Jackson Alexander
Ferry Move through the Farmland
One of the luckier days in recent times for myself came on the tail end of a three day trip to Vermont with my friend last autumn to attempt to shoot the Washington County RR from White River Jct, VT to Newport.
A railroad that has scorned me before, the second day of the trip and third morning were spent trying to catch them doing something with only small batches of information to go off of. As per the usual, I was left with nothing on the second day. No VTR trains moved except for a 2-car freight from Bellows Falls that tied down in White River.
It seemed as if the trip was a dud for moving trains. The day prior we traced the old STJ&LC and had a blast, but without a good chase this trip would have been missing a key element. We managed to grab a New England Central painted GP38 working White River Jct on the NECR side of things which was a nice uplift, but it only lasted a couple hours of switching and off to day drinking at Chili's we went.
The third morning, before the sun came up we awoke in my rusty 2007 Prius I had for all of 6 months. It was frozen in that thing. My buddy forgot that starting a car brings you heat and instead decided to stay pinned awake in the passenger seat with his toes gone numb. I woke up in the back pretty chilly but definitely not losing feeling in my extremities, and got us rolling for another, slightly more impatient attempt at the WACR.
We made it to the Junction and there we sat for another couple hours before I (as expected) grew impatient. I decided we were going to find the GMRC turn to Bellows Falls. We drove to Rutland and unknowingly passed right by the thing departing town. Thankfully my friend urged me to drive back down the line to check for it and if we saw nothing just go home. There she was, a set of red 4-axles taking the turn through the mountains. We got ahead of it at Ludlow and went to climb the trestle in town for our shot, but right when we got to the top I heard my buddy tell me to turn around. Behind us in the stub track siding by the station was their Alco RS1.
I had never shot it before, let alone any RS1. They're one of my favorite ALCos so we made the obvious choice to shoot our freight on the bridge and chase this wherever it may go. We got to talking with the company photographer who was present and he let us know it was a ferry move to end the passenger season and was going all the way to Burlington, fit with the company president in tow after they stopped in Rutland.
So we followed this Rutland locomotive on its home track across half of Vermont with both digital and film cameras alike. This photo was taken just north of New Haven Jct. where the Rutland branch to Bristol, VT once broke off from the main. The cows didn't seem nearly as excited as I was to see this little train trundling through the picturesque and colorful Vermont countryside.
Image taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 using my Nikon F4 fitted with an 80-200mm F/2.8 ED lens.
Ferry Move through the Farmland
One of the luckier days in recent times for myself came on the tail end of a three day trip to Vermont with my friend last autumn to attempt to shoot the Washington County RR from White River Jct, VT to Newport.
A railroad that has scorned me before, the second day of the trip and third morning were spent trying to catch them doing something with only small batches of information to go off of. As per the usual, I was left with nothing on the second day. No VTR trains moved except for a 2-car freight from Bellows Falls that tied down in White River.
It seemed as if the trip was a dud for moving trains. The day prior we traced the old STJ&LC and had a blast, but without a good chase this trip would have been missing a key element. We managed to grab a New England Central painted GP38 working White River Jct on the NECR side of things which was a nice uplift, but it only lasted a couple hours of switching and off to day drinking at Chili's we went.
The third morning, before the sun came up we awoke in my rusty 2007 Prius I had for all of 6 months. It was frozen in that thing. My buddy forgot that starting a car brings you heat and instead decided to stay pinned awake in the passenger seat with his toes gone numb. I woke up in the back pretty chilly but definitely not losing feeling in my extremities, and got us rolling for another, slightly more impatient attempt at the WACR.
We made it to the Junction and there we sat for another couple hours before I (as expected) grew impatient. I decided we were going to find the GMRC turn to Bellows Falls. We drove to Rutland and unknowingly passed right by the thing departing town. Thankfully my friend urged me to drive back down the line to check for it and if we saw nothing just go home. There she was, a set of red 4-axles taking the turn through the mountains. We got ahead of it at Ludlow and went to climb the trestle in town for our shot, but right when we got to the top I heard my buddy tell me to turn around. Behind us in the stub track siding by the station was their Alco RS1.
I had never shot it before, let alone any RS1. They're one of my favorite ALCos so we made the obvious choice to shoot our freight on the bridge and chase this wherever it may go. We got to talking with the company photographer who was present and he let us know it was a ferry move to end the passenger season and was going all the way to Burlington, fit with the company president in tow after they stopped in Rutland.
So we followed this Rutland locomotive on its home track across half of Vermont with both digital and film cameras alike. This photo was taken just north of New Haven Jct. where the Rutland branch to Bristol, VT once broke off from the main. The cows didn't seem nearly as excited as I was to see this little train trundling through the picturesque and colorful Vermont countryside.
Image taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 using my Nikon F4 fitted with an 80-200mm F/2.8 ED lens.