Here's a photo I took on April 13, 2013, ELEVEN YEARS AGO, of a High Iron Travel / Iowa Pacific excursion that ran on the Pan Am Southern route from Woburn, MA to Mechanicville, NY via the historic Hoosac Tunnel. This is a former Boston & Maine line and I boarded the train at the Anderson RTC station in Woburn, which is situated on MBTA's Lowell line. The photo here shows the train pulling into the Anderson RTC station. The MBTA commuter route ends at Lowell, but we continued on a Pan Am freight-only segment to Willows (CPF WL), near Ayer, where we joined up with the MBTA Fitchburg commuter line and took it to where it ends at Wachusett. Then we continued west through East Deerfield and along the scenic Deerfield River to the Hoosac Tunnel and, eventually, Mechanicville, NY, where the trip ended.

This line is used by Norfolk Southern to serve the metro Boston area and in 2013 an alliance between NS and Pan Am Southern was established with considerable capital improvements being made to the line. I'm not sure how that is currently working out now that Pan Am has been taken over CSX. Perhaps this line is now pure Norfolk Southern with CSX getting the rest of Pan Am Railways. NS seems to have a limited interest in this region, operating just this one line.

This was a sharp looking train, with F units and two Budd full length dome cars. A very memorable trip.