Eastern Railroad Discussion > Recent EMD Action On The B&A

Late last year, CSX changed the call time of Q436 (Selkirk-Framingham), such that it now typically makes a morning appearance on the east end of the former Boston & Albany.  Since it's been running in morning light, it tends to draw a crowd on weekends, or anytime there's interesting power.  There has been a bit of a trend with SD40-2 leaders sprinkled in among the GEs.

Such was the case with Sunday morning's all-EMD lashup...which I unfortunately missed, since it got held in Springfield for opposing traffic and didn't make it to Worcester until after I left for work.  After I clocked out, I played a hunch that the power would double back on that night's Q437 out of Framingham, which it did.

1 - Q437-23 passing the former depot in Ashland, after waiting for the last MBTA runs in each direction to clear.  The current MBTA station is about a mile west of this downtown location.

2 - The same power set was again on Q436 on Wednesday morning, so I went out while my kids were at school.  Here they are passing the Grafton & Upton interchange track, about to hit the North Grafton defect detector.

3 - Heading west again on Q437-26, passing Cherry Street and CP-24.  The defect detector just ahead still announces CONRAIL too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/20 19:33 by pennsy3750.

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So CSX 8881 was built as PRR 6073 in March 1966 meaning it will shortly celebrate its 54th birthday!
With all the newer power CSX has retired, it’s truly remarkable to see this senior citizen lead a mainline symbol freight in this day and age! Excellent captures!

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Have cab signal requirements changed on the B&A with the implementation of PTC? It used to be that power for B&A trains required back to back modern GEs with Ultracab II systems (or 6200 series GP40-2s with cab signal / ACSES-II installed). Occasionally SD40-2s from the east-of-hudson pool (roughly in the 8830-8850 series, CS equipped w/ LSL) would make their way onto the B&A as helpers or an add-on, but I dont recall any other SD40s retaining cab signals.

The 8400 and some other old sd40-2's has been fitted with ACSES and Cab signals along with some ac44cw's in the 400 series because metro-north is using acses on the Hudson line and sd60m's supposedly didn't have the space for acses equipment and have been side lined along with all the other sd60's. I am unsure of how many additional locos have been fitted with ACSES but will add a little variety to the east end.

8400 was originally Western Maryland 7449.....