Vermont Railway #301 & 311, Edited Version, North Bennington, Vermont, USA, 2015

This was at North Bennington on the second to last day of the 2015 NRHS National Convention, the first such convention when I didn't have a working conventional camera. This was not deliberate, as I had brough the Pentax MZ-10 out of retirement, only to see it die on the 19th of June, which was the third to last day of the Convention. I still had the cameraphone, which I shot this with, but I mostly compensated by shooting video, something I had never done at an NRHS Convention before.

This was at the North Bennington end of an excursion operated by Vermont Railway diesels, both of them GP40's, which are now so old as to be almost heritage units. The lead unit is #301, which looks roughly like any other GP40, but the trailing unit is a GP40-2LW, which has a safety cab and other modifications for service on the Canadian National.

www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=465198

Another spotting feature that it has is a lowered center radiator fan, making it look a bit like a GP35, which had me confused at first. In general, EMD diesels sold in Canada had a number of special features, both from the factory and through later rebuilds, including some of the earlier safety cabs. Today, these features are less noticeable, as during the 1990's most of the Canadian features were adopted by American railroads. In addition, many Canadian variants have ended up in service in the U.S., as here.

The passenger stock was the same mix as that used for the Omya excursion on the previous day, being a mix of heavyweight and streamline stock, but all of it being owned (operated?) by the Green Mountain Railroad.

As one final aside, this excursion was technically to Hoosic Junction, but North Bennington was the last station on the route, and it was here that this photo runby was done. My video camera battery also died at about this point.