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Incase you missed out on the absolutely beautiful items in this years Advent calendar you can go grab the collections in two different bundles.
A shifter out of Danville, WV works the Wells Prep Plant near Van, WV with a gorgeous AC44 and a younger sister GE. The track gradient is really obvious here. The conductor on this job was very friendly. He came and chatted with me and a couple other goobs and made friends with Dakota the railfan pup.
The crew of this day's Lhoist mineral train builds their train of covered hoppers for departure from the limestone plant in Crab Orchard, TN bound for the NS interchange in Rockwood, TN.
This male kōlea is about two weeks from his annual migration to the Alaskan tundra. Looking fat and dapper in his breeding plumage, he will somehow sense the time to congregate with other previously solitary kōlea and depart collectively. The trip spans over approximately 3,000 miles of open ocean requiring a rigorous, energy intensive effort of 3 to 4 days and nights of nonstop flight at elevation ranging from 3,000 to 16,000 feet. Superb navigators with territorial fidelity, kōlea use the stars and the earth’s magnetic field to find their way over the featureless ocean to the same small patch of territory every year. They may use the earth’s magnetic field visually with the magnetoreception molecules of cryptochrome in their retina.
At a bamboo basket factory, an environmental portrait of a lady prepping the bamboo, making it pliable for weaving later into a basket.
We parked in the University area to enjoy and short walk and found this sight. These logs were categorized and sectioned off as a preparation for delivery.
Preparing mushrooms for dinner.
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Milwaukee Road 261 heads west on the Wayzata Sub as it enters Nicollet Island en-route to Hopkins. It is running PTC exempt so it was rolling by at 20mph. Glad to finally rolling again after a 2 year hiatus due to COVID-19.
This was a deadhead move prior to the weekend's excursion. Only had 4 cars and the E9 behind the tender, the rest of the train is already at Hopkins as it was on the bottom half of the Saint Paul Turn a day prior to this. The train will be built at Hopkins and will be overnighting there for the weekend while not on excursions.
AAW June 14 - 21: 6 O"Clock
WIT: At this time of day, I prepare for dinner - Green onions for Chinese noodle soup. Set the camera up on a tripod, and tilted down, put on the timer, and with my mis en place, started cutting. Nothing much in post, just a bit of a crop and cloned out a tripod leg part.
Allegheny Central 1238 is prepped for the day's excursion from Cumberland to Frostburg. The shop location is located in Ridgely WVA just across the Potomac River from Cumberland MD. August 13, 1989.
This slide is a little blurry due to a young photographer getting used to using a telephoto lens.
Fujichrome 100, Pentax K1000
Here the crew is preparing the flag for the duck drop at Greenwoods Duck-N-Jeep Jam.
HFF, by the way.
Didcot loco shed as the nightshift crew carry out maintenance duties preparing the engines for the next day.
Allegheny Central 1238 is prepped for the day's excursion from Cumberland to Frostburg. The shop location is located in Ridgely WVA just across the Potomac River from Cumberland MD. August 13, 1989.
Fujichrome 100, Pentax K1000
I'm off to Australia for the weekend! I'll be back soon ^^
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Credits:
GENUS Project - Genus Jaws v1.1
[HANDS] Legacy (f) (1.1)
DOUX - Chill Hairstyle [S]
[JOE SL] GIGI MESH EYES OCEAN BLUE
[JOE SL] GIGI MESH EYES OCEAN BLUE R
CURELESS [+] Moonlight Jewels
Lunar - Lulu Dress (Legacy) Moo Edition
[BODY] Legacy (f) (1.2.1)
[FEET] Legacy (f) (Classic Fit) (1.1)
1990 - Chanel French Set - Reg - Legacy
#POHUI Gel eye pads (L)
GENUS Project - Genus Head - Baby Face W001 - v1.6 - Mocap
#POHUI Gel eye pads (R)
MVT LED PHONE 1 BLACK
A visit to the Grafton and Upton Railroad's modern two track engine house in North Grafton finds GU 1158 in the process of being sand blasted and stripped in preparation for repainting into the modern orange and black scheme the railroad has recently adopted. 1158 is an EMD MP15AC built in Oct. 1977 as Seaboard Coast Line 4008 and delivered in the Family Lines livery. The unit passed to Seaboard System then CSXT and wore several other paint schemes until being retired and coming here in 2017.
The Grafton and Upton Railroad is the rarest of shortlines. It was never part of a class 1, it wasn't a former mainline, it has operated independently since inception, and it sat virtually abandoned save for one mile of track and one customer before rising like the Phoenix seemingly from the dead to be rebuilt from end to end with a diverse, busy, and growing customer base. Now how many lines can say THAT?!
So a bit of history. The G&U story began in 1873 when the Grafton Center Railroad was chartered to build a 3 ft narrow gauge line between Grafton and North Grafton, which officially opened for business on August 30, 1874. At North Grafton the railroad established a connection with the Boston & Albany Railroad, a later subsidiary of the New York Central. The company remained a three-mile narrow-gauge for the next 13 years until July, 1887 when it was renamed as the Grafton and Upton Railroad, converted to standard gauge, and set its sights to the southeast at Milford. Two years later in 1889 the line had reached Upton and on May 17, 1890 the entire route was open to Milford, a distance of 16.5 miles, where it connected with the Milford & Woonsocket Railroad (a later subsidiary of the New Haven).
Between 1894 and 1979 the railroad was owned by its largest customer, the massive Draper Corporation of Hopedale that one time employed some 3000 people as the largest maker of power looms in the country for the textile industry. But in 1978 Draper successor Rockwell Corporation closed the mill and sold the railroad which seemingly had little reason to exist any longer and little future. The track beyond Hopedale to Milford had not been used since 1973 when Penn Central terminated the interchange there since after acquiring the New Haven a few years earlier there was no need to connect with the G&U at both ends. By 1988 the G&U was no longer running to Hopedale at all and the tracks were out of service. In the mid 1990s the G&U did revive the line to haul highway salt down to their tiny yard in Upton for transloading, but I never made it to see that happen before it too was gone.
When I was growing up the G&U had one working locomotive, an Alco S4 resplendent in St. Louis Manufacturer's Railroad paint. I never saw it run, however, as it was always sitting with the stack capped at the railroad's sole customer, Washington Mills just about a mile south of the then Conrail interchange in North Grafton. By the time I had learned of the railroad's existence back then their other two "orignal" units in G&U black and yellow were long out of service. I do have one significant souvenir off original G&U GE 44-tonner #99 bought new in 1946 and scrapped in 2009. Around that same period the two Alcos also sadly met their demise.
But all was not lost...as sad as seeing those locomotives go along with the demolition of the last original G&U buildings in Hopedale those losses signaled a rebirth. In an entirely improbable turn of events the road was purchased in 2008 and the new owner began rehabbing the entire railroad. Over the past decade the line has grown busier than it's ever been with a large new yard and transload facility in West Upton, two busy customers in Hopedale and a new propane distribution facility in North Grafton. And the future looks even brighter as the connection to Milford was reestablished in June 2020 after nearly 50 years out of service. Not long after that the G&U took over servicing CSXT's last two customers on the Milford Industrial Track that had prior been served via a Walpole based local running down to Franklin and Bellingham over the MBTA's Franklin Line. With more power and more customers on the way and a bigger shop than they ever had things sure do look good....if quite different....around here!
Grafton, Massachusetts
Wednesday February 5, 2025