Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Crossing the Williams River and Route 103 for the umpteenth time on their way out of Ludlow.

We got a bit of a bonus at Chester, when the crew tied down briefly to go into the depot to use the restroom, giving us some time for static shots.

And then they went roaring out of town again.

I went back to the Bartonsville Bridge to get a photo, not of the bridge but from the bridge. As I was getting near the bridge, all of a sudden the sky clouded up solid, it was like someone turned out the lights.

There were some other chasing and they all went into Bellows Falls to get the #405 arriving in the yard, but I skipped that and went over to North Walpole, NH and set up along the old 1899 B&M stone bridge that crosses the state border to the ex-B&M roundhouse that Green Mountain Railway is based out of. First I caught some regular VTR red power coming across the bridge to switch cars.

And then the #405 came rattling over shortly.

In reply to NickD :

Looks to me like you have a bunch of saleable shots for those that got cheated out of them on the trip.Great photography.

For shots in overcast, especially if you want to show them alongside others of the same subject in bright sunlight, try bumping the contrast to make things pop a bit more and end up with a more cohesive set. Here's a quick example of what I'm talking about (shadows and midtones dropped some, highlights increased, and a slight vignette added):

The old B&M roundhouse and turntable at North Walpole. There had been some hope that the #405 might get turned on the turntable and put into the roundhouse, but there was a Trackmobile on the turntable and they instead ran down into a siding, shut off the #405 and capped the stack. 

That 85-foot turntable, while owned by the B&M, saw the Rutland's L-1 4-8-2s fairly regularly as well, since the Rutland's own 70-foot turntable across the river at Bellows Falls was too short to fit the L-1s. The Rutland's turntable at Bellows Falls served a four stall wooden roundhouse which was sandwiched tightly between the B&M/CV mainline and the canal, but the roundhouse was razed after dieselization in 1954. The turntable was saved though and was moved up to Chester in 1965 by Steamtown USA, and a new pit was dug and the turntable installed in it. Chester was as far north as Steamtown's excursions regularly ran, with the line north of that to Rutland being used by Green Moutain Railway for freight service. There's a runaround track at Chester, and the engines ran tender-first back to the museum location at Riverside, but Blount apparently hoped to turn the engine at both ends. It never ended up being hooked to live rails though, and it was reported as buried in 1975 after the pit filled with water and was deemed a hazard to local children. In the 1980s the Green Mountain RR built a parking lot over the site and it may have been dug up and scrapped at this time, or it may be interred in the pit there.

Before finding its home at Riverside, Blount had originally had his collection stored in North Walpole and had hoped to buy the B&M's Cheshire Branch between North Walpole and Keene to operate excursions on. The eventual plan was to relocate the entire collection to Keene, and local and state support was initially strong, but delays on a sale of the Cheshire Branch caused by labor disputes on the B&M and some negative press in the state led to the newly elected state government killing the Keene plans in early 1963. The state of Vermont was looking to find operators for the Rutland, either as a whole or in pieces, and Blount took the Bellows Falls to Rutland segment. 

This caused a stir over at the B&M though. First, the B&M had now just lost the eventual sale of the Cheshire Branch to Blount. Second, the B&M had had designs for the Rutland and had been hoping to end up as the owner of it, and now Blount had just swiped 52 miles of it. And, with opening day of the Bellows Falls operation approaching, the B&M began refusing to move Blount's equipment out of North Walpole and across the river to VT out of spite. Just 24 hours before the gates were to open to visitors, Blount was in Boston pleading with the B&M to move his collection the short distance to Bellows Falls, when he received a phone call from the court appointees for the liquidation of the Rutland Railroad. They were aware of the problem and explained that technically, until midnight when the sale of the Rutland's final assets went through, the Rutland Railroad was still in operation and they still had one locomotive, the #405, on the property, so if Blount could provide them with a list of the engines and cars he absolutely needed, the Rutland could authorize a special move. So, under literal cover of darkness, like something out of a movie, the Rutland Railroad dispatched the Rutland #405 over to North Walpole, collected Nelson Blount's equipment and brought it back to Bellows Falls, making the final run of the Rutland Railroad. With equipment in place to operate, he then later negotiated with Boston & Maine and had everything gradually moved onto the property over the following year.

Kevin Burkholder told us that they matched the color and font of the Rutland lettering when they put the #405 back in Rutland lettering, but as soon as they applied it, the most glaring issue was that it was way too shiny. So he and GMRC employee Scott Whitney ran out in the yard, gathered up "genuine B&M roundhouse dirt" and applied it with a brush and rubbed it into the lettering to knock off the worst of the shine.

TurnerX19 said:

In reply to NickD :

Looks to me like you have a bunch of saleable shots for those that got cheated out of them on the trip.Great photography.

Quite a few of the real diehards were out Monday as well, taking photos. 

I would like to add that Vermont Rail System was honestly a great host, and very accomodating. The staff were friendly, the AGM was a particularly great guy and helped out with trying to make the Sunday trip to Burlington happen. Kevin Gilliam, who was there on behalf of Trains Magazine, was also a very friendly and helpful guy. His situation was also kind of rough, because he had worked for the magazine in their DVD department, then got laid off when Kalmbach Publishing was bought by Firecrown Media. Trains Magazine called him up and asked him to go up there, and he was basically there as a contractor for the magazine from what I understand, and he did as much as he could to try and make things go well. Despite the various foibles, it was still neat to ride basically the entirety of the remaining contiguous Rutland system, and behind a Rutland RS-1, no less. I've never seen an RS-1 in person, even a static piece, and the #405 has so much history and is so significant to Vermont rail history.