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It was a crisp, February afternoon. A recent dusting of snow had given the world a new, clean look without causing significant problems for road travel, so my father and I set out to see if there were any trains about for photography. I was 14 at the time and had just inherited my father’s Yashica 35mm camera in October, and he was still getting used to the settings on his new Pentax SLR, so we were both eager to see something.

A quick drive Downtown to Butler Street yielded nothing, so we continued down US 127 to South Hamilton Crossing, where we saw a cut of Chessie GP’s – a GP-9 and two GP-38’s – making set-offs at the small yard there. We thought the GP-9 was certainly worth shooting, as there was no telling how much longer they would last on the Chessie System before being retired. As for the GP-38’s? Well, at least it wasn’t another pair of GP-40-2’s – we had seen enough of them! [What I would pay to see a pair of Chessie System GP-40-2’s leading a train out of town today!]



We got a few shots as the EMD’s made their final move and then shot them as they began to pull north.

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We chased the train towards Butler Street, arriving at the High Street overpass just ahead of the train. I knew I was on the wrong side of the sun, but thought a GP-9 was worth a “Hail Mary” shot anyway. [Today I would not hesitate at all to take a desperation shot. Back then, however, you only had so many shots on a roll of film, so you made them count.] I fired off a shot of the GP-9 and another as the engines passed by. We were treated to a classic B&O bay window caboose at the end, which was still common then, but we knew the days of cabooses would be over soon. I, for one, was taking all the caboose shots I could get.

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Alas, it was time to head for home. It was just another afternoon on the Chessie System!



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