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CSXT's overnight Worcester local L002 has returned from Framingham with traffic from CSXT's eastern Mass carload hub which will be added to train M437 for departure west to Selkirk later in the day. The pair of locally assigned ACSES equipped 24 yr old GE AC4400CWs still dressed in their as delivered YN2 'bright future' livery are crossing the massive three track wide viaduct that carries the former Boston and Albany Railroad, now CSXT's own Boston Sub mainline over the Providence and Worcester Railroad's ex New Haven trackage and Southridge Street in a triple level crossing arrangement.
Worcester, Massachusetts
Friday June 28, 2024
“Eco Snoot” or “Eco Snoob”, is an inside joke directed towards CSX’s lineup of 2017 rebuilt EMD SD40E3 locomotives, specifically CSX 1712.
CSX 1712 began her life in the summer of 1980 as a SD40-2 built for the Seaboard Coast Line. Birthed as SCL 8130, she spent a chunk of her life serving Florida and the Southern U.S. before being acquired by CSX sometime in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. Like most of CSX’s assets at the time, she was painted into the recognizable “YN2 Bright Future” scheme, and acquired FRA regulated ditchlights sometime between 1994 and 1998.
CSX 8130 chugged into the 21st century and continued to serve CSX for over another decade before being selected and taken to Progress Rail in Muncie, IN for rebuild. In January of 2017, two years after leaving revenue service, CSX 1712 emerged from Progress Rail along with 13 other newly designated SD40E3 series locomotives. Built around efficient fuel consumption, low emissions and operating costs, the SD40E3 was designed for yard switching where fuel efficiency and low emissions are crucial. Taking inspiration from Norfolk Southern’s SD33ECO series, the SD40E3 has the latest in PTC equipment and an SD70 Series style control stand. They’ve been retrofitted with EMD’s 12-cylinder 12N-710G3B-T3 ECO, giving them a voice similar to the SD70 series’ EMD 710.
During rapid snowfall in early March of 2023, CSX M426 was led out of Selkirk by CSX 1712 and over the former B&A. By the time the train reached former Pan Am territory, the sun was long gone, and temperatures were well below freezing. Thankfully, the threesome of locomotives didn’t make the extended journey to Waterville, ME, and were spun in Portland for ACSES operations west. In the midsts of the night on March 6, 2023, CSX 1712 led M427 down the future Portland Subdivision. They went M.I.A for quite a few hours, but soon turned up in Ayer about an hour before school got out. Thankfully, with a little bit of yard work, I was able to get them in a couple of spots on the Worcester Mainline as they headed West to Selkirk.
Another uninspiring image from this bleak day on the west end
Other than East Portal there are a few other classic locations on the west end that everyone does but with speeds up on the railroad post Pan Am and slow conditions on the roads we couldn't catch back up to them for the Zoar or Charlemont shots. We only followed him east as far as this spot before turning back west for the tunnel in hopes of another train. Eastbound train B100 seen making good time crossing Ashfield St. on Main 2 at MP 398.7 of the Berkshire and Eastern's Freight Main. I am standing almost exactly where the joint Boston and Maine and New Haven passenger station once stood. It's hard to imagine that the New Haven once reached this far north with the Shelburne extension of the Canal Line from South Deerfield which opened in 1881 but had a very short life being taken out of service in 1919 and removed seven years later. The station saw its last B&M train call on November 1, 1958 and I'm not certain how much longer it survived before being demolished. Fortunately the freight house survives behind me and is nicely restored and cared for by the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum
Berkshire and Eastern is a Genesee and Wyoming owned company which is newly created to act as a neutral third party operator of the former Pan Am Southern property as a result of the sale of Pan Am Railways to CSX. Train B100 is the symbol B&E uses for the continuation to Ayer of Norfolk Southern eastbound 264 (intermodal 63rd Street Yard in Chicago to Mechanicville) that used to be known as 22K. The train is led by the standard SD60E which is necessary due to it being one of a small fleet of this model equipped with ACSES for operation on the MBTA property east of Westminster. This train is on borrowed time out here because another condition of the sale was NS being granted trackage rights for one pair of premium trains (this one and its westbound counterpart) over CSXT's former Boston and Albany route. These trains will then take the old Delaware and Hudson Albany main to Voorheesville, NY and utilize the connection on to Selkirk Branch which has been rebuilt there. From there they will travel east via Selkirk Yard, the Castelton Bridge and the Berkshire and Boston Subs to Worcester and on up to Ayer. Allegedly that routing will commence in March, so if you want shots of 'the pig train' on the old Boston and Maine the time is now!
Buckland, Massachusetts
Friday January 26, 2024
CSX K160 comes through CP MARION with a former Conrail SD40-2 leading due to ACSES requirements near Philly.
On a gloomy Saturday morning CSXT train M426 (Selkirk to Rigby manifest) thunders east holding the main passing the ancient granite milepost 83 on CSXT's Boston Sub mainline (the once and always Boston and Albany Railroad). The veteran 23 year old GE AC4400CW leader is equipped with ACSES so it can lead across the MBTA commuter zone from Ayer to the New Hampshire state line.
Palmer, Massachusetts
Saturday December 30, 2023
M427 with CSXT 8822 - CSXT 8839 - CSXT 9005 - CSXT 478 and a train of all paper and water loads for Ayer rolls west over the Salmon Falls bridge connecting Maine and New Hampshire.
While PTC / ACSES requirements have restricted what can lead freight trains that travel through Keolis territory I definitely won't complain about seeing some SD40-2's as that would have been very rare in the previous era of CSX run through power of the early 2010's.
December 13, 2022
Pan Am POED with MEC 611 - MEC 605 heads west in golden December light through the Scarborough Marsh three miles out of Rigby Yard.
Back then scenes like this could pretty much be taken for granted as POED ran daily and the majority of the 600 class was painted. Times change unfortunately and today the only remaining SD40-2's in Pan Am paint are the 3400's but ACSES requirements in Keolis territory greatly restrict what can lead in most of District 2. POED also isn't a daily train anymore, departing Rigby about 2-3 times a week and not always in daylight.
December 12, 2013
Recently Norfolk Southern has won the contract for unit grain trains destined to the Ardent Milling facility at the Willows east of Ayer. For the last several years they have been moving via CSXT and were interchanged to Pan Am at Rotterdam Junction and since the CSXT acquisition they have often moved via the old Boston and Albany to Worcester before turning north to Ayer. Now they are traveling Norfolk Southern's Southern Tier and former Delaware and Hudson route via Binghamton and Mohawk Yard before handing off to the new Berkshire and Eastern.
Here is one such loaded grain train holding just west of the North Leominster MBTA station on Main 1 at MP 325.1 on the old Freight Main (and 45.1 as measured from North Station via the Fitchburg Line). The train would ultimately sit here for hours unable to go east to Ayer until after intermodal train B101 was built and departed west from Ayer. This train had a nice power consist of two NS units sandwiching a run thru BNSF unit with a Pan Am SD40-2 trailing. Alas, due to the need for an ACSES equipped unit for operation over the commuter territory it was capped with this ugly patch job C40-8 at East Deerfield.
BERX 7489 is a a former Pan Am unit (that used to have MEC reporting marks) part of a group of 30 ex CSXT C40-8s (24 standard cab and 6 wide cab) acquired by Pan Am in 2017 in a deal brokered by GE. With the sale of Pan Am to CSXT effective June 1, 2022 they all once again became the property of their former owner. Finally after a protracted delay Genesee and Wyoming's newly created Berkshire and Eastern Railroad began operating the former Pan Am Southern property as a neutral third party on behalf of parents Norfolk Southern (49%) and CSXT (51%). Consequently 10 of the remaining C40 variants were transferred to the new startup including the three here. Most were quickly patched with new BERX reporting marks and the Pan Am Railways or legacy CSXT logos were painted over.
Leominster, Massachusetts
Friday February 16, 2024
Just one more frame of this scene before we move on down the line.
CSXT's Troy Industrial Track is a six mile long branch line that connects with the Amtrak controlled Hudson Line just north of the Albany-Rensselaer station at the east end of the Livingston Avenue bridge. The former New York Central route is the last active rail line into the Collar City which at one point in the early 20th century was the fourth wealthiest city in the nation. The city once had lines radiating in four directions serving a grand Union Station downtown.
The four railroads that originally formed the Troy Union Railroad were the Rensselaer and Saratoga (D&H), Troy and Boston (B&M), Troy and Greenbush (NYC) and Schenectady and Troy (NYC). That's how the NYC ended up with half ownership of the TURR, and the others each had one quarter.
This surviving spur began as the Troy and Greenbush Railroad which was chartered in 1845 and opened later that year, connecting Troy south to East Albany (now Rensselaer) on the east side of the Hudson River. It was the last link in an all-rail line between Boston and Buffalo and until bridges were built between Albany and Rensselaer, passengers crossed on ferries while the train went up to Troy, crossed the Hudson River, and came back down to Albany.
The Hudson River Railroad was chartered in 1846 to extend this line south to New York City and the full line opened in 1851. Prior to completion, the Hudson River leased the Troy and Greenbush and all would come into the hands of Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1864 who then three years later combined it with his New York Central Railroad to have the entire New York City to Buffalo route under his control. A decade after that Vanderbilt would gain control over the lines to Chicago uniting the famed 'water level route' under one banner that would grow to be one of the worlds greatest rail systems in the first half of the 20th Century.
The above information is courtesy of this site where you can learn more:
penneyvanderbilt.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/troy-greenbush-...
CSXT is the direct corporate successor of the New York Central by way of Penn Central in 1968, then Conrail in 1976, and CSXT in 1999. Despite occasional fear of the line's demise they continue to serve it three days a week with a local out of South Schenectady that travels via the Carmen Branch and the Hudson Line via West Albany hill and LAB to get to this branch.
CSXT local L020 has 17 cars trailing two ACSES equipped ex Chessie GP40-2s seen paused in South Troy just north of the Main Street crossing at MP 4.8 while the conductor walks over to Troy Pizza and Gyro to pick up a pie for the ride back home. I just love this scene with the tracks hugging the edge of South River Street along a block lined with ivy bedecked brick buildings...it's truly a throwback to railroading of another era and so vastly different than the sterility of modern class 1 mainlines.
Troy, New York
Friday October 25, 2024
Providence and Worcester's Valley Falls based local, PR-3, tests the cabs and ACSES on their pair of GP38-2's on a hot July Morning. At 0730 it was already 85 and humid. Personally, the heat sucks, but not for the drought tolerant purple New England Aster growing all over Rhode Island.
July 2024
Cumberland, RI.
NS 265 creeps through small-town Edgerton with an SD60E leading, a unique leader here compared to the usual GE's. The 60E was required out east due to the Pan Am Southern using ACSES, but the powerset remained unchanged the whole way to Chicago.
CSX L002 divides the signals at CP-23 with two CSX AC44CWs.
Another photo from “that” warm February day. CSX L002, which runs across the former B&A from Framingham, MA to Worcester, MA, was my first (real) exposure to Boston Line freight traffic within MBTA limits. CSX’s eye-catching YN2 or “Bright Future” scheme remains fairly common in Massachusetts, specifically on their ACSES II AC44CWs.
Located along the Sudbury River in Ashland, MA, CP-23 controls traffic entering and exiting CSX’s Nevins Yard, while governing Amtrak and Commuter Rail on the MBTA Framingham/Worcester Line. The yard lead (left) allows trains such as L002 to make pickups and extend their train for several-hundred meters before needing to use the mainline for headroom. To the right is a siding track, to which I don’t know the given name. Normally used for storage purposes, many funky and unusual trains have been stored here. LORAM occasionally uses this 4,000ft siding for layover purposes when rail grinding is needed.
[February 19, 2023 at 11:08:58]
Ashland, Massachusetts
With a welded rail train from A&K Railroad Materials for Keolis coming in from CSX, we expected to see some sort if unique move but nothing like this. On the day of, I got a text while running errands that the pair of ACSES equipped AC44s for L002 were running east from Worcester as Y101 with the Welded rail train in tow. Knowing that Y101s crew at the time was the only CSX crew qualified to Beacon Park I began to put 2 and 2 together. Although there was some uncertainty of how far Y101 was going to take this railtrain I just had a feeling that it would be a good idea to get trackside as this could be my opportunity to get the one shot I have always dreamed of, CSX wide cabs in Boston. Luckily for me, this move had some additional work to do in Framingham. A 85ft car of 115lb stick rail out of Steel dynamics in Arcola was also billed for MBTA to be unloaded at the yard 10 T pad. That work in Framingham gave me just the right amount of time for me to make it to Wellesley Farms just as this CSX extra called clear of a foreman's 135s limits in Wellesley. After seeing them I was off the Beacon Park without thinking to get pictures of them working the yard with the Boston skyline. To conclude, I somehow managed to leapfrog this lite power on the westbound from Beacon Park back to Wellesley Farms with some aggressive driving to get my iconic Wellesley Farms Westbound shot!
An ACSES test train heads north through the MBTA’s Attleboro station while testing the safety systems recently installed on the NPCU
Berkshire & Eastern B101 rolls west past the small yard in Gardner on a cold and sunny late-December afternoon in 2024. Leading the way to Mechanicville was NS 6953, an EMD SD60E equipped with ACSES PTC to lead over MBTA territory.
“Eco Snoot” or “Eco Snoob”, is an inside joke directed towards CSX’s lineup of 2017 rebuilt EMD SD40E3 locomotives, specifically CSX 1712.
CSX 1712 began her life in the summer of 1980 as a SD40-2 built for the Seaboard Coast Line. Birthed as SCL 8130, she spent a chunk of her life serving Florida and the Southern U.S. before being acquired by CSX sometime in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. Like most of CSX’s assets at the time, she was painted into the recognizable “YN2 Bright Future” scheme, and acquired FRA regulated ditchlights sometime between 1994 and 1998.
CSX 8130 chugged into the 21st century and continued to serve CSX for over another decade before being selected and taken to Progress Rail in Muncie, IN for rebuild. In January of 2017, two years after leaving revenue service, CSX 1712 emerged from Progress Rail along with 13 other newly designated SD40E3 series locomotives. Built around efficient fuel consumption, low emissions and operating costs, the SD40E3 was designed for yard switching where fuel efficiency and low emissions are crucial. Taking inspiration from Norfolk Southern’s SD33ECO series, the SD40E3 has the latest in PTC equipment and an SD70 Series style control stand. They’ve been retrofitted with EMD’s 12-cylinder 12N-710G3B-T3 ECO, giving them a voice similar to the SD70 series’ EMD 710.
During rapid snowfall in early March of 2023, CSX M426 was led out of Selkirk by CSX 1712 and over the former B&A. By the time the train reached former Pan Am territory, the sun was long gone, and temperatures were well below freezing. Thankfully, the threesome of locomotives didn’t make the extended journey to Waterville, ME, and were spun in Portland for ACSES operations west. In the midsts of the night on March 6, 2023, CSX 1712 led M427 down the future Portland Subdivision. They went M.I.A for quite a few hours, but soon turned up in Ayer about an hour before school got out. Thankfully, with a little bit of yard work, I was able to get them in a couple of spots on the Worcester Mainline as they headed West to Selkirk.
Berkshire & Eastern EGT glides west between the approach signals to CPF-354 in South Royalston on a snowy and cold late-January afternoon in 2024. Leading the way west would be BERX 7489, formerly MEC 7489, a GE C40-8 equipped with ACSES PTC to lead the train over MBTA territory to the east.
Small disused taxiway South West of taxiway C: From left to right:
LY-NVY Airbus A320232 C/n 1909 Leasing Company All white / Sky Angkor Airlines
2-ACSE Airbus A319112 C/n 3436 Leasing Company All white / Eurowings
1 x TAP Air Portugal
CS-TTU Airbus A319112 C/n 1668 Leasing Company / TAP Air Portugal
Berkshire & Eastern B101 rolls west through the interlocking at CPF-363 in Athol on a sunny late-December afternoon in 2024. Leading the way to Mechanicville was NS 6953, an EMD SD60E equipped with ACSES PTC to lead over MBTA territory.
As ED9 finishes it's duties up working the automotive facility, the 3-string of locomotives pulls it's full slab of cars out to end up putting the entire train on the mainline, to then undergo brake testing and have the conductor walk the whole length of the train from back to front.
After, the power would latch off of the string of racks that have been brought out, to be wyed at Ayer and that hitch onto the other side of the string. This is in order to comply with MBTA's ACSES/PTC system, which is only compatible in Norfolk Southern's SD60E rebuilds, and a few other oddball locomotives that have had this specific system installed. So, no other Pan Am Southern trains are permitted to run without the ACSES/PTC system that Keolis has integrated into their trackage.
This means it's almost always an SD60E leading as they are the only locomotives in Norfolk Southern's fleet that have consistently been installed with this unique system.