Trains Along the Millers

On a day where the weather put a damper on most outdoor plans my work brought me back out to the Millers River area, and I decided to take a drive to South Royalston for a closer look at the Birch Hill Dam flood control project.  The photo at left was taken from the Route 68 bridge and shows the Millers River downstream of the dam and heading towards Athol.  The tranquility of the small village was soon disturbed by this approaching eastbound freight train...

This train had been running alongside and crisscrossing the Millers River for a little over 21 miles since Millers Falls and was about to take center stage at S. Royalston...

It was one of the longer freight trains I've seen in awhile.
Finally the tail-end passed and the train headed towards a point about 2 miles distant where it would say "so long" to the Millers and "hello" to the Otter River...

When things at S. Royalston had returned to normal I drove down the road alongside the tracks to Birch Hill Dam where, from the top of the embankment, the Millers River is seen in the distance...

Prior to the building of Birch Hill Dam in 1941 the river ran through this meadow just to the left of center in the above photo and the railroad line ran along the trail on the right side.  The flood control project required moving both the river and the railroad to new locations.  The river was moved to a new and narrower channel where it could be valved-off (so to speak) when necessary...

Once the valves are closed the Millers and Otter rivers would back up creating a large lake of stored water.  This facility works in conjunction with a similar structure on the Tully River to protect the downriver communities of Athol and Orange from flooding such as they experienced in 1936 and 1938.
The valves are housed in this gate house sitting atop the channel...

On this day pigeons living around the gate-house were being tormented by a hungry Coopers Hawk.

Walking back across the dam/embankment I saw the old pre-1941 riverbed peeking out from under the rip-rap (at left in photo)...

As I left the area and was driving south on Rt. 68 this scene along Beaver Brook caught my eye...

Can it really be time for the swamp maples to change color?