New York Central bay window caboose 21630 brings up the rear of Flexi-Van hotshot SV-4 at Worcester, MA on 4/30/67. NYC 21630 was from Lot 827, built by St. Louis Car Co. in 1952 and rebuilt and renumbered from series NYC 20298-20497 during 1963-65. Tangent has just completed a second run of this car in HO scale, with a revised shade of Century Green.
SV-4 was the Selkirk-Boston section and carried trailers in addition to Flexi-Van containers. While NYC was widely known for its innovative container system, it began TOFC service in 1962 and joined Trailer Train in 1964 with TOFC spreading across the system. Clearance issues close to the city prevented piggyback service into Boston until 1966. Scanned from the original Tom Murray Kodachrome slide, my collection.
New York Central Alco RS3 #5527 passes through the former Interlocking #26 at the east end of the Worcester Yard on November 5, 1967 (unknown photographer, author’s collection, scan of Agfachrome transparency. Worcester Stamped Metal never had a sidetrack – the Worcester Consolidated Street Railway used to run between the B&A and the building. The real hidden story here revolves around NYC simplifying infrastructure to cut costs.
In the mid-1950s, facing rising costs and declining traffic, NYC announced a plan to single-track much of the system and install Centralized Traffic Control (CTC), this included the Boston & Albany. The railroad postponed that project while traffic projections were reassessed as the traffic decline showed signs of stopping, possibly due to the growth in automotive and intermodal traffic. In the meantime, NYC took other methods to reduce their plant. Here at milepost 43.2, Tower 26 has been demolished and the interlocking reduced from five crossovers to just one plus a spring switch at the entrance to the yard, protected by a single aspect dwarf signal. The spring switch let eastbound freights exit the yard without having to stop and reset the switch once clear. It was one of only two places on the mainline that had them at this time, the other being both ends of the single-track crossing of the NY State Thruway in East Chatham, NY. Westbounds meeting a stop signal at the home signal (seen just past the end of the train) had instructions to call Tower 28 for instructions immediately. Eventually, NYC and Penn Central would reduce the main to a series of CTC islands like this, controlled remotely from just a few towers.
In the mid-1980s Conrail finally single-tracked the B&A. Since then, double track has been going back in and may stretch continuously for 150 miles from Boston to Pittsfield in a few years if the plan to increase passenger service beyond Worcester comes to pass.
Penn Central train 405 westbound at Jamesville, MA 7/27/69. Tom Murray photo, author’s collection.
One thing I do a couple times a week is to search E-Bay for 1960s Boston & Albany images. Often times I’ll just grab a screen shot of the picture, but if it something I think I may want for a future publication or this blog I’ll throw a bid in. Persistence pays off and a few times a year I’ll find something really useful. This is one of those finds and is a good example of how a below-average photo can be priceless to prototype research.
This is a picture of train #405, the westbound Boston to Albany run. This was a train that was heavily photographed due to its predictable daytime schedule. The photo is a little fuzzy and weather dreary; a magazine editor would throw it in the trash. The vantage point though is the James Street bridge – a place I’ve never found another photo taken from and it gives us a look at a whole bunch of details that are front and center on my layout. It is also the first period color photo I’ve found of the area.
Starting with color, we can confirm what the three-deckers to the upper left looked like. Some are still in the same shingles today. Further down is the Graham Street bridge. Black was the standard color of the overhead truss bridges on the B&A, but this one appears to be dull silver. Silver was certainly used on other bridges on the B&A and I have seen other trusses in this color during this period. This saves a mistake and will help set the layout in the 1960s. We also get a glimpse of G.F. Wright’s factory complex in the distance, while the brick colors were obvious, the photo confirms the gray color of the window panels. The different shades of gray on the ballast of the different tracks are even informative.
A close up reveals more details.
For details, we get a great look at the hardware that controls the switches including a pipe-connected hand throw crossover – standard engineering on the NYC for double track lines with Automatic Block Signals. Up on the hillside just before the bridge, it looks like the garage is filling in the land behind their building, implying that it was graded differently in 1965. Other details like the flanger sign, signals, and speed board are useful as well.
The lessons here are to really dig into you photo material and don’t stop looking for new material – you never know when you may come across an imperfect image that only you will appreciate.
CENTRAL ARTERY 