Grassroots Railroad Sports?

I did stop by the Rexleigh Covered Bridge to get another photo of a New England covered bridge, this one dating back to 1874. The BKRR passes by a hundred feet or so from the bridge.

And again, more weed-covered tracks, and again, this is the active segment.\

I kind of came away with a melancholy feeling on seeing the BKRR, and not because of not getting to see them operating. The whole thing just has that vibe of a railroad that is barely hanging on. Lots of out-of-service locomotives, as much out-of-service trackage as active if not more and the enginehouse and office aren't even connected to the system anymore, weeds overgrowing spindly and wobbly rails with ties that have vanished into the earth, just two active online customers. It's like a modern day version of some of the short lines in Lucius Beebe's Mixed Train Daily and it seems like if I heard the BKRR was being abandoned, I wouldn't really be that shocked.

Slightly off-topic, but I took VT-9 from Bennington to Brattleboro, which is called the Molly Stark Trail. Gorgeous drive up over Hogback Mountain, if not the fastest way. There's a great scenic overlook at the very top where you can see three states from.

There's also a distillery up there so that you if you want an additional challenge, you can get sauced up and then try to drive back down the twisty mountain road. Just kidding, please don't drive drunk. I ended up staying at the Purity Spring Resort and got upgraded to the room at the top of the old mill that serves as an office, with a balcony that looks out over a pond.

Also, the 470 Club announced the plan for tomorrow:

Here is the rundown for tomorrows trip on how the engine will be placed.

#1741 will lead to Conway, then be spliced in between F-units for the remainder of the day.

#4268 will be lead engine westbound and #4266 will be lead engine eastbound with #1741 in between them once we depart Conway for the rest of the day.

Remember, Conway Scenic actually departs from North Conway, and runs south to Conway, as well as north to Crawford's Notch. Unfortunate that #1741, being recently restored and debuted won't be leading for 95% of the trip. The problem is that the F7s don't have MU receptacles on their nose, so for the #1741 to lead would require two crews.  

I get that the 470 Club wants to show off their equipment, but I would have been fine with MEC GP7 #573 and/or one of the other MEC Geeps being paired up with the #1741. 

So, this morning I headed up to North Conway. It was a cold, gray, cloudy morning, with temperatures in the low 40s. Originally the forecast called for mid-50s and sunny, but the sun never really materialized once we headed north. 

This building, which looks like the world's largest and most ornate gingerbread house, is the B&M Conway Branch station, which dates back to 1874. Really impressive-looking structure and it's where Conway Scenic is based out of.

I walked around back and took some photos of the yard from the south end of the yard. Quite a bit of Conway Scenic power was on hand. 

The red and white #255 is a GP38 that Conway acquired from Vermont Rail about two years ago. It was originally a Maine Central engine, which is part of why Conway purchased it (they have another MEC GP38, #252, as well) and while it still wears the VTR red and white, I overheard that the plan is to repaint it into the MEC Harvest Gold and green livery over the winter.

The Harvest Gold #216 hooked up to the #255 is an ex-N&W GP35, and still retains the original high hood, and reportedly the original GP35 electrical gear, including the convoluted 16-step transition system that EMD used to crutch their early electrical gear to work at the 2500hp level. It's a time capsule in that regard, but that's not necessarily a good thing, since th GP35s were never particularly good, and indeed this one is said to be a bit unreliable. Doing time with Guilford and Pan Am likely didn't help it's reliability.

Working left, in the lightning stripe paint we have #1751, a GP9 that once belonged to Finger Lakes Railway. It was originally a C&O unit, then went to Buffalo & Pittsburgh, then FGLK, and then was sold to Conway back in 2010 or so. It's had Conway Scenic lettering applied but still wears the out-of-place NYC lightning stripe livery.

And then in the black, blue and white is 470 Railroad Club's freshly restored B&M GP9 #1741.

470 Railroad Club's gorgeous pair of B&M F7s, #4266 and #4268, move through the yard to run around to the north end of the train. The B&M only had four F7As, so this is half the fleet present right here. Thee #4265 is "preserved" at Gorham, while the #4267 was wrecked and scrapped around 1960-1961. 

Unfortunately we began boarding before I could get the #1741 moving through the yard and hooking on. We boarded and departed for Conway when there was a pretty sharp jolt and a loud bang-hiss and the train came to a stop. I looked at the one guy in my car, who was a VTR engineer, and I said "I think we just went into emergency", and he agreed. So we sat there for a little while, while they fixed what was an air hose that pulled apart between the last car and the #4266. They got that fixed and we headed down to Conway, and I hoped we were going to get a photo stop with the #1741 leading. We slowed down at Hussey Field, where we got a runby in 2022, but then motored on by and got to the end of the line at Conway. I again thought maybe we'd get a photo of the #1741 before they unhooked it and split the #4266 and #4268, but before they let us off, they cut off the #1741 and ran it around the train. We were allowed to disembark, but at that location we could not get to the head end to see them hooking up the #1741 and #4268, because there was trees and and a large depression in the adjoining property, so being allowed off wasn't really that useful. It was also kind of weird that we didn't get any photos of th #1741 by itself, but I learned that they had planned a stop at Hussey Field when heading south but then scratched it due to the emergency brake issue. We were able to get photos of th recently-relocated Flying Yankee.

Now on the MEC Mountain Division, we made a photo stop at Notchland. The problem with this excursion, as I've now learned, is that there's a lot of daisy-pickers, and no one really enforces photo lines, which makes it hard to get photos because there is just no etiquette. A lot of the railfans would try to form up, but then a bunch of other people would be wandering around in front of us.

Further up, we stopped on the north side of Willey Brook Trestle, on the site of the former section house at Mt. Willard. Two years ago, we did a southbound photo shoot on the other side of this ravine. This location was a little more roomy for photography (we had to drop half the photographers off on the other side, do a runby, then drop off the other half), but I didn't think it was as good of a shot. I was also bummed that we didn't get photos of the even more impressive Frankenstein Trestle. By the time we got here, it was apparent that the rest of thee northbound run would be cloudy, and the temperature had plummeted and wind was picking up. I was fully expecting snow at Crawford Notch or Fabyan's, as were others. 

We ran all the way to Fabyan's, and they did allow us to get off and get photos as the power runs around the train, but I remember two years ago that you have to stand between the two sidings, and it's not really feasible to get any photos, so I stayed aboard where it was warm. We did make our first southbound stop shortly afterwards at Crawford Notch, and I did get off for this spot. You can see the V-shaped notch in the White Mountains where the rails and road squeeze through, which is the source of the Crawford Notch name.

This was at Cobb Farm Road and you can see how people just crammed along the tracks, making it hard to get a good shot. So I jogged a ways up the ROW to try and get a better shot. I was somewhat successful, but I think if I were to come up for this trip again in the future, I would just chase the trip.

Our last photo stop was above where we get back on the B&M Conway Branch and this location was just kind of terrible. It was an exclusive shot, not being accessible by the chasers, but the it was heavily dappled shade. I would much rather have cut this one and eiither gotten the shot at Hussey Field with #1741 or gotten a shot at Frankenstein Trestle.

Back at North Conway, the trip was over but there was great opportunities to get the power by the old B&M semaphores with some terrific lighting.

The #4266 and the #255 behind the depot.

The #4266 was finally cut off the head end of the #1741, giving a few chances at photos of the #1741 by itself. A lot of people took off, and really I was just hanging around for the last Valley Train to return, so this was kind of a nice bonus.

The #1741 is a really gorgeous locomotive and I am bummed that we didn't get to see it lead. I totally would have been fine with it leading with MEC GP7 #573 or MEC GP38 #252, but I get that this was the club's trip and the club wanted to use all their equipment.

And the #1751 shoves the last Valley Train of the day up into the yard after a lengthy delay from the 470 Railroad Club shuffling passenger cars and their locomotives around.

At least some other people have posted photos of the #1741 during it's brief time leading the excursion south from North Conway to Conway

So, yesterday, I decided to get some more regular Conway Scenic action. Unfortunately, they ran the final train to the Notch for the season the weekend before this, so the only service they were running was the Valley Train from North Conway to Conway and back. I was really hoping they would be using one of the MEC-painted engines, but the #1751 had been used the day before and was still hooked up to the train when I got there in the morning. And, of course, Sunday was a sunny, cloudless day, which would have been nice the day before. These photos were taken right on startup, and I caught the quick puff of smoke out of the exhaust as it started.

Heading south along Valleyview Road in North Conway, popping out of the tree line. It's kind of amazing that Conway has had the #1751 for over 10 years and has never repainted it out of the Finger Lakes Railway paint, especially when they're reportedly talking about repainting GP38 #255, which they just got two years ago. The #1751 would look really good and fit in more in either the B&M/MEC maroon and yellow or the MEC dark green and gold. I think part of the reason it hasn't been repainted though is that Conway seems to be gravitating more towards second-gen EMD power, leaving the #573 more for Valley Train power and the #1751 seems to be more of a reserve engine. 

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Coming around the curve and emerging from the woods at Sawmill Road.

The night before, when the Valley Train had returned they had apparently shoved the train the whole way back from Conway, so I was a little worried they would be doing that all day. They did not, but the lighting for the northbound runs is just absolutely atrociuous.

I hiked back in along Hussey Field, and if you go far enough north through the tree line, there's a cool wooden bridge over Moat Brook. This was my favorite shot of the day, with the wooden trestle and the White Mountains in the background. If only it had an MEC- or B&M-painted engine in the lead. 

It's a pretty good walk back into the Moat Brook bridge, so I knew I wouldn't catch them any farther south (they were running multiple frequencies of this trip and this was the second run) so I instead walked out into the field and tried to get as good of a photo as I could despite the lighting. It's not awful, and again, you've got the mountains in the background.

The #1751 waiting at North Conway to depart south with the final trip of the day. According to some of the 470 Railroad Club guys who I spoke to the morning before, that semaphore actually used to be set up to move to appropriate signals as trains entered and exited the yard, but like a lot of the more railfan-oriented touches of the Conway, that system fell by the wayside in recent years.

Also interesting is that I guess the #255 and #216 had followed us up the day before, and then came back ahead of us. There were concerns about the train possibly stalling out on the hill, and the also wanted them to help the train down the hill, since thee #255 and #216 have dynamic brakes, while the #4266, #4268 and #1741 do not. If you saw, the #1741 does have the dynamic brake blisters, and the #4266 and #4268 were also built with dynamic brakes (little harder to tell on an F-unit, but they'll have another fan on the roof right behind the cab). But, around 1967m, the B&M decided that the infamous 'Boxcar Mine' derailment that blocked the Hoosac Tunnel was because of slack running in when dynamic braking was started. Management forbade the use of dynamic brakes, the later GP38s and GP40s were purchased without them, and as older power was rebuilt the equipment was removed. Funny enough, this tradition continued into the Guilford/Pan Am era, but for a different reason. Guilford/Pan Am were so cheap that they never wanted to fix dynamic brakes, and so when they bought the C40-8s off of CSX, they had the dynamic brakes disabled before delivery.

Coming around the curve on a high fill on approach to the depot at Conway with the last train of the day