East Deerfield

Back when I was in college, which I have to say was a long time ago now, I used to sneak away from time to time and go up to the Boston & Maine's East Deerfield yard to stand on ``Railfan Bridge'' and see whatever I could. I remember a few cold afternoons up there in the weeks before my oldest daughter was born watching Delaware & Hudson units leading west bounds out of the yard in the last few glimmers of daylight. (I was told the birth wasn't going to be for awhile and hanging around the hospital was just going to put me in the way. "Go do something," the doctor advised.)  I also remember standing amid a crowd of other fans watching eastbound freights pick up a GP-40-2 as a pusher. The other guys up on the bridge explained that the pusher would stay on as far as Gardner and then come back.

                I thought of those days as modern times, although they are as far removed from the present day as steam engines were to the time I made those memories.  I shudder to think how fast the time has come and gone. I shudder to think how many changes have come to the old yard and the old railroad. Yet, last weekend, as my wife, the Little Helper and Nibbles the Dog took a walk along the bike trail that now terminates at East Deerfield I got a glimpse back to the in the form of a contrivance of the modern day -- a switcher and slug. 

                When I was in college, it was common see a slug, if memory serves B&M 100, slung between two GP-40-2s working the East Deerfield yard. This past weekend I saw the GATX switcher handing around the west end of the yard with its calf. The calf, I have to say, looks a lot like the old slug. It is even close to the same shade of blue. Close, but not quite. As the switcher and the slug moved out of the way, though, I was returned to the present day when a brace of Norfolk Southern GE units came in pulling an intermodal,