Morning in Massachusetts
It's November of 1997. I'm a freshman in high school and have a job bagging groceries at the Thruway Supermarket in Walden. The magazine rack there was representative of railfan media at the time, carrying the full slate of Carstens and Kalmbach. So, if I wanted to psychoanalyze things I could say that the Grafton & Upton article from the November 1997 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman stuck in my head because of a church steeple shot in it as I really over time have a thing for cool buildings and gnarly trees in photos. It could also have been because it wasn't written in a "how to model this" tone entirely but included a little bit of the history and operation. It also stuck in my head that the railroad essentially went a short way from the B&A interchange to their lone customer. Fast forward just a shade under 9 years and of the 2 trains I was ever on east of Worcester I was kinda most concerned with seeing the G&U interchange and wasn't really surprised to just see a switch and a track trailing off into the woods (it's my memory, it looks how it looks in my memory).
A decade or so later I'm out in the world and seeing that the Grafton & Upton has been reborn and has an F Unit. My trips east in this time frame are most concerned with Guilford in Maine (Thanks George & Candy) and at that point I didn't really have the network yet to know a person who knows a person who knows what's going on everywhere. February 28th of 2018 I hand a cold Coors Light to Dave Blazejewski at Norden on Donner Pass. He thought we were enemies because of internet shit but he didn't really know me yet.
2020 I get furloughed at CN and decide (it didn't take much deliberation) to do a 7 week road trip through peak covid (china virus released from the wuhan institute of virology which is curiously funded by US sources) and race riots focusing especially on the Reading & Northern. I had time to do everything but my focus was single minded. Early in June I was sick of sleeping in my truck so much and went home to Minnesota. I came back out in October and do ya think I gave a single thought to the Grafton & Upton? Nope.
Next trip east was a 2+ weeker in 2022 for a friends wedding. Guilford had been done, R&N had been done. I'd been in 1 spot for 4 years and homesickness was sinking in. I was looking backwards and the Grafton & Upton was on my radar for the first time in many years. My fall 2023 trip had them on the to-do list but they didn't get done. Sometime in early spring of 2024 Blazejewski posted a photo of Grafton & Upton rolling through a field bisected by stone walls. The G&U went up near the top of the to-do list. Just about a month later Blaze took me there for my first visit. I saw the church steeple at Grafton but didn't want to chance getting to the field and wanted time to set up.so we went to the field and waited for the train for an hour. It was Erie's final spring, I was relaxing in a New England hay field bisected by rock walls and there was a train coming. It was heaven.
This year was a bit different. Blaze & I got up there relatively late after having a long day of MBTA and 3 lobsters for $50 the day before. Nick Palazini was already up there, Dan Lowe would show up a short while later and we posted up in the woods slightly down track from the mill that served as the end of operable railroad when the article was written in 1997.. I started tooting on my Boston Lager purchased in trade for a good parking spot close to the Crows Nest in Gloucester the day before as the G&U got going out of North Grafton. An absolutely cloudless spring morning in Massachusetts and I was there, the church. The steeple, the photo from half a lifetime ago, the article, the hobby and the sound of an non turbocharged EMD diesels ricocheting off the buildings. It's just wonderful.
G&U 1751, Grafton MA.
Morning in Massachusetts
It's November of 1997. I'm a freshman in high school and have a job bagging groceries at the Thruway Supermarket in Walden. The magazine rack there was representative of railfan media at the time, carrying the full slate of Carstens and Kalmbach. So, if I wanted to psychoanalyze things I could say that the Grafton & Upton article from the November 1997 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman stuck in my head because of a church steeple shot in it as I really over time have a thing for cool buildings and gnarly trees in photos. It could also have been because it wasn't written in a "how to model this" tone entirely but included a little bit of the history and operation. It also stuck in my head that the railroad essentially went a short way from the B&A interchange to their lone customer. Fast forward just a shade under 9 years and of the 2 trains I was ever on east of Worcester I was kinda most concerned with seeing the G&U interchange and wasn't really surprised to just see a switch and a track trailing off into the woods (it's my memory, it looks how it looks in my memory).
A decade or so later I'm out in the world and seeing that the Grafton & Upton has been reborn and has an F Unit. My trips east in this time frame are most concerned with Guilford in Maine (Thanks George & Candy) and at that point I didn't really have the network yet to know a person who knows a person who knows what's going on everywhere. February 28th of 2018 I hand a cold Coors Light to Dave Blazejewski at Norden on Donner Pass. He thought we were enemies because of internet shit but he didn't really know me yet.
2020 I get furloughed at CN and decide (it didn't take much deliberation) to do a 7 week road trip through peak covid (china virus released from the wuhan institute of virology which is curiously funded by US sources) and race riots focusing especially on the Reading & Northern. I had time to do everything but my focus was single minded. Early in June I was sick of sleeping in my truck so much and went home to Minnesota. I came back out in October and do ya think I gave a single thought to the Grafton & Upton? Nope.
Next trip east was a 2+ weeker in 2022 for a friends wedding. Guilford had been done, R&N had been done. I'd been in 1 spot for 4 years and homesickness was sinking in. I was looking backwards and the Grafton & Upton was on my radar for the first time in many years. My fall 2023 trip had them on the to-do list but they didn't get done. Sometime in early spring of 2024 Blazejewski posted a photo of Grafton & Upton rolling through a field bisected by stone walls. The G&U went up near the top of the to-do list. Just about a month later Blaze took me there for my first visit. I saw the church steeple at Grafton but didn't want to chance getting to the field and wanted time to set up.so we went to the field and waited for the train for an hour. It was Erie's final spring, I was relaxing in a New England hay field bisected by rock walls and there was a train coming. It was heaven.
This year was a bit different. Blaze & I got up there relatively late after having a long day of MBTA and 3 lobsters for $50 the day before. Nick Palazini was already up there, Dan Lowe would show up a short while later and we posted up in the woods slightly down track from the mill that served as the end of operable railroad when the article was written in 1997.. I started tooting on my Boston Lager purchased in trade for a good parking spot close to the Crows Nest in Gloucester the day before as the G&U got going out of North Grafton. An absolutely cloudless spring morning in Massachusetts and I was there, the church. The steeple, the photo from half a lifetime ago, the article, the hobby and the sound of an non turbocharged EMD diesels ricocheting off the buildings. It's just wonderful.
G&U 1751, Grafton MA.