Photo of the Week: 1/6/2012

Well, this is the first Photo of the Week post for the new year!  I started this column in December 2010 with a photo of a Long Island Railroad train crossing Main Street in Port Jefferson, NY.  Since then, we've visited the Long Island Railroad, a tourist line here in New Hampshire, San Francisco, and James even shared a photo from a Costa Rica railroad once.  Today's photo takes us to Ayer, MA, a place we haven't visited in a while.  I was down there on a summer evening one time, to see the daily intermodal train pull in.  Here is one of the photos I shot:



The train is Pan Am symbol MOAY (Mohawk Yard in Albany, NY to Ayer, MA).  It runs daily, arriving in Ayer in the evening and leaving in the early afternoon the next day.  The train usually runs with Norfolk Southern power, and carries containers, trailers, and autoracks.  The train pulled through the station, which is inside of a wye, and backed down the east leg of the wye, behind where I am standing.  The train was too long for the yard, and had to be broken into two cuts of cars to fit in the yard.  Even then, they were still 3 autoracks too long, so they parked those on an empty siding west of the station.