back in PC and early CR days.
This was once named 'Coal Mine' station for the deep underground anthracite mines once located here. Anthracite coal was mined for more than a century from 1808 to 1913. Between 1867 and 1883 the coal fed the Taunton Copper works which operated a smelter adjacent the mine on Arnold's point off to the right. In latter years the mine site was the home of Kaiser Aluminum which operated from 1967 to 1987 and was the last major rail customer on the island. Today all the land which is still zoned heavy industrial has been redeveloped into luxury condominiums. The centerpiece of that development is The Tower at Carnegie Abbey rising in the background. The 22 story tower opened in 2009, and at 242 ft it is far taller than any other structure anywhere on the island. It is built exactly on the footprint of the former Kaiser Aluminum plant's extrusion tower where coated aluminum wire was produced and hence fell under the zoning variance for the former manufacturing facility. You can learn more about the site and development here:
portsmouthabbeymonastery.org/kaiser-to-carnegie
www.hoganassociatesre.com/blog/carnegie-abbey-and-the-kai...
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Saturday May 17, 2025