Been a while since I’ve actually contributed to one of these! Sadly my best photos from today are still on my camera, and I need to track down where the heck I put my SD card reader. Today I went out on an aventure with a friend- we started by making a short visit to the trolley museum where we both volunteer, since another volunteer was bringing his speeder up for the day and we wanted to chat with him about his machine and the proper care and operation of the machine. Here’s a picture of it:
It’s a Fairmount, I believe it was an M or MT-14. Apparently it was outfitted with an alternator, which it still retains, but these days it’s only run off of a battery. It’s powered by a two stroke ROC type engine, which transmits torque to the wheels via a flat belt. It has a fairly comfortable cushion on top of the wooden seat, a very nice creature comfort!
After that was the main event- an ambitious hike along an abandoned stretch of the New York, New Haven & Hartford’s Shelburne Falls branch line. Originally it ran between the town of South Deerfield and a location maybe half a mile upriver of a location known as Bardwell Ferry, at which point it met the Boston & Maine railroad and used trackage rights to reach the villaige of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Built in the early 1880s by the New Haven & Northampton Railroad, the line was absorbed by the New York, New Haven & Hartford by 1890 and it was officially abandoned in the mid 1920s, though they may have stopped using it sooner.
Sections of the right of way became a hiking trail, and for the most part are fairly passable. The portion we hiked was “closed off” at some point due to a few major washouts, but we bravely set forth to see if we could make it past them, not anticipating we’d have much luck. Ultimately, we managed to f
