NR-2 and an Acela on 9/21/07

Yeah, a bit late on this one. Just coming off of a really busy weekend with a large family party we hosted at home. So here’s last Friday’s post, a few days behind schedule.

The clear blue sky streak continues here in southeastern Connecticut. Taking advantage of that, I headed for Mill Cove in Ledyard to catch Providence & Worcester train NR-2 while on my usual daily walk. I also decided to run a roll of slide film through my Graflex Pacemaker 23 Speed Graphic. So when I got to the cove, I began setting up – loading the rollfilm back on the Speed Graphic, setting up the tripod and using my 20D to meter the scene. While I was doing all of this, NR-2 reported to the Worcester dispatcher that they were south of MP12 and about 15 minutes from the sub base. Perfect – I’d have enough time to set things up at the south end of Mill Cove before NR-2 showed up.

About 10 minutes later, the scanner again came alive as NR-2 reported to the Worcester dispatcher that they were south of MP5. I rechecked all of my settings on the Speed Graphic, and prepared to take both digital and film shots. Moments later, NR-2 began to sound for the crossing at Red Top, just to the north of the cove. Next they rolled onto the causeway between the cove and the Thames River. I decided on the wide angle lens today, as opposed to my usual telephoto from this spot. I waited and took the Speed Graphic shot first, then switched to the 20D and grabbed these shots of the train passing the southern part of the cove.

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Not bad – I’ll get the slides back tomorrow, so stay tuned for the scans. So I packed things up and headed back south. As I caught up to NR-2 at the south end of Fairview yard, the Amtrak Shore Line dispatcher was going to hold them there for a pair of Acelas, so it looked like I won’t catch NR-2 crossing the river. Oh, well. I stopped anyways to get a shot of the ongoing bridge work.

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Then I heard horns across the river – an eastbound Acela was heading through New London. I figured I could stay a couple more minutes to bag this train. A minute later, they hit the bridge, and I got a couple shots of the trainset traversing the Thames River drawbridge.

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Happy with what I got, I packed up and began my normal southward trek. But as I was riding south, I heard the westbound Acela hit the Midway detector just to the east of Groton. That meant they were right here, and NR-2 would be following them west. So I stopped down by Garbo Lobster and got a really long shot of NR-2 crossing the bridge with a sailboat in the foreground waiting for a bridge opening.

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That was just the icing on the cake. Camera hit the bag, and I hit the office for the remainder of the day.

Thanks for looking!
Tom