Well it depends, like if you were seeing some GP9's or stuff like that, then heck yea, that's pulling ancient stuff out. But I couldn't believe my eyes, I haven't seen SD60's in action on a long haul train in 12 years.. 'bout 11 years was the last time I saw C40-8's out in full force, but wow! It felt like my childhood again with modern stuff thrown in. There were a few trains where 5-6 SD70M's were on point for intermodal trains and even manifest trains. Not only that, trains were running probably at some of the largest sizes that I've seen in quite sometime. I wish it would happen again, because I would gladly take the old power plus, pooling from every RR in the US including CN, CP, KCS, CSX and yes even NS, though I only saw 1 NS visitor overall.
That must have been awesome to see and really exciting. Back when I was a kid, there would be big potato harvests up on the BAR. This was prior to the Penn Central fiasco. I remember seeing long trains of BAR boxcars pulled by New Haven Alcos. There would be RS3s, sometimes in the middle, as well. I also remember seeing Baldwins and sometimes some TrainMasters. There were even NYC lead trains as well. Then PC screwed the harvest and the railroads lost the business as the farmers went to trucks for what was left of their ruined business because of the screw up.
We see GP9s all the time up here and SD60s and SD70s are modern compared to their old Guilford GP40-2s and SD40s they use most of the time, except for run through power from NS and CSX. Sometimes we see some real modern equipment from BNSF and
UP, but they are on the coal trains on their way to Bow NH, and are rarely seen because they run at night. In the old days, it was New Haven, and later Penn Central that pulled these trains in conjunction with the Boston and Maine. Today, it's done by the Providence and Worcester then via Guilford up to Bow.
Prior to Conrail, the NYC and later Penn Central ran freights to Selkirk from Lawrence, MA. This was manifest freight LASE and it's sister SELA. There were others too from Rigby that stopped in Lawrence as well. When I passed by the Lawrence yard in these days, there were old Alco C-420s and GEs on the front. Later on everything was painted Conrail Quality Blue and the GEs and Alco units disappeared.
After the Guilford merger of the B&M, D&H, and MEC, we saw all kinds of equipment including D&H Alcos, C420s, and RS3s in their beautiful blue, silver, and gold paint scheme. Some had come from the Lehigh Valley and had the LV flag on them. The MEC pooled in their U-boats and we'd see a handful of these still in the MEC green and gold, all mixed in with the B&M blue dipped GP40s and D&H units. All this is gone now, sadly. Guilford painted it all grey and orange, the Alcos were scrapped along with the GEs, and all that's left are the PAR blue SD40s and GP40s and a handful of GP9s.
John
