Gemperline's Bike and Train Film Productions (Gemperfilm) » Site Information

Ayer Rail Trail

AJ Gemperline — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:38:35 +0000

I have ridden the Ayer Rail Trail twice. Once in the summer at a leisurely pace on my mountain bike and the other this past Sunday November 13th on my road bike. I really wanted to push it this past ride, but the number of limbs down narrowed the trail in many spots where only one bike could get through at a time. The limbs also made it difficult to see ahead in several spots, which was a speed limiter. Overall, I managed the trail end-to-end, up and back a distance of about 24.5 miles. I did this in about 90 minutes, which comes out to almost 16 mph, per my gps. I plan on doing this trail again as it is very scenic, and hopefully next time the limbs will be clear and I can keep my speed up. However, if I want to do a fast ride with no cars I guess I will negotiate the baby strollers, dog walkers, joggers and roller bladders on the Minuteman Bike-way.

I have added two pictures taken from my low quality cell phone camera and posted them in my photo gallery on bike rides. A.J.

June 2010 – Updates

AJ Gemperline — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:25:38 +0000

How do you like the new format for the site? I like it and I guess that is whose opinion really matters I have added a few more photos of the old NVRRA Bolton layout. I had these on my computer but I just never had the time to get around to posting them. Check them out. It shows what a nice layout it was. If you notice, you will have to use the drop down menu from the Other Model Railroads button to get to the tribute. You also have a couple of choices when you click on the Appalachian Northern menu button.

As for my layout, I just received my custom decals. I have about 7 or 8 freight cars to paint, one undecorated locomotive to paint, with two more on order from Atlas, which should arrive around Christmas 2010. I also have three locomotives that need new decals and minor touch up. Time for me to find my airbrush and go to work. It looks like a rainy weekend coming up so I may just get my chance to work more on the layout.

I also managed to get down to Pennsylvania again this past May. However, I had very little time for railfanning, about an hour or two. I got a few shots when the sunlight was about gone for the day in Cresson. The next morning I saw a train climbing the hill westbound at Gallitzin. I managed to get to Cassandra ahead of it. It was pouring rain. I hope to add those shots to the Pennsylvania Gallery soon.

Feel free to leave comments and please know that you can contact me, A.J., at ajgemp@gmail.com Stay Safe! A.J.

May 2010

AJ Gemperline — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:46:05 +0000

Hello Again. I have been busy lately and have not had much time to work on this page. I had some minor flooding in the layout room. No damage was sustained, it was just a headache to keep ahead of the water. The layout room is cleaned up and I have settled back down to working on the layout and some projects. I have also ordered a decal set and plan to paint some rolling stock for the Appalachian Northern. I will post some more pictures as the progress moves along.

I have also edited the model railroad page regarding the fictional history of my model railroad, the Appalachian Northern. Check out the changes.

I have not been track-side much either. CSX runs up near here and the traffic during the daylight hours has been light. There is more traffic at night, but this is not conducive to photography. Besides, I have been spoiled by my trips to western Pennsylvania over the years with all the traffic down there, it hardly seems worth the effort to spend a whole day track-side in New England and see maybe 6-8 trains vs. that same number of trains in 1-2 hours in Western PA.

Hang in there and please come back to visit. If you need to contact me about wanting to use some pictures, please email me at ajgemp@gmail.com. I apologize if you tried to contact after this past October. I switched internet providers and forgot to update the email settings on this page.

A.J.

Winter Projects

AJ Gemperline — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:55:11 +0000

It has been a snowy winter here in eastern Massachusetts. A lot of snow, but unfortunately I have not had the time to go out and get more snow pictures. After spending all the time digging out it seems the last thing on my mind is to go out again in the cold and wet and try to get some pictures of trains. Especially since the predictability and timing is harder than ever this year. I must be getting old. So this winter I have concentrated more on my model railroad.

I finally built a 10 foot straight test track. I also purchased a scale speedometer that you can get from Greenway Products or www.trainspeed.com. It took me longer than I thought to build it. What I thought would take a couple of hours, ended up taking up the better part of weekend. Now that I have it, I can check out my locomotives and adjust the speed settings, via DCC so that they can run together. I wrote an article about it for my local clubs newsletter. I will publish here after the newsletter is out. I also spent some time cleaning up my work area.

I am still in the midst of some projects. My coal mine is coming along and since I moved a piece of track I had used for programming, I now have more space for the little coal mine community. There are always things to keep me busy on my railroad. Time to fix things here and there. Regular maintenance. My home layout is roughly a 10ft by 10ft layout. It keeps me busy and it makes me wonder how some people manage to build these basement empires.

Until next time, stay warm, stay safe.

Updates

AJ Gemperline — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:55:29 +0000

Hi all. I have been busy through the holidays both with model railroad and issues not related to railroading and model railroading. What I have done is manage to get the test track under way. I am about 80 percent completed with it. I will have a new programming track, a DCC and a DC test track. Basically it is two tracks that are 10 feet long. The tracks are straight with no turnouts. I am also working on putting in a speedometer so I can balance out locomotive consists. I will have more later. A.J.

Fall in New England

AJ Gemperline — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:46:38 +0000

This past week the fall colors have been at their peak in eastern Massachusetts. With that in mind I went to three different locations. On October 10, I spent some time at Westborough, Massachusetts and was able to snag Q437. The colors were not at peak. A few days later, I went out to Charlton Hill and got a couple of shots of Q168 coming up Charlton Hill through the S curve at Gauthier Road. I then headed west and spent a few hours at a classic New England railfan site, the mill at West Warren, Massachusetts. These photos are in the New England Gallery. I hope you enjoy.

A.J.

More Railfan and MRR Pictures Added

AJ Gemperline — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:09:28 +0000

I have slowly been going through and organizing the pictures I have taken over the years. So I have added a lot more pictures to the New England Trains Gallery. Some photos are as recent as August of 2008. Others go back to the mid 90’s or earlier.

I also wanted to show some progress of my model railroad. I have been building the New River Mine by Walthers. I have been taking my time with it. Sometimes I may only get a piece or too glued a night, but there is progress. Anyway there are some shots of this progress in the Model Railroad Gallery. You will see two interior shots of the New River Mine.

A.J.

Gallery Update

AJ Gemperline — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:37:44 +0000

I believe I have finished my Pennsylvania Gallery for now. I added some shots from 2007 as well as some others from 2008. These are not all the shots I took, but they are a good representative of what I took and saw on those trips. I put the pictures in a rough geographic order. I haven’t ruled out adding more.

What to Expect

AJ Gemperline — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:35:06 +0000

What do I want to do with this website? I have asked that a lot. This is what I plan to do. I plan to post some selected photos from my various railfan trips and categorize them by trip and location. I also plan to have some pages dedicated to my model railroading and what I have learned along the way. I will share it with you. Eventually, I will load up some videos I have taken. This will be down the road though. Enjoy!

Introductory Information

AJ Gemperline — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:00:32 +0000

Welcome to my website! I have been a rail-fan and model railroader since the early 90’s. But truth be told I have liked trains since I was a youngster growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in southern Ohio. In the 80’s I moved to eastern Massachusetts and to interested in trains again in the early 90’s. The town I lived in had Conrail’s Boston Line splitting it in half. The rest is history.

I soon discovered railroad photography, and moved on to video. I still do both but presently I favor digital photography with a good digital SLR. I have shot video and made a couple of DVDs that I have I have sold on eBay and at a local hobby shop. I have plenty of video sitting, just waiting to be to be loaded up on the computer, edited and put in final form. Alas, the motherboard on my main editing computer died and I decided to see if I can purchase a new mac sometime after Christmas 2008. When you have a child in college, car insurance, house insurance, dental work and a major car repair bill come due at the same time, they take priority over a hobby. In the meantime, I will upload my stills. I will still shoot video, but for the time being it will be cataloged and archived for future use.

As for model railroading. I have been into model railroading since the early 90’s as well. I belonged to a club for a while, but due to lease arrangements they had to move to a place that made it impractical for me to get to on a regular basis. But this gave me time to work on my own home layout. I plan to share my information and some pictures here as well. I also plan to bring over the information, that I had maintained on my MSN group site to here. MSN was limiting my storage and my comments and photo’s outgrew that site.

Thanks for stopping by.