Chasing the Mt. Tom Coal Train on a Winter Day

On the morning after a modest snowfall, I had info that the Providence & Worcester Railroad was going to be delivering a loaded coal train to the Guilford Rail System at Gardner, MA. This is imported coal that the now closed Mt. Tom (in Holyoke, MA) generating station was using for several years. The train was loaded at the Port of Providence, RI, and normally ran to Worcester, MA during darkness. Another crew took it from Worcester to Gardner the next morning. The Guilford Rail System gets the train at it's interchange with the P&W at Gardner, MA. Sometimes hauling the train as a unit train and other times adding it to a westbound already in the vicinity. In this case I believe the westbound was symbolled POED (Portland, ME - East Deerfield, MA). On this day Guilford was utilizing a set of BNSF power that arrived on its system almost two weeks earlier and a leased GP38.