Railroaders' Nostalgia > My Dumb Luck: the AFT years 34

34 Milford, CT Aug. 3-5/ Providence, RI Aug. 6-9

I don't remember why, but the move from NYC to Milford was entirely a day run. I'd guess it had something to do with fitting us into an open window, traffic wise – the old New Haven line north of NYC is every bit as busy as is the corridor south of New York. It wasn't a long run, but daylight running was always a welcome treat.
LIRR diesels took us up and over the Hell Gate Bridge. On the other side we were handed off to a couple (or three?) Conrail B-23's for the trip up to Milford.

Meanwhile, the T-1 had been holing up in Selkirk NY while we had been out on Long Island. So on the same day they left Selkirk to meet us at Milford. Their route was kind of round-about because they had to avoid the 3rd rail lines to Harmen and White Plains NY. They left the NYC Hudson line near Poughkeepsie, passed through Danbury, and finally met the old NH line at Devon just west of Milford.

In Milford, we were dihsplayed on a track wedged in alongside the busy New Haven main. Looking at Google Earth today it seems impossible a track even fit there! It was a great place to watch the constant parade of electric trains at speed. This was still in the days when electric power ended at New Haven, about 10 miles north of us. After handing off to GG-1s or E-60s, diesel power would then move light the somewhere south of us (Bridgeport?) to be turned. An extra bit of interest was the passing of the UA Turbos on the Flying Yankee schedule. These were in their very last weeks of their service – Amfleet would replace them in September. I spent a fair amount of time on the roof in Milford!

Photo 1. Hell Gate.
Photo 2. GG-1, the same one Ruben and I rode behind on the 4th of July.
Photo 3. UA Turbo holding down the Flying Yankee.
Photo 4. Another Turbo.
Photo 5. E-60.

From Milford, we made the short(ish) trip up to Providence. This would be our furthest move north in 1976, the 1975 tour had already covered the states beyond Rhode Island.

Photo 6. Arrival in Providence.

I used Providence as jumping off point for a day trip to Boston, and had planned a second outing to Nantucket Island. But there was a wee weather problem ... an approaching hurricane! At first, I didn't take this news seriously. I'm from the land of earthquakes and wildfires. I mean, really ... wind? Oh pshaw!
I showed up bright and early at the ferry dock ready for a pleasant island adventure. I innocently asked, “What's the deal with all the plywood?” I do believe they took me for some kind of idiot.

Back at the AFT, they WERE starting to take things seriously. It was decided to close the train early and move to higher ground. It wasn't particularly windy, but it was certainly wet, and we tore down the train in a warm rain. Taking the train apart and loading the flats in the middle of the day really seemed strange- this was always a 10pm to midnight activity!
High ground wasn't far, just a bit north of the display site. Amtrak maintained the UA Turbos in Providence. As I understand it, the city had a perimeter sea wall and gates for these situations and Amtrak's Fields Point Shop was on the “wet” side of this protection. So as the wind picked up and evening fell, the one trainset at the shop was moved up alongside us on our little hill. This took a bit of back and forth movement, and I scored a (very) short Turbo cab ride.

Photo 7. Turbo on one of the schedules headed out of town as the rain and wind moved in.
Photo 8. Waiting to move the train... that's Dale (Security) and Dave (Operations) with I-don't-know-who between them. Looks to be someone from the T-1 crew? Oh, and the lettering on the car has been sanded down in preperation for painting, that's why it looks so bad.
Photo 9. Turbo joins us.

So we rode out Hurricane Belle and shared our emergency rations (beer) with the Amtrak Turbo guys. It was really pretty uneventful, and eventually I simply went to bed.
Pshaw indeed!

SR Bush
Dutch Flat

Post Script: Ross told me there was a fuel mix-up in Providence. There was supposed to be a gondola waiting for us when we arrived. Well, it seems there is also a Providence UT, KY, and NC. And one of those three has an unclaimed carload of coal. One wonders if it's still there 38 years later? We got a local power plant to share a few tonnes with us and, not to sound ungrateful, but the stuff was crushed pretty fine- and a fair bit of it simply went up and out the stack!
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/14 06:02 by BoilingMan.

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My parents were on their honeymoon somewhere around NY shoreline when Belle came ashore. They arrived at hotel and were the only guests in the place. The manager found somewhere to park their truck on higher ground. Water was up to the windows in the lobby and my father about killed himself in rip tide next day because he thought it would be fun to body surf in the high waves.

Posted from iPhone

Hmmm, perhaps your Dad and I are kindred souls?
Did your Grandmother say "More luck than sense" a lot?

I think Belle caught the far end of Long Island and spared the CT, RI, and MA coast much damage. I heard later that there was some concern about even setting up the AFT in Providence, but RI was needed to fulfill the mission of displaying in all 48 states...so we went for it!
SR