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For more pictures of Vietnam please check my Vietnam trip 2014 diary.
We traveled over 3 hours from Hanoi to Halong Bay by bus. While we take a break I found this funny scene.
Processed with VSCOcam with f1 preset
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Hope 2015 is off to a great start for you and the people you love. So far so good here.
I've done some thinking about goals for this year. All i really want to do are
1. Do 20 push up on my smiley muscles every morning
2. Invest time in myself and the people i love
3. Turn criticism to my own advantage
4. Be Mindfulness and kindfulness
5. Work on my meditation at least twice a week
6. Milk on my emotions with acknowledge, forgives, learn and laugh
7. Be as open as possible to what comes
8. Love my people with everything i've got each and every moment
And understanding that sometimes happiness is not something i do, but just the way i change the way i look at life.
Life is a wonderful thing. It really is.
I hope your year is full of peace, love, laughter, and great adventure.
Love to you and yours.
This photo is so special to me that I actually used a vacation day and took off from work just to get it. Kind of crazy I know, since it's not the most amazing of images, but one that has long been on my New England bucket list!
This is a place I first learned about decades ago when I purchased Scott Hartley's "Guilford: Five Years of Change." I was a young fan then new to railroading and eager to learn. While I already knew of the mighty Hoosac, this other long tunnel mentioned and shown on the last page of that book was heretofore unheard of to me and quite mysterious. Back in the 90s I made a trip to see it, but never saw a train...and filed it away as a a must have someday.
So what is this place you ask? This is the Terryville Tunnel and we are at the west portal of the nearly 7/10th's of a mile long bore on Pan Am's Waterbury Branch. This is a section of trackage that was not one of Pan Am's historic predecessors, but rather is former New Haven. When Conrail, the NH's successor in Connecticut, was looking to divest unprofitable lines during the Stanley Crane era the Boston and Maine acquired this trackage in 1982 from Berlin to Waterbury (and trackage rights down from Springfield to reach it from their own property). They acquired other former NH and B&A lines at that time as well but most have since been abandoned or sold to other operators, but this one has proven valuable enough to survive through the Guilford and Pan Am eras.
Historically this route was known as the Highland Line owing to it's rather hill and dale twisting route west from Hartford through New Britain, Plainville, and Bristol on to Waterbury and a connection with the Naugatuck Line. But going back further this was the route of the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill Railroad. Construction began in Hartford in 1847 and by 1855 a through route across southern New England from Providence to Waterbury was open.
The HP&F ultimately became part of the New York and New England system in 1878. In 1882 the line west of Waterbury to Fishkill landing on the Hudson finally was completed and a decade later an even more important branch from Hopewell Junction to a connection with the Central New England Railroad's Poughkeepsie bridge was completed. In 1898 the New Haven leased the NY&NE where it would remain into the modern era. The extension from Danbury to the Poughkeepsie Bridge would be the only heavy haul mainline in modern times, and the rest of the system was relegated to secondary status owing largely to the rough terrain from which it gained the Highland moniker.
And that brings us to the tunnel. The route was still important enough in the early 20th century to warrant this massive investment. Construction of the tunnel through Sylvan Hill in Plymouth began in 1906 but wasn't completed until nearly 5 years later to eliminate the steep grades and horseshoe curves at Terryville. Ironically more than a century later those grades rain known as the Terryville Loop Track which is a long industrial lead with several important shippers.
This route hosted a thru Boston to Waterbury train until 1955 when the Midland Divison line was severed at Putnam. Local passenger service from Hartford to Waterbury lasted until about 1960 but since then it has been freight only under the aegis of the NH, PC, CR, B&M, and Pan Am.
And this bit of passenger history leads me to a personal story. My Dad has told me often how he remembers as a young child boarding a train with my Grandmother in Blackstone, MA to travel to Waterbury to visit relatives. Given his age and when the line was severed he would have had to have been 6 or younger and undoubtedly road in an Osgood Bradley coach pulled by one of my favorite model of diesels, the Alco DL109, sadly none of which survive. It's hard to imagine my young father peering out the window as they emerged from the darkness at this very spot some 65 or more years ago....
Anyway, as for the present, this is Pan Am local PL-1 creeping west thru the bore approaching MP 16 on the road's Waterbury Branch. Trailing a pair of B40-8s they have 30 empty c&d gons for handoff to the Naugatuck Railroad and one car of their own to spot.
Plymouth, Connecticut
Thursday July 16, 2020
Life is so full of unexpected twists. They often distract you from pursuing and achieving your goal. The key, of course, is to refocus.
...I'm back!
Questa meta certo non è invitante
eppure chissà come mai non faccio che essere attratto
da essa...
(This goal.. well it's not so appealing
and yet, dunno why, I continue to be captured
by it...)
I tweaked this map from another goal-setting map, so I can't take all the credit. But I hope it motivates you to aim for something this coming month of May! Or even this week...
Things are going so good I need to look ahead to my next challenge, get these on my feet so I can get back on a motorcycle and back to work.
# 15 in my 30 days of photos from my bed series