Hank the Tank made his third annual visit to the Railroad Museum of New England in Thomaston, CT with trains running over two weekends ending today at 4 PM. I had a chance to go up yesterday and introduce a friend to Hank. He took tons of pictures and lots of hi-def video. I’ll share those once he puts them up. In the mean time here are my highlights from chasing two runs and riding one. As we arrived they were prepping Hank for the day’s activities, which included a partial blow-down…
Shortly thereafter, Naugatuck Railroad 2203 brought up the coaches from the museum’s storage yard…
While waiting for the train to leave, I got a close look at our own Al Pomeroy’s freshly restored wooden Central Vermont caboose. Unfortunately Al couldn’t be at the event, but he did get to ride his caboose behind Hank on rare mileage to Torrington, CT on a test run when Hank first arrived.
We set up our second shots to catch the return trip crossing the Naugatuck River…
We rode the noon train. Since Hank is a tank, there is a good view into the cab from the vestibule of the first car. The nice folks from the RMNE take small groups into the vestibule to watch the men work the engine. I got this great shot of the engineer as we were backing…
For the 2PM train we set up at a grade crossing for our final shots of the day…
We had a great time and I can’t wait to see my friend’s video. I hope these photos aren’t too large. The 800 pixel wide versions just looked too small to catch the detail. If they are, I’ll replace them with smaller ones.
