In 1964, after I returned from Viet Nam where I had worn a green suit, I went down to my favorite haunt, East Side Tunnel. I was disappointed with what I found. The formerly double-tracked New Haven Railroad branch was now single iron, the double slip on the west end was gone, the former storage track had been bent over somewhat and now connected to track 4 at Union Station in Providence, and the post office connection was gone. A new post office, the world's first automated facility, had done in the New Haven's work. For that matter, even the New Haven was gone. Some entity named Penn Central had taken over, but they were so poorly managed its remains became part of a larger system of broken down railroads renamed Consolidated Railroad Corp - Conrail for short.
On the east end, SS K-315 was gone, the bridge operator now worked from an on-shore control station on the Providence side, and kept the bridge up most of the time. Track speed was down to 10 mph - or less - over the entire line. Conrail offered three-days-a-week service and hauled maybe a half-dozen cars. No trains went to Bristol any more - no track. At least I now had a decent camera, a Mamiya C-330 medium format machine.

Photographed by Leo King, October, 1964.
Added to the photo archive by Leo King, May 17, 2004.

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