Amtrak Disabled in Brush
With Braintree Payloader
By Sandy Vondrasek

On what is possibly Amtrak’s busiest day of the year—the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend—the southbound Vermonter was delayed for two-plus hours after a minor collision with a farm vehicle on a Route 12A farm in Braintree.

Pete Legacy of Randolph, who was driving a payloader toward the tracks to pick up some corn on the other side, was unhurt in the collision. The only damage to the farm’s payloader was a scratch on the bucket almost too small to see.

But, unfortunately for the Vermonter—and passengers aboard and those waiting at depots down the line—the edge of Legacy’s bucket managed to sever an air-brake hose close to the train engine’s front wheels.

The collision occurred about 10 a.m., at the Route 12A dairy farm owned by Harold Greenwood and rented by Mike Ferris of Braintree. There, the rail tracks bisect the field behind the barn, and there has been at least one previous train accident at the farm. That time—before Ferris’ tenure at the farm—several cows wandered onto the tracks and were struck and killed.

Legacy, who has worked at the farm for five years, said yesterday that the approach to the private, unsignaled crossing was icy Sunday morning.

Legacy was close to the tracks when he heard the train. He jammed into reverse, he said, but the wheels just spun, and the payloader "slipped up to the tracks."

There wasn’t much time to think about anything, he said, except "Get the h___ off the tracks."

Was the train sounding its whistle and braking as it approached?

"I don’t know," Legacy confessed.

The actual collision, from where Legacy sat, wasn’t so bad: It was one short "thunk" and a little jiggle of payloader, he said.

The engineers managed to stop the train a little ways down the track, and Legacy and crew members spoke briefly. Shaken, Legacy went back to work, while the Amtrak crew spent the next two hours or so trying to repair the hose.

Unable to fix the line, the crew opted to rely on the smaller engine at the rear of the train to push and brake the train down the line, according to Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole. A repair crew met the train south of White River Junction for the repair, he said.

Farm operator Mike Ferris was out of town Sunday morning, but it just so happened that his wife drove down Route 12A shortly after the accident. Amy Ferris admitted when she saw the extra activity, and the Amtrak stopped just below the farm, she feared the worst. She was relieved to find no one hurt.

The Herald was unable to determine by press time yesterday how many folks were waiting at the Randolph depot, 3.5 miles down the tracks, for their end-of-holiday trip home. However, Amy Ferris said she knows there was at least one: A relative of another farm worker, she said, had a ticket out of Randolph that morning.

Amtrak spokesman Cole confirmed Tuesday, from his New York office, that the Vermonter rolled into White River Junction at 1:30 p.m., instead of the 11:07 a.m. scheduled time. An estimated 60 passengers were scheduled to board the train there. A few of them, it was reported, opted to rent cars instead, after hearing about the delay.