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"When you're all on, give me a highball!"
That's our engineer, looking back from the front vestibule of a live-and-rumbling RDC1, asking a railfan for a go-ahead signal.
Talk of a time machine! This might be the early 1960s, when Mass Bay RRE was the "New England Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts," and we rode New Haven Shoreliners to Fitchburg or New York Central Beeliners to Winchendon. But pinch yourself - it's October 10, 2003, in Thetford Mines, PQ, on our "Tour of the Line" over the reopened Quebec Central Railway.
As the last rider in sight scrambles aboard, we wave a rulebook highball, step up crisply into the rear vestibule and slam down the trap in our best professional style. The RDC's dual diesels rev up - then the air goes on.
Turns out two passengers are still on the ground, waiting for the RDC to come into camera range and not realizing we meant to leave town. Open the trap, let 'em up and start again - if only for another few hundred feet, where the conductor and trainman wait to take their jobs back.
So much for that Kodak moment.
Mass Bay RRE's Quebec Central trip, its first multiple-day excursion in two decades, carried 31 passengers and staff on its Oct. 9-13 journey. Riders came from as far away as California to join this rail-and-bus adventure across northern New England and southeastern Quebec. Sadly, we could not make the complete 'tour' after QC barred passenger trains from the outer 55 miles of its Lac Frontiere branch, pleading bad track, in late September. But we still had a grand time!
