A Trains encounter of the 1027 variety

I was in Boston late last week to give an after dinner talk for the Mass Bay Railroad Enthusiasts, and my friend and club Secretary Bill Crawford picked me up at the airport and took me to Chelsea, Mass., for train watching. Our aim was to view MBTA commuter trains prior to the dinner and speech in the former Boston & Maine depot, now a restaurant, in Malden, Mass. While we were watching the outbound parade of afternoon trains last Thursday, we witnessed F40PH-2C No. 1027 hustling commuters out of the city. It was good to see an F40 in passenger service. Once ubiquitous on Amtrak and commuter railroads nationwide, they are scarce now and their days at MBTA are numbered as new power is arriving. More than anything, though, it was uplifting to see a unit that takes me back to our publication’s fascination with its original street address, 1027 N. 7^th Street in Milwaukee.

You’ve heard me say how much that road number means to us long time Trains readers and staffers as recently as two years ago when Norfolk Southern bought an SD70ACe with this number. There’s been a long association with 1027 and Trains magazine. So to see the locomotive in service was like being welcomed by a long lost friend.

At age 23 MBTA’s No. 1027 is looking a bit weary from years of hard use in and around the Boston area, but the unit and several sisters were still getting customers to work or back home just as they were designed to do. The next morning after my talk, the club’s president, David Brown, took me to the Anderson Regional Transportation Center in Woburn, Mass., to catch a bus for Logan airport. We arrived early enough to watch a few commuter trains at work once more, and No. 1027 departed before 6:45 a.m. shoving its consist into B-town. How nice, I thought, for this unit to come and see me off. I know the locomotive won’t last forever, but at least we crossed paths twice in one trip, and I got a good smile out of another unit that carries Trains’ special number.