Backyard Plaything?! - While exploring the remains of the old Boston and Maine Hillsboro Branch one late summer day I was quite surprised to find this sitting seemingly in someone's backyard. Near milepost 27 (from Nashua) scuttled away on a siding this 1953 EMD product rests on former home rails. In a past life she was the Boston & Maine #1228 and then was renumbered by Guilford to #1423 before being retired. She is owned by the Milford-Bennington railroad which until 2010 regularly ran rock trains between South Lyndeborough, NH and Milford for Granite State Concrete. A dispute with Pan Am in 2010 prohibited the MBRX from running since the southern three miles between Wilton (end of their state owned line) and Milford is over Pan Am trackage rights. The MBRX's sole running unit is a former CN SW900, and it doesn't appear 1423 has turned a wheel in some time. No trains have regularly plied the rails in Greenfield since 2005 when the Wilton-Scenic Railroad closed shop after a brief three year revival of the line for tourist service. The last regular freight movements were in the early 1980s when Guilford abandoned service to the last remaining customer at the far end of the line, Monadnock Paper in Bennington, NH. The rails, however, are safely in the ownership of the state of New Hampshire ready should the opportunity to resume rail service ever arise. The building beyond that looks like a home is actually a daycare center in the heavily modified former B&M freight house. I must say though, if I was a kid at that place I wouldn't care much for the playground outside when something so much more fascinating was at hand to climb on, don't you agree?
