I am coming into the final stretch at school, so I decided to take some time off this weekend and take a little road trip. I ended up in Maine with the goal of getting a photo of the Downeaster coming through Saco. I missed the southbound, which would have been the one to get given the way afternoon light falls there. So I pushed up Route 1 to South Portland, which is where Pan-Am's Rigby Yard is.
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| The Piper of the Cemetery. |
From the bridge over the north end of the yard I could see nothing much was happening. I took trip around the surrounding area to see if there were better locations to shoot from. I had never really taken the time to do this before. As I was driving up Broadway, I thought I heard bagpipes coming from Calvary Cemetery. I was right.
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| Switching Rigby. |
There was a fellow there practicing his bagpipes and he was good. He went from one tune to the next and sat listening to him a little while, as I debated the merits and drawbacks of stopping at the Dairy Queen down the street. While I was doing this I heard the rumbling of an EMD product coming from just beyond the trees.
Pan-Am's main goes right through the middle of the cemetery. I couldn't get a perfect shot without walking out on the tracks, so I took what I could with the telephoto and staying at the treeline. The bridge in the foreground is the one that carries the line over Broadway and the one in the background is Route 1.
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| Waiting for its next run. |
I did get the shot of the Downeaster. Of course it was just a trainset parked by the joint train-bus station off the highway in Portland. I was on the test trip for this service in the mid-1990s. I can't remember exactly when it was -- 1995 I think. They used a Talgo trainset that was designed for high-speed service. At slow speeds it rocked like a rowboat in the ocean. The train was full of dignitaries (Maine Senator George Mitchell among them) and they were both selling and promoting the service. I remember this one passenger train advocate, who was along for the ride, telling a friend: "Passenger service in this country would be so much better if we could get rid of the freight trains."
After the trip to Maine, we were left to our own devices to get back to Boston. The guy who invited me on the trip had a car waiting and gave me a ride back. It would have been nice if they had had a return trip, though. I took a lot of photos but I lost one roll of film and the other got exposed to the light before I could develop it -- I dropped it and stepped on the can. Anyway, the few photos I have now look more dreamlike than anything else.
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