DL&W at XO Tower?

New England regional Pan Am Railways, which operates the old Boston & Maine, Maine Central, Portland Terminal and Springfield Terminal trackages, entered into an agreement with Norfolk Southern in March 2009, with each railroad owning 50% of “Pan Am Southern” comprising trackage between Mechanicville, NY and Ayer, Mass. With the unveiling of the NS Heritage Fleet in 2012, this partnership between NS & Pan Am has resulted in a surprising number of colorful Heritage engines visiting on trains running to and from Ayer and also on NS originating coal trains to the power plant in Bow, NH! You can imagine the attention these Heritage units generate as they are tracked coming and going! Throughout their visits, it has been cast in stone, so to speak, that whatever leads/trails eastward will also lead/trail going back west due to operations at the terminal in Ayer where a wye is used to access the yard. On Monday this week, both the Nickel Plate and Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Heritage engines were on the property! The Nickel Plate leaving westbound in the lead overnight and the DL&W arriving at Ayer in trailing position on their respective trains. Feeling I could wait on the Nickel Plate unit I let him go as it is a two and a half hr. drive each way to a favorite location in Mechanicville...........XO Tower.

I wake up the next afternoon, (my morning.....) and check emails as is standard procedure. Here comes many emails from the GuilfordRailSightings group which covers Pan Am, the subject of them all was the power off of 206 at Ayer which included the DL&W unit! The notes take on many forms, some cryptic and puzzling in their meaning but I get the idea, the power which arrived overnight off of 206, which was sitting outside the yard all day, has departed westward.....................LIGHT ENGINE! (Light engine meaning with no cars in tow) Wide awake suddenly I’m re-reading some of the emails, making sure I didn’t miss something. This never happens, the engines running light back west? This means......Then I receive an email from night photographer William Gill which confirms it, the DL&W Heritage unit is leading westbound out of Ayer! Are you kidding me!? The plan is for the light engines to run to East Deerfield Yard where they will pick up some cars and continue on to Mechanicville. William guesses they should be going past XO Tower around 00:30. At 19:45 I’m downtown with the Civic gassed up, a Subway “Egg & Cheese” Sub on the seat next to me, leaving southbound!

Driving down in rain and fog, it all disappears upon arriving in Mechanicville around 22:30. A full moon is out, making it bright enough to walk around without really needing my headlamp at times. The set up goes smoothly having set up the lighting here several times and as soon as I am ready to do a test shot or two, here comes empty crude unit train CP 609 on the right hand main heading for Saratoga and a road crew to take it to Montreals St. Luc Yard! The crew on 609 “somehow” seems to know me lol! I get a couple toots and the engineer hollers something as he passes me, I can’t make it out amid the din of the passing pair of GEs’'. Great to see you guys! Surprisingly, the rushed photo comes out okay! Let’s hope this is a good omen I think to myself. lol! 23:30 comes and goes, then midnight...........I am waiting and listening...............for a westbound. The Mechanicville Police driving by notice one of my test flashes and shine a spotlight up towards me atop the stepladder from below XO Tower, then check the two main lines to make sure they have no obstacles and to the officers credit, depart without interviewing me, I’m grateful. I was gonna wave but then thought better of it and just stood atop the stepladder behind the tripod etc. A Police Interview would be an open invitation for the DL&W unit to suddenly appear! lol! The signal behind me protecting the shared main line as well as the yard throat has been red, red over yellow now for fifteen minutes promoting my conclusion the signal “must be” for 205 with the DL&W unit. Several minutes after midnight the gorgeous sound reaches my ears, that of an air horn across the Hudson River to my east! With a short and light train of empty auto racks, 205 takes less than ten minutes I would guess before activating the grade crossing signals below me! I fire off the lighting and at the angle the cab is at, the crew must at least see XO Tower briefly lit up in front of them before slowly negotiating the curve towards me. Seconds tick past then the pilot reaches my mark, I fire off the lighting, nothing happens! I don’t see the flash or the reflected light off the engine!! (Likely due to my using a 100mm telephoto, and viewing the proceedings from further away than the norm) It’s an unnerving second before the image appears on the camera lcd monitor! SUCCESS! I’m wearing a broad smile with 1074s cab passing alongside me as I wave to the crew. The engineer opens the window but we say nothing to each other in passing. I am speechless! What a beautiful paint scheme! And to think this night photo was made possible by a light engine move! As 205 came into town, a second westbound could be heard behind them, and an eastbound was arriving in Mechanicville also but...........there is nothing to hang around for at this point, and I have the lights all retrieved as the two trains pass through the location. Anything else moving on rails is anti-climactic after this! Shot on January 15, 2014 at 00:24 with the 5D and Zeiss ZF 100/2 lens set at f2. Special thanks to Kevin Burkholder and William Gill! Please enjoy! Comments are welcomed.

All the Best In 2014;

Gary Knapp