Trackside Travels

The Reading T-1s

2012-01-02T21:06:00.001-05:00

Reading 2102; Reading, Penn., September 1985

So how did it all start? How did I get interested in trains? To find that answer, you need to go back to the 1960s. The Reading Company had pulled three of their 4-8-4 T1-class steam locomotives out of retirement to run on what the railroad called Iron Horse Rambles. I was just a tyke at the time, but Dad took me on the excursions out of Reading Terminal in Philadelphia to eastern Pennsylvania destinations with exotic names like Macungie and Tamaqua. It was through these three locomotives, Nos. 2100, 2102 and 2124 (especially 2124) that got me hooked on steam.

My next encounter with a Reading T-1 wouldn't be until 1979. The Chessie System was operating its Chessie Steam Special throughout the northeast and I got out a few times to see it. T-1 No. 2101 (a T-1 the Reading had saved but never used on the Rambles) had the honors of pulling the train, but painted in the Chessie corporate colors it just wasn't the same. (Side note: The Chessie colors are my all-time favorite diesel colors, but when affixed to a steam locomotive it's a little disconcerting...)

Chessie Steam Special 2101; Perryville, Md.;

Fast forward to 1985. Reading 2102 had operated sporadically in the Northeast since the end of the Rambles for Rails Diversified and had finally wandered back to its home in Reading, Pa., thanks to Rails Diversified and the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society. In freight service, the T-1s wore basic black, but for the Rambles the Reading added yellow handrails and white tires. It was the Rambles scheme the 2102 wore when it returned to Reading, and while there it ran a set of new Iron Horse Rambles (albeit not railroad sponsored). When I first saw it, it brought back a rush of memories. Talk about going back in time...

Reading 2102 in its Iron Horse Rambles paint scheme; Reading, Penn.

In 1986 the T-1 was acquired by the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern (also known more simply as the Reading & Northern). And, they put it to work, hauling coal (at least for photographers) just as it did in the 1950s.

Reading & Northern 2102 in "freight black;" Port Clinton, Penn.

Alas, 2102 would soon be out of service again, as its flue time expired in 1991 and it has been cold ever since. As this is written it has been two decades since a Reading T-1 ran. But, I would have one more encounter with a T-1. My favorite of the Northerns, 2124, had been retired by the Reading before the Rambles program had even ended in the mid-1960s and it went on a long journey to Steamtown U.S.A. in Bellows Falls, Vt. When the Steamtown collection moved to Scranton, Penn., in 1984, the 2124 was brought back to its home state. On May 6, 2010, Pete Lerro of Lerro Productions used a little smoke and light to bring 2124 seemingly back to life. It had been 45 years since I had a close encounter with the 2124. It was good to be paying attention to my old flame -- the one that started the love affair --once again.

Reading 2124; Steamtown National Historic Site, Scranton, Penn.; May 6, 2010

Thanks to Christopher Bost for getting some of my fuzzy T-1 history squared away.

A Dash of Nutmeg

2011-09-05T23:42:00.000-04:00

All the photos from this trip can be found here in Photo Lines.

Metro-North; Cos Cob, Connecticut; May 14, 2011

The Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum in Willimantic asked me to come up with my lights and pit on a night photo session for -- not a railroad group, but a camera club! Intrigued, I agreed to do it, and plotted a two-day trip into the Nutmeg State with my brother Bruce and friend Mike Burkhart on May 14-15, 2011.

Our first stop would be along Metro-North at Cos Cob, where we hoped to get some of the new M8 cars that have just been put into service by the commuter railroad. Alas, we didn't get any M8s, but we did find some angles to work, including getting the classic ex-New Haven Railroad tower in the background (above).

Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum; Willimantic, Conn.

Happy with that, we moved on looking for Shore Line East at Guilford. Alas, this commuter operator was running its weekend trains with leased Amtrak diesels, some of which had battered Shore Line East decals on the nose and some that didn't. We also caught a handful of Amtrak's Northeast Direct and Acela Express trains working between Boston and New York. Getting over to Old Saybrook, we just missed an Amtrak work train. A quick run up to Essex to check on the status of the Valley Railroad's new steam locomotive was thwarted when we discovered that Thomas the Tank Engine was in town. We found a neat shot along the railroad with a "No Thomas Parking" sign, but the little blue engine had made his last run of the day at this point.

Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum; Willimantic, Conn.

At the museum, we found coordinator Tom Nanos and an enthusiastic group that had never photographed trains before. We lit up a few station scenes featuring the museum's ex-Metro-North FL9 diesels, complete in New Haven paint. From there we headed over to the roundhouse for a multiple locomotive line-up, and finished off with the CERM's traditional "shower of sparks" night shot of someone grinding away at a steam locomotive (okay, the steam locomotive was not harmed; the sparks came from grinding a piece of metal that was clamped to the steam locomotive). All in all, the folks got about 30 opportunities to photograph different equipment from different angles, and the museum's "actors" who posed in the photos certainly brought the scenes to life. It was a great time.

The next morning we were up early to shoot the Providence & Worcester as it made its way south along the Thames River. Our target was getting the train passing the U.S.S. Nautilus, the nuclear-powered submarine that's now a museum at the U.S. Coast Guard sub base in Groton. Clouds dogged the shot, but we were able to get the train there and again as it made its way to the interchange with the New England Central across the Thames in New London. A small trestle provided a good photo prop to get the train. We chased it back past the sub base and continued on one more stop at Mill Cove before breaking away.


Providence & Worcester; New London, Connecticut; May 15, 2011

That shot of Thomas the Tank Engine was still on our minds, so we headed back to Essex and awaited the blue engine's next departure. Since the shot was better when Thomas returned, we hung around and got the inbound move for the shot showing how friendly Thomas's neighbors can be.

Thomas the Tank Engine; Essex, Connecticut; May 15, 2011

The weather wasn't great and Shore Line East still wasn't cooperating (leased Amtrak power was still leading all trains this day), but we got some Amtrak and SLE at Westbrook and Guilford before heading west of New Haven and back onto Metro-North. We paused at Old Greenwich to shoot Amtrak and commuter cars, and finally got a set of the new M8s. But it was getting dark, so after a few trains we called it a day and headed home, wrapping up our visit to the Nutmeg State.

South Florida Fun and Sun

2011-08-08T17:15:00.000-04:00

All photos from this trip can be found here.

Florida East Coast; Jupiter, Florida; March 25, 2011

Back in March I went to Florida on a lighthouse tour with Pete Lerro of Lerro Productions. There wasn't much time to do any rail photography while the trip was going on, but as the tour wound down a few opportunities presented themselves, and spending a few extra days in the Sunshine State after the tour allowed for some solid railroad shooting.

Bahia Honda Bridge; March 20, 2011

The first opportunities came as the result of a last-minute change in plans during the lighthouse tour. A boat ride from Key West to the Dry Tortugas was canceled due to heavy seas, so the four of us on the tour chartered a small plane to fly to some lighthouses. As the plane could only hold three people plus the pilot, we broke our group into two sections. Pete and my brother Bruce took the first flight, while Dennis Morgan and I headed back up the Keys to shoot some remnants of the Florida East Coast's Key West extension (opened in 1912). Most of the bridges used by the FEC were later used by U.S. 1 after the FEC abandoned the line following the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, and most of the bridges have since been bypassed by new highway bridges. Two of the most interesting bridges can be found on either side of Bahia Honda Key -- on the south (west) side is a through truss bridge where the highway was simply placed on top of the trusses following the railroad's abandonment. On the north (east) side is Sevenmile Bridge that connects to Marathon Key.

By March 21 the tour was winding down with Pete and Dennis working their way towards the airport. A free afternoon at Fort Lauderdale found us shooting the evening rush of Tri-Rail commuter trains. Pete, an avowed steam fan, couldn't quite figure out what all the excitement was about over diesels. The next morning we shot the last of the lighthouses on the tour (at Jupiter Inlet), Pete and Dennis headed to the airport and Bruce and I headed trackside. We were back near Fort Lauderdale for the evening Tri-Rail rush, then caught a Florida East Coast train in Fort Pierce to wrap up the day.

Tri-Rail; West Palm Beach, Florida; March 22, 2011

The following day, March 23, was spent largely in the Fort Pierce area with a side trip to Stuart. The Florida East Coast is a tough railroad to shoot during the day (most traffic is at night), but the ATCS Monitor software allows you see what the dispatcher is seeing for the entire railroad and lets you find those elusive daytime freights with ease. We started out shooting South Central Florida Express, a railroad that primarily serves the sugar cane fields in its namesake location but also interchanges some mixed merchandise with the FEC in Fort Pierce. The highlight of the day was heading down to the long bridge in Stuart where we caught two northbound FEC trains on the bridge and a southbound shortly thereafter.

Florida East Coast; Stuart, Florida; March 23, 2011

The next day we ventured down to Clewiston, the headquarters town of South Central Florida Express, to check out the cane operations. Things seemed unusually quiet down there, quieter than we had been told they should be. We couldn't find much in the way of cane harvest trains, but we did follow the road train out of town heading for the CSX interchange in Sebring. The scenic highlight of the trip is the bridge at Moore Haven, but the light wasn't around enough to make the shot look really good. Back at Clewiston not much was happening, so we ventured back out looking for the return of the Sebring train. It came back with no freight -- just light locomotives. And when they got to the bridge at Moore Haven, a large cloud blocked the sun just long enough for the locomotives to get across the bridge in shadow. This wasn't our day...


South Central Florida Express; Palmdale, Florida; March 24, 2011

Back at the shop, we did find another non-cane switch job working outside Clewiston and followed it back into town. Soon everything was tied up and the quiet railroad was even quieter. It wouldn't be until later that we would find out the cane harvesting season ended three days before our visit.

South Central Florida Express; Clewiston, Florida; March 24, 2011

The next day we had three bridges on the Florida East Coast locked into our sights. All we would need would be enough trains to shoot. The first was in downtown Fort Lauderdale, a lift bridge with a conveniently located parking deck that provided a nice view of a southbound. A northbound also came, but the way the lift span is configured the shot is definitely better for a southbound.

Florida East Coast; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; March 25, 2011

Getting a morning southbound at Stuart was almost a daily obsession, but once again trains did not cooperate. Thus, we found ourselves at Jupiter for our next bridge shot, getting both a southbound (top photo of this blog entry) and a northbound. Then, we found the bridge at Roseland using Google maps and headed there for an evening shot of a northbound; a southbound met the northbound just north of the bridge. Six trains on the FEC in daylight, three in each direction. By FEC standards, a pretty busy day.

Our last day in Florida was mostly visiting relatives, but good timing put us and northbound FEC train No.202 in Fort Pierce at the same time. Our final shot would be of two yellow SD40-2s leading the train over a small bridge on the north end of town.

Florida East Coast; Fort Pierce, Florida; March 26, 2011

There are still things I need to shoot in Florida. A morning southbound at Stuart remains elusive, and getting back to the cane fields -- this time in season! -- is a priority. Toss in Amtrak trains and the Bone Valley phosphate fields near Tampa (and the Tampa streetcar) and the Sunshine State still beckons.

The Great Triangle Trip Part 2 - Up The Mississippi

2011-06-02T00:03:00.000-04:00

Part 1 of the trip can be found here.
Photos of the trip can be found here.

Union Pacific; Morley, Louisiana; February 22, 2011

When last we met, we had just left New Orleans and were heading north. Our stop on Tuesday, February 22, was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we met up with Forrest Becht for a day of shooting. The weather was dismal as we sought out some Union Pacific and Kansas City Southern trains south of the city. We finally camped out at the end of the lift bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway waiting for an eastbound. Trackwork dogged us however, and after shooting a westbound (above) it would be a couple of hours before an eastbound -- with Norfolk Southern power -- would show up.

Our luck turned a bit on Wednesday, February 23. We met up with Mick Nussbaum in Meridian, Mississippi, and got the grand tour of the city. The northbound Crescent came through and we even had a bit of sun as the train passed under an ex-Southern Railway cantilever signal bridge.

Amtrak; Meridian, Mississippi; February 23, 2011

Our ultimate destination for the day was Jackson, Mississippi, and we hoped for a westbound Kansas City Southern train. As fate would have it the westbound showed up right about when we needed it to and the chase was on -- at least for awhile. As the train was passing through Newton it went into emergency, coming to a stop with every grade crossing in town blocked. The conductor needed to walk all 8000 feet of train to find the problem and we knew that would take awhile. Fortunately, the head end was parked in a nice location, so we were able to get a shot or two and head on to Jackson.

Kansas City Southern; Newton, Mississippi; February 23, 2011

Our goal was to get to the railroad location of Switch Tender in Jackson where Kansas City Southern crosses the former Illinois Central (now Canadian National) main line on a series of hand thrown switches. While the sun wasn't completely cooperative, there were enough trains that sunny shots were possible, including a meet with the two railroads.

KCS and Canadian National; Switch Tender, Jackson, Mississippi; February 23, 2011

Who would have thought a decade or two ago that Canadian National would serve the deep U.S. south? Our best shot of the day would have seemed almost ludicrous a decade ago -- a locomotive from BC Rail (also a part of Canadian National) leading a train through Mississippi. This would be our last sunny shot of the trip -- and we still had several days to go!

Canadian National; Switch Tender, Jackson, Mississippi; February 23, 2011

Canadian National; Memphis, Tenn.; February 24, 2011

The next day would be perhaps the most disappointing day of the trip. I had never been to Memphis before, and what a wonderful city it is! We had a list of shots we wanted to get, including trains passing the abandoned tower at Aulon Junction (didn't get it) and the Liberty Bowl (got it sort of). Other shots we tried to get included CN Junction and KC Junction, but bad weather prevented anything decent. Most of the day was spent over on the streetcars downtown, and there are several good angles there. Too bad the sun didn't cooperate. The one thing that did work out, though, was Memphis ribs. Dinner consisted of a rack at the Rendezvous. We walked back to the car in shirt-sleeve weather. By the time we drove to St. Louis, five hours up the Mississippi, it was snowing.

Memphis Area Transit Authority; Memphis, Tennessee; February 24, 2011

Our hopes for getting shots of trains passing under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis were pretty well shot down as soon as it was bright enough to see on Friday morning; the gray Arch did not exactly pop against the gray skies. Near Gateway Yard across the Mississippi in East St. Louis, Illinois, we shot a Kansas City Southern train, snow stuck to the front, with the St. Louis skyline in the background.

Kansas City Southern; East St. Louis, Illinois; February 25, 2011

BNSF on TRRA; St. Louis, Mo.

Our tour guide was Mark Mautner and he has a great knowledge of St. Louis photo locations. We tried the shot that was on the then-current Amtrak timetable cover of a train passing the Arch (taken by Mark's brother Mike on a far sunnier day) and got two BNSF coal trains on the Terminal Railroad of St. Louis trackage directly under the Arch. We poked around on the Manufacturers Railway, in its last days of serving the Busch brewery, and headed across the river to check out ethanol and grain switching operations.

On our list was getting some power from the Terminal Railroad of St. Louis in its new paint scheme. The end-cab switchers are gone from the railroad, but the line's new road power is pretty sharp. We found a set at North Market Street in St. Louis early in the day, then found another set working at the Pillsbury Siding just off Kingshighway in the northern part of the city during the afternoon. Then it was back downtown to shoot Amtrak before calling it a day. We had a long drive ahead of us up to the western outer regions of Chicagoland, so we bid Mark goodbye and hit the road.

Terminal Railroad of St. Louis; North Market, St. Louis, Missouri; February 25, 2011

Union Pacific; Nelson, Ill.; February 26, 2011

The next day was the memorial service (more of a life celebration) for Jim Boyd in Dixon, Illinois. We spent the gloomy morning at nearby Nelson, waiting for a train to come under the coaling tower there. Then it was on to the celebration where we met up with friends of Jim that we knew and friends we were meeting for the first time (but I had read about them in the pages of Railfan & Railroad, so it seemed like I knew them for years). We had a dinner of Al & Leda's pizza (Jim's favorite), watched some slides of travels with Jim, then headed back to the motel. On Sunday we visited with Mike Schafer, editor of Passenger Train Journal, then hit the road eastward. We tied up near Sandusky, Ohio, that night and finished the drive to New Jersey on Monday. No photos were taken on the last two days of the trip.

The Great Triangle Trip Part 1 - New Orleans

2011-05-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

All the photos from this trip can be found here.

Norfolk Southern; Chattanooga, Tennessee; February 18, 2011

Some trips you just can't win (or so it seems). I had been invited to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to give a banquet program to the Southeast Louisiana Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society on Saturday, February 19. Subsequent to that, my friend and former boss Jim Boyd passed away and a memorial service was scheduled for February 26 in his hometown of Dixon, Illinois. A drive to Baton Rouge and back followed by an immediate turnaround to drive to Dixon was going to be tough, but combining the trips into one big triangle would save 700 miles -- and as an added bonus I could hit some great railroading along the Mississippi in Memphis and St. Louis. So, a triangle trip it would be!

CSX Transportation; Whiteside, Tennessee; February 18, 2011

My brother Bruce and I left New Jersey on Thursday evening, February 17, and got as far as Staunton, Virginia. Next morning we hit the road again and by the time we got to Chattanooga it became apparent we'd have a few hours in the schedule to take a break. Unfortunately, clouds were prevalent this day. We did get a train going through the complex junction at 16th Street in Chattanooga (above) and chased a few trains over the mountain towards Alabama, and soon we were heading south again, finally tying up in Meridian, Mississippi.


Huey P. Long Bridge, Bridge City, La.; February 19, 2011

Next morning we finished the drive to Hammond, Louisiana (the actual location of the banquet) and after the banquet we went to the Hammond station to see the northbound City of New Orleans pause at the station. We then headed into New Orleans where we got a few trains on the 22,996-foot-long Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi, including a sunset shot.

We had some sun the next morning as we watched the northbound Crescent cross Lake Ponchartrain into Slidell, and wound up spending most of the rest of the day dodging clouds. We did another couple of trains on the Huey P. Long Bridge from the west end of the span in Bridge City. We wanted a shot at the east end of the bridge, but trains did not cooperate.


New Orleans Public Belt; Huey P. Long Bridge, Bridge City, Lousiana; February 20, 2011

That night we began our exploration of the famous New Orleans streetcar system. We took a few night shots here and there, with our favorite location being at Loyola University. We also tried shooting downtown near the Ponchartrain Hotel.

New Orleans RTA; Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana; February 20, 2011

Amtrak; New Orleans, La.; February 21, 2011

Monday would be another day in the Big Easy, but we found ourselves fighting clouds in the wrong place and trains not showing up when we needed them. We started by catching the northbound Crescent from the levee along Lake Ponchartrain, but morning fog prevented us from getting as good of a shot as we wanted. We then headed over to Canal Street to get the red streetcars -- on our 2008 visit to New Orleans the red cars were not running as they had been damaged by flood waters from Hurricane Katrina. The sun peeked in and out, but the nice thing about streetcars is there is always another one coming. It didn't take long to get a few nice shots on Canal Street.

New Orleans RTA; New Orleans, La.; February 21, 2011

We then headed over to the St. Charles line to get some of the historic green cars. The streetcar lines in New Orleans are photographically target-rich, and we found a couple of nice locations to shoot the cars. The location seen at left also had a convenient Burger King where we could grab a snack.

Also on our list for the day were several other shots on the freight railroads, including the east end of the Huey P. Long Bridge, East Bridge Tower, NE Tower and other locations. We had spent part of the morning at NE Tower but got no trains. And during our entire stay in New Orleans we never did see an eastbound train on the bridge at the right time.

As I said before, this was our second trip to New Orleans. There is a blog entry about the first one here.

After shooting several cars on St. Charles Avenue we headed back to an area just a few blocks from the French Quarter where the Canal Street cars and St. Charles cars share Canal Street for about a block. This is one busy place with looping St. Charles cars heading briefly south and Canal cars passing. We spent quite a bit of time here trying to get cars from both lines in the same frame, but were largely unsuccessful. Getting two Canal Street cars together was much easier.

New Orleans RTA; New Orleans, Louisiana; February 21, 2011

As the afternoon progressed we kept an eye on the clock. The northbound and southbound City of New Orleans traverse the wooden trestle over the Bonnet Carre spillway within an hour of each other and we wanted to make sure we got them. The northbound was first, which was a tight broadside shot. The southbound train, which was a much better shot, had Amtrak locomotive No. 1 leading, but the train and a cloud headed towards us at pretty much the same pace. We did squeeze off the shot, however.

Amtrak; Bonnet Carre spillway, Norco, Louisiana; February 21, 2011

Back into the city we finished the day off at NE Tower. Alas, despite bright sun a train never did head west past the tower while we were there. We had to be satisfied with only a shot of the tower with an empty diamond in front.

NE Tower; New Orleans, Louisiana; February 21, 2011

As the sun set, we said farewell to New Orleans. Next up -- Baton Rouge. We'll head north along the Mississippi in our next installment.

Columbia Gorge Chase

2011-04-06T23:10:00.002-04:00


Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700 and Southern Pacific 4449; Cape Horn, Washington

The buzz is starting to build over the upcoming convention of the National Railway Historical Society, which will be held in Tacoma, Washington, in late July. The last time there was an NRHS Convention in the Pacific Northwest was in 2005, based out of Portland, Oregon. The star attraction in Tacoma, as it was in Portland, will be Southern Pacific "Daylight" 4-8-4 No. 4449. Prior to the Tacoma convention, No. 4449 will be powering a trip from its home city of Portland along the Columbia River to Wishram, Washington -- this route was featured at the 2005 Convention and is the subject of today's story.

The date was July 6, 2005. I had put together the night photo session for the Portland Convention and the Convention committee had offered me a parlor car ticket for the ride to Wishram for helping them out. I decided that a relaxing day riding a parlor car would be a nice alternative to chasing the train for once, and decided to do that. That is, until it was announced that the 4449 would be sharing the head-end duties with Spokane, Portland & Seattle No. 700 and the 700 would be leading the eastbound trip. The route along the Columbia is ex-SP&S and it has long been my goal to get the 700 on its old home rails popping out of the classic tunnel at Cape Horn. So, I gave away my parlor car seat and drove to Cape Horn to get a shot I had long yearned for.

The day was misty, not uncommon for the west end of the Columbia River Gorge. Nonetheless, 700 made a fine sight as it emerged from the rocky tunnel (above). Knowing that I had a long walk out of Cape Horn and the highway would be clogged with chasers, I decided to meander towards Wishram; if I caught the train that would be fine -- but if I didn't, that would be okay, too.

(Okay, that's not entirely true. I got behind some slow old driver and decided that, chasing or not, I had to get past her. Just as I passed, a Washington state trooper appeared from the other direction, whipped around, put on his lights and stopped me. The trooper listed everything that I had done wrong -- a little speeding, wet road, etc., etc. Anticipating a fairly hefty ticket by the time he finished his speech, he concluded with, "I'm going to have to give you a warning." Well, if you have to give me a warning, I guess that's okay....)

I crossed from Washington into Oregon to take advantage of the interstate highway on the south side of the river, and as I neared The Dalles, Oregon, I caught and overtook the train. Suddenly I was in "chase mode" and cranked up the speed on the car -- I needed to get across the river to get a shot of the train from the highway bridge. As I crossed the Columbia I could see the train down river rapidly closing in. Fortunately, there is a large gravel parking area at the north end of the bridge, and I was able to park in a cloud of dust, grab the camera and run back onto the bridge and get the shot. Whew!

At Wishram I went over to the 4449 and was immediately invited into the cab by engineer Doyle McCormack. As it turned out, about that same time the train was given permission to back out of Wishram to be turned for the return trip, so I got a short cab ride in the process.

Spokane, Portland & Seattle No. 700; Wishram, Washington

For the return trip I decided to roll the dice and follow the route back on Washington Highway 14, a twisting two-lane road. I knew if the train went as fast back west as it did coming east I probably would only get one shot. Still, I figured it was worth a try. As it turned out, the passenger train had many meets, including at Stevenson where I got a nice shot with the 4449 in the lead.

Southern Pacific 4449; Stevenson, Washington

All in all the day couldn't have gone much better. I look forward to getting back out to Washington and seeing the 4449 again. I won't be able to chase the Columbia Gorge trips in early July, but the Stampede Pass trip should be a fun chase.

Way Down Yonder In New Orleans

2011-03-02T20:27:00.000-05:00

New Orleans RTA; New Orleans, Louisiana; June 10, 2008

Last week I had the chance to visit one of my favorite cities -- New Orleans. While the weather wasn't real good for the trip (and it will take awhile to get all the photos processed and on the website), I thought it might be nice to go back to 2008 and my first visit to the Crescent City. Scenes like streetcars parading past the Ponchartrain Hotel (above) show how charming the city can be.

In 2008 New Orleans was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. We headed out to the area along Lake Ponchartrain on the city's east side, going through the Ninth Ward which was still full of houses with the markings painted on by post-Katrina rescue workers. In 2011, much of the same area has been repopulated, and long stretches of deserted houses (at least in this area) are a thing of the past. It is here, where Norfolk Southern crosses Lake Ponchartrain on a long bridge, that we caught Amtrak's Crescent on its early morning departure entering Slidell.

Amtrak; Slidell, Louisiana; June 11, 2008

One of the most famous railroad landmarks in New Orleans is the Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi River. The railroad stretches 22,996 feet across the bridge, while the adjacent highway lanes are a mere 8,076 feet long as they drop to the ground faster than the railroad does. Crossing the bridge by car is quite the experience, as the grades are remarkably steep and the lanes remarkably narrow at nine feet across (two lanes flank each side of the railroad). By the time we visited in 2011, a lane widening project was well underway.

New Orleans Public Belt; June 11, 2008

There are still a handful of towers scattered around New Orleans, but the only two still open are at each end of the Huey Long Bridge; the pair are appropriately named East Bridge Junction and West Bridge Juncton. The railroad on the bridge is the New Orleans Public Belt, but power from virtually all the U.S. Class I railroads can be seen crossing the structure.

New Orleans Public Belt; East Bridge Junction; June 11, 2008

And, of course, there are the streetcars of New Orleans. After Katrina, the two symbols of New Orleans that were immediately restored to show the city was still alive were the Superdome and the streetcar system. The St. Charles Line was heavily damaged by Katrina, but its carhouse was spared; conversely, the Canal Street Line survived the storm with minimal damage, but its carhouse was submerged, damaging all the bright red cars used on that line. Thus, on our 2008 visit we found St. Charles cars pressed into Canal Street service. In 2011 we found red cars once again on Canal Street.

St. Charles streetcars on Canal Street line; New Orleans, Louisiana; June 10, 2008

So there's a quick look back at the June 2008 trip to New Orleans. Down the road we'll take another look at what we found in February 2011.

Sunshine State

2011-02-10T18:54:00.000-05:00

Florida East Coast; Stuart, Florida; February 10, 2009

Okay, I admit it. I'm tired of this winter. This has been one of the most miserable winters ever in the northeast. Frequent snow storms were bad enough, but the last two storms were mostly heavy-to-shovel ice.

It makes me wish I was in the Sunshine State, if only for a week just to get a break. So in this installment of my ramblings, we're going to visit Florida. One of my favorite locations is on the Florida East Coast at the town of Stuart (above). Old U.S. 1 provides this nice view of a northbound FEC ballast train. The bridge behind the train is new U.S. 1, which sports a nice walkway that makes train photography in the morning a real treat.

Florida East Coast; St. Augustine, Florida; March 21, 2008

The Florida East Coast has the disadvantage of being a night-running railroad. Trains depart their originating locations at opposite ends of the railroad (Jacksonville and Miami) in the early evening, arriving at the counterpart terminal the next morning. While southbounds coming into Miami are shootable, northbounds approaching Jacksonville are against the sun for most of the year. There is one place, however, where northbounds are perfectly lit -- the bridge in St. Augustine directly adjacent to U.S. 1. Here trains break sharply to the east to cross the bridge, then swing back north for the final miles into Jacksonville.

Florida East Coast; St. Augustine, Florida; March 21, 2008

The FEC used to be headquartered in St. Augustine, and their former office buildings can still be seen (above to the right of the train). The buildings are now a part of Flagler University (named for Henry Flagler of Florida East Coast fame who built the Key West Extension).

Florida East Coast; Bowden Yard, Florida; March 23, 2008

The FEC picked up some nice SD70M-2s a few years ago. For several years there was an early-afternoon southbound that departed Bowden Yard (Jacksonville) and it often had one of the new units leading. At right we see the class unit, No. 100, leaving Bowden Yard with the Jacksonville skyline off in the distance.

I made it to Florida in 2007, 2008 and 2009, but missed out last year. The FEC has become a little easier to shoot thanks to ATCS Monitor, a program that lets you see where trains are on the railroad -- all you need is the ATCSMon software and an internet signal. Despite having ATCS Monitor in 2009 we still missed a train. The winter weather here in the north has me thinking Florida again, and next month I'm planning on getting back down there. The FEC has plenty of photographic possibilities (when the rare daylight trains run) and Fort Lauderdale and more shooting at Stuart are high on my list of things to do. Sunshine State, here I come!

Florida East Coast; Scottsmoor, Florida; February 9, 2007

Two Virginia Towns

2011-02-01T21:44:00.000-05:00

CSX Transportation; Ashland, Virginia; January 8, 2010

When it comes to train watching, it's hard to beat the Virginia towns of Ashland and Doswell along the former Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac (now a part of CSX Transportation). Located about 14 miles north of the state capitol, Ashland provides trackage running down the middle of the street in the business district and on into a nice residential area. Another six miles north, Doswell has a diamond where the former Chesapeake & Ohio crosses the RF&P, an old station and tower, and a short line yard (Buckingham Branch Railroad).

Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac; Ashland, Virginia

I have been to both towns many times over the years, and recently had the chance to visit both twice within a week in January. Doswell has a country store called Squashapenny Junction that you really need to go inside to believe. It is just full of Americana. Back in the days before CSX, the building was simply the former Doswell general store in plain white paint.

Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac; Doswell, Virginia

Today the store has numerous signs on it, most prominently the classic "Coke" circle logo, along with other signs of the past. The courtyard now features wagons and a giant hand.

Amtrak; Doswell, Virginia; January 30, 2011

Coal trains on the former C&O through Doswell are fairly common, and if you are equipped with a railroad radio you will hear trains call the RF&P dispatcher to request clearance past the old tower and across the diamond.

CSX Transportation; Doswell, Virginia; January 22, 2011

The Buckingham Branch yard is located adjacent to the RF&P main line just north of the diamond. The Buckingham Branch now leases the former C&O. Their diesels have been given a uniform coat of gray and red paint and are looking pretty good.

Buckingham Branch; Doswell, Virginia; January 22, 2011

If your travels take you down I-95 below Washington, take the King's Dominion exit at Doswell and head on in to the tracks. Frequent Amtrak service makes train watching fun, even when freight trains are hard to find. When you are finished at Doswell, head south to Ashland for the best in small-town train watching in the middle of the street. These are indeed two of the best towns to view trains in the east.

Amtrak; Ashland, Virginia; January 30, 2011

The Road To Acela

2011-01-24T19:07:00.000-05:00

Amtrak Acela; Holmesburg Junction, Pennsylvania; November 29, 2009

Amtrak's Acela Express has certainly been a success. Since its inception a little more than a decade ago, Amtrak has made significant inroads into the market that has been dominated by the shuttle airlines between Boston, New York and Washington. The Northeast Corridor is the closest the United States has to true high-speed rail.

It was the Pennsylvania Railroad that brought electrification to the railroad between Washington and New York. The Pennsy was just about to merge into the Penn Central (with the New York Central) when it debuted its new high speed Metroliner trains. These self-propelled trainsets raised speeds on the Corridor, and operated through the Penn Central years and into Amtrak in 1971; they were the precursors to the Acela.

Amtrak Metroliner; Perryville, Maryland

The Metroliners were aging, and not gracefully. By the 1990s conventional locomotive-powered trains were holding down Metroliner schedules (and carrying the name as well), while the actual Metroliner cars were bumped to Keystone service between New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Amtrak needed new high-speed trains. But first, in order to capture the Boston market successfully, it had to upgrade the Corridor east of New York, where electric locomotives powered trains to New Haven, Connecticut, and diesels continued east to Boston. Amtrak commenced to stringing wire in anticipation of its new trains.

First, Amtrak had to decide on what it wanted. To get a better idea, it borrowed two trainsets in regular service in Europe. First up was the X2000 from Sweden. Fast and lightweight, the X2000 featured tilt technology that allowed the passenger cars to tilt on curves, countering centrifugal force and allowing for higher speeds on curves (a necessity given the curve-laden nature of the railroad east of New Haven). The X2000 certainly impressed Amtrak as it worked in regular service for several months during 1993.

Amtrak X2000; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; April 28, 1993

The next train to test on Amtrak in regular service was the ICE (Inter City Express) from Germany. While the X2000 was light and nimble, the ICE was brute force with its rapid acceleration. With the two trainsets tested, Amtrak took the best of both worlds, combining the tilt technology of the X2000 with the strength of the ICE. Bombardier was hired to build the new trains, which were called American Flyers while under construction.

Amtrak ICE; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; October 6, 1993

Amtrak Acela; Old Greenwich, Conn.; August 2001

Acela finally made its debut on December 11, 2000. While there have been occasional problems (the entire 20-train Acela fleet was taken out of service briefly in 2002 and again in 2005 for maintenance issues) there is no question that it has been a success. I was fortunate enough to catch the Amtrak test trains (X2000 and ICE) and even rode the cab of the ICE between Trenton and New York and back (it was quite a ride!). When the Acelas entered service the upgrading of the New York-Boston segment hadn't been quite completed -- obviously the wire had been finished from New Haven to Boston, but the older infrastructure between New York and New Haven needed replacing. In August 2001 I was able to get a new Acela trainset passing under decades-old triangular wire on the former New Haven railroad (right).

Some say the Pennsylvania Railroad's classic GG1 locomotives were the best thing to ever run under wire on the Northeast Corridor. It would be foolish to argue otherwise, so I won't. But I will say the Acela trainsets are a worthy successor to the GG1s and make for quite a sight coming down the tracks. Power and speed -- all in a classy package. They have one decade under their belts now and should have another two or three to go.

Southern Steam Specials

2011-01-18T20:49:00.000-05:00

Southern Railway (Texas & Pacific) No. 610; Mitchells, Virginia; August 1978

There was no other steam program in the diesel era as ambitious as the program run by the Southern Railway (and later successor Norfolk Southern) starting in the 1960s and running until 1994. A modest program expanded to the point where there were two main line steam powered trips running almost every weekend except in the winter. Over the years I had the chance to see many of the locomotives used by the Southern and NS.

My first encounter with the Southern Steam Program was in August 1978 when I convinced Dad to chase a trip from Alexandria to Charlottesville in Virginia. Power for the trip was leased Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 No. 610 (above), a massive locomotive. This would be the only day I would see 610 under steam.

My first National Railway Historical Society convention was the gathering in Washington, D.C., over Labor Day weekend in 1979. The Southern lacked a fast main line locomotive in its roster, so it turned to a leased engine, Canadian Pacific "Royal Hudson" No. 2839. With its tall drivers and impressive speed, Southern's Master Mechanic-Steam William Purdie commented, "Now I have a locomotive that can outrun the railfans."

Canadian Pacific No. 2839; Orange, Virginia; September 1979

Now that I knew about the Southern program, trips to Alexandria to chase steam became common. In March 1980 I followed Southern 2-8-0 No. 722 as it ran over the Front Royal branch. The 722 was one of the original locomotives in the steam program and its light weight, low drivers and strong pulling power made it the perfect locomotive to pull low-speed trips on the branch lines.

Southern Railway No. 722; Springfield, Virginia; March 29, 1980

In 1981 Southern found itself power-short. The 722 was down and couldn't work the Front Royal branch, so the Southern turned to a privately-owned locomotive -- Jack Showalter's ex-Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 No. 1238 (lettered for Showalter's Allegheny Central). The Southern advertised a photographer's special that year, promising numerous runbys. I tried to get tickets, but the trip sold out so I decided to chase. Somehow the locomotive ran low on coal, so after about two photo stops the rest of the runbys were canceled. The chasers were the winners that day!

Allegheny Central 1238; Linden, Virginia; June 1981

Canadian Pacific 2839 was soon returned to its owner and the Southern started looking for another high-speed main line locomotive. This time they turned to the Kentucky Railway Museum and discovered ex-Chesapeake & Ohio 2-8-4 No. 2716. Unlike the Royal Hudson, which Southern ran in its Canadian Pacific colors, the 2716 was taken into the Birmingham shops and had its distinctive C&O look changed to a Southern look by Mr. Purdie. I chased one trip with 2716 to Charlottesville, but in 1982 firebox problems sidelined the locomotive for good after a too-brief career. I had the chance many years later to ask Mr. Purdie what his favorite locomotive was in the program and he quickly said, "The 2716."

Southern No. 2716; Culpeper, Virginia; July 1982

The star of the Southern Steam Program was always 2-8-2 No. 4501. Painted in its apple green, it was the flagship locomotive of the program. Somehow, though, I could never catch up with 4501. A trip to Shenandoah, Virginia, to chase it resulted in chasing diesels substituting for it. Finally, in 1985 I made it to Richmond to chase a trip to Keysville, Virginia. Finally, I had crossed paths with the 4501. It would be the only time I would see her under steam.

Southern Railway No. 4501; Amelia Court House, Virginia; August 1985

In 1982 the Southern Railway merged with the Norfolk & Western to create Norfolk Southern. With the N&W a part of the railroad's legacy, a pair of N&W steam locomotives was added to the mix. Class J 4-8-4 No. 611 was first, and one of the most memorable chases I had with her was in September 1989 on a trip from Roanoke to Walton up Christiansburg Hill. The trip was billed as a recreation of the N&W passenger train Powhattan Arrow and the 611 pulled an all-tuscan red consist -- plus, it carried no water canteen behind the locomotive tender, one of the rare times this happened. One of my favorite shots from that day was of the 611 passing under the coaling tower at Vicker, Virginia.

Norfolk & Western No. 611; Vicker, Virginia; September 1989

The Norfolk Southern Steam Program came to an end in 1994. There are plenty more stories and plenty more photos from those trips, and we'll relate a few of those in the coming months.

Jim Boyd - Bringing Night Photography Out of the Dark

2011-01-10T20:10:00.001-05:00

Steamtown U.S.A.; Riverside (Bellows Falls), Vermont; October 1979

Jim Boyd, former editor of Railfan & Railroad magazine, passed away on New Year's Eve 2010. It would probably be fair to say that no other single person influenced the railroad hobby as much as Jim did in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the magazine (which started in 1974) he shaped the rail enthusiast world by bringing steam trips and train chasing and numerous other aspects of the hobby into the mainstream. And while he didn't do anything groundbreaking, what he did do was make some of the mysteries of railroad photography available to the masses through his Camera Bag column and his group night photo sessions.

Ah, the group night photo session. For decades photographers have been taking pictures of trains after dark. And while people like O. Winston Link were doing it on a grand scale with dozens of flashbulbs lighting up entire towns in one big burst of light, there were people who were doing night photography on a smaller scale with maybe a single flash gun. Open flash photography (often called "painting with light") involved locking open the camera's shutter, loading a bulb into the flash gun, firing the flash at a point on the subject being photographed, ejecting the spent bulb, loading a new bulb, moving several feet along the subject and firing the flash at a different point on the subject. Eventually the entire locomotive would have had a flash on it and the shutter would be closed. Depending on the size of the subject and how fast the photographer could eject and reload bulbs, the shutter could be open for 30 seconds up to two minutes or more. And while Link was working with moving subjects that required synchronization to one camera, the static subjects of open flash could be captured by multiple cameras simultaneously.

Jim Boyd was not the first to do open flash photography. He probably wasn't the first to conduct a group night photo session. But in the 1970s his night photo sessions at Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia and Steamtown U.S.A. in Vermont (above) brought delightful results to groups that could include 100 or more photographers. The first group night photo session of Jim's that I attended was one at Steamtown. His night sessions soon became staples of the National Railway Historical Society's annual conventions. At the 1980 Convention in Toronto (the second one I attended) he did night sessions that included streetcars, Canadian Pacific diesels and GO Transit's commuter trains.

GO Transit; Mimico, Ontario; August 1980

Richmond Triple Crossing; Richmond, Virginia; July 1983

Perhaps the most ambitious of the night photo sessions occurred at the NRHS Convention in Richmond, Virginia, in 1983. Richmond has the only "triple crossing" of three main line railroads in North America; at the time there was the Southern Railway at ground level, with Seaboard System above it and Chessie System above them all. Jim arranged for all three railroads to provide locomotives and short trains and he and his staff lit the entire scene for about 100 photographers. It will go down as one of the most classic open flash shots of all time. Today the Triple Crossing is still there, with Norfolk Southern on the bottom and CSX Transportation controlling the two elevated levels.

The 1991 NRHS Convention was in Huntington, West Virginia, and the night photo session had a new problem -- it was pouring rain. While the photo line was busy getting wet and trying to keep cameras dry, Jim (who was also an avid diver) simply put on a wetsuit so he could throw the flash in the storm. The session featured two large steam locomotives, Nickel Plate Road 765 and Pere Marquette 1225, two locomotives that would later star together 17 years later at Train Festival in Michigan in 2008.

Pere Marquette 1225 and Nickel Plate 765; Huntington, West Virginia; August 1991

If I recall correctly, Jim's last NRHS night session was at San Jose in 1992. By this time the flashbulbs that he used (large bulbs the size of a standard household lightbulb) were getting expensive -- if you could find them at all. Jim had shared his knowledge of how to conduct night photo sessions with a new generation, and these guys had adopted high-powered strobes to replace flashbulbs. Jim was perfectly happy to stand back and watch the next generation take over. Eventually I wound up conducting several night photo sessions for NRHS and other events. I still use the same commands Jim used -- "stand by" just before the shot is ready to be taken and "open 'em up" when the flash is ready to be thrown. Every time I yell "open 'em up" and here the clicks of dozens of shutters being tripped, I'll say a small thank you to Jim Boyd for sharing his knowledge that has let the photographers following him get the same kind of results that made Jim famous.

The Last Roll of Film

2010-12-31T12:46:00.000-05:00

Norfolk Southern; Kimball, West Virginia; April 18, 2006

Yesterday marked the final day that Kodachrome film was developed anywhere in the world. While slide films are still being produced and developed, it was Kodachrome that made color slide photography popular. And yesterday as I was reaching for a stack of slides to scan, I just happened to grab the last roll of film I ever shot. No, it wasn't Kodachrome - I had switched from Kodak's standard bearer to Fuji's Provia line of films in 2001, as I felt that Kodachrome was in a state of decline - but still I thought that it was perhaps ironic (and certainly coincidental) that as an era in film came to close I would be scanning slides from the end of my personal film era.

The last rolls of film I shot were in April 2006. My brother, Bruce, and I had headed down to West Virginia to shoot Norfolk Southern's Pocahontas Division - the "Pokey" - and CSX's former Clinchfield lines in southwestern Virginia. I didn't know during the trip that I was shooting film for the last time, but the decision to switch had been made about a month earlier. Things fell into place to finally buy a digital camera after this trip ended.

The weather on the Pokey started out worse than awful, with pouring rain on our arrival. But the weather cleared and the next two days were spent under sunny skies shooting mountain scenes such as a train emerging from Big Four Tunnel No. 1 near Kimball, West Virginia (above).

One shot we had wanted to get was of a train emerging from the tunnel and onto the bridge at Welch. When we got there we were dismayed to see the area was full of railroad maintenance workers. Nonetheless, figuring the worse they could say was "get out of here," I wandered over to the crew foreman with a copy of Railfan magazine that had the shot I wanted on the cover. "We'd like to get this shot," I said, pointing at the cover. He replied, "Okay. Looks like if you go over there and stand by our truck you should be able to get it." He had no problem with us being there, and in fact we had a really good conversation about the Heartland Corridor clearance project that would soon be coming to the Pokey.

Norfolk Southern; Welch, West Virginia; April 18, 2006

CSX; Pool Point, Kentucky; April 20, 2006

With our time on the Pokey done, we headed over to CSX to do more coal railroad photography. One place I had never been (but seen plenty of shots from) was Pool Point, located in Breaks Interstate Park just south of Elkhorn City, Kentucky. We tried and tried to find access to Pool Point with no luck. Finally, we went to the park's headquarters and tracked down a ranger. He described exactly where we needed to park and exactly where to look for the winding path from the road down to the CSX bridge. His directions were perfect and we soon were rewarded with a southbound coal train.

Towards the end of the trip, the weather had gone south again. Our final morning was spent with local rail historian Ron Flanary and he showed us some photo locations around Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia. We chased a few trains, and finally in a fairly heavy rainfall we found a CSX train meeting a Norfolk Southern train near Yuma, Virginia. We shot the meet, had lunch at a Pal's burger drive through, then Ron took us back to our car at Duffield and we began the long drive back to New Jersey in the rain. Little did I know that the meet at Yuma would be the last trains I'd ever put on film.

CSX and Norfolk Southern; Yuma, Virginia; April 20, 2006

Fun (at least for me) Facts
With the year coming to a close, I have counted up what I have shot and scanned. The preliminary count for the end of the year is I shot 14,475 digital photos in 2010, bringing my total to 53,510 digital photos since switching in May 2006. I have also scanned 18,859 of my slides, but using monthly averages of the stuff scanned so far and extrapolated over the years I shot film, it looks like I'll eventually finish with 156,827 slides in the collection. This means that 12.03% of the collection has been scanned and scanning should finish sometime in February 2016. (Note: I do expect that number to actually go down, as right now the scanning is heavily back-loaded on more recent years where I shot a lot more; once I get deeper into the 1980s and early 1990s the average shots per month [which stands at 496 slides per month] will probably decline).

Forgotten Photos

2010-12-27T11:40:00.000-05:00


Monongahela Railway; Time, Pennsylvania; October 1990

I've been slowly working through my slide collection making scans of just about everything. I'll take a stack of slides, load them into the scanner stack loader, make the scans, and then import them into Lightroom. Since I'm not really looking at the slides I'm going to scan as I load them in the scanner, when they open in Lightroom it's like the good old days of opening a fresh box of slides to see what's in them. I'm often surprised at what comes out of the scanner!

Such was the case when I loaded up the slides from October 1990. When the images opened in Lightroom I found a trip that I had taken to the Monongahela Railway back when that was the place to go for photography. The weather was bad for part of the trip, and to compound matters I managed to blow the exposures on some of the best scenes from the trip. Thus, the slides sat unlooked at and unappreciated for 20 years. But with Photoshop and Lightroom, slides that were rendered useless can yield very nice images. My favorite from the trip was of a pair of Detroit Edison GE diesels leading a train at Time, Pennsylvania. I had over-exposed the original, but thanks to modern technology I've managed to save this photo (above).

The rain made for some dark photography on the first day, but some brightening in Photoshop put the Monongahela's "Super 7" GE diesels back into good light, such as this scene of a train heading out of Waynesburg.

Monongahela Railway; Waynesburg, Pennsylvania; October 1990

There were a few other gems located in the October 1990 stack. The town of Nicholson, Pennsylvania, had a large event, complete with a parade, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western's magnificent bridge over Tunkhannock Creek and the town. That night the bridge was illuminated by a searchlight truck. The black & white photos I took that evening were pretty good (one appeared in the NRHS Bulletin), but I was never happy with the color slides. But thanks to scanning technology, the color version is now usable.

Nicholson Viaduct; October 1990

There was still more hidden gems in that stack of slides. A bunch of us did an informal night photo session at the shops of the New York, Susquehanna & Western in Little Ferry, New Jersey. One of the scenes from that evening is among my all-time favorites, but there was a second scene I had almost forgotten about. There was a front-end loader parked near GP18 No. 1800, and four of us carefully stacked ourselves, cameras and tripods onto the hood of the loader to get a nice scene of the 1800 with another locomotive tucked away in the shop.

New York, Susquehanna & Western; Little Ferry, New Jersey; October 1990

And finally, it's been my goal recently to get the Stourbridge Line's BL2 diesel passing the PP&L power house in Hawley, Pennsylvania. I knew I had shot a fan trip there many years ago, but forgot exactly when. Well, guess what showed up in this stack of slides. Yup, the trip was just over 20 years ago, in October 1990. It's great to go down memory lane with a stack of old slides made new through modern technology!

Stourbridge Line; Hawley, Pennsylvania; October 1990

Special Trains at Christmas

2010-12-21T19:34:00.001-05:00

New Hope & Ivyland; Hood, Pennsylvania

Christmas has always been a special time for railroad enthusiasts -- how many railfans got their start with a Lionel set under the tree? Trains and Christmas just go together.

The Polar Express movie from a few years ago only reinforced the Christmas and trains connection. Many tourist railroads offer official Polar Express trips or knock-offs (North Pole Express is one way to avoid copyright issues!). And a lot of this magic can be found at night, when the trains and the surrounding communities are decorated in lights. Thus, in addition to being a time for peace on Earth and goodwill towards men, it's also a good time to break out the strobes for some good ol' night photography.

On December 10, 2010, I headed down to the New Hope & Ivyland at New Hope, Pennsylvania. Just outside of town is a location called Hood, with a nice bridge over a small stream. Santa was riding the NH&I throughout the day, but on Fridays and Saturdays there were three departures after dark. I met up with Mike Burkhart and Jeff Smith at Hood, and each of us set up a set of lights to capture the Santa Claus specials. With two flashes each, it was quite the light show each time 2-8-0 No. 40 steamed by. We stayed at Hood for three hours, trying different angles with each departure. It was a cold, but fun, night.

SEPTA Christmas Lights Special; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The next night the three of us were onboard the Christmas Lights Streetcar Special hosted by the Wilmington Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. Mike is the Chapter president and assisted with moving lights around, while Jeff and I used over-the-shoulder Lumedyne flash units to light a PCC-2 streetcar on the streets of Philadelphia. SEPTA personnel (consisting of streetcar operator Gary Mason and supervisor Ed Springer) were cooperative in allowing several night photos; locations were picked based on the amount of Christmas lights along the street or, in some cases, because a street was quiet of auto and other streetcar traffic. No Santa tonight, but it was an unusual streetcar opportunity.

SEPTA Christmas Lights Special; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A week later (December 19) Mike and I were in Delaware along the Wilmington & Western, where their Pennsylvania Railroad "doodlebug" (a self-propelled diesel-powered railcar) had its halls decked with many, many Christmas lights. We went to the small community of Wooddale, location of one of many bridges across Red Clay Creek, to photograph four after-dark trips on the railroad. Steve Jensen, a volunteer for the W&W, was out chasing as well, and he arranged for the railcar to traverse the bridge slowly on each trip, allowing us to fire off several shots each trip.

Finally, the last trip ran and it was time to head home. Now I really have the Christmas Spirit!


Wilmington & Western; Wooddale, Delaware

More photos from each of these trips can be found in Photo Lines.

Timeless Treasure

2010-12-08T21:30:00.000-05:00

Passing the sandhouse at the Rockhill Furnace shop complex

Back in October I participated in a photo charter on the East Broad Top Railroad in Rockhill Furnace, Pa., hosted by Lerro Productions. The EBT is the last narrow gauge railroad still operating in its original location east of the Mississippi River (although Maine's Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington now has tracks on the old right-of-way after decades of abandonment). The EBT has five miles of track, much of which parallels busy U.S. Highway 522. Back yards and businesses have encroached on much of the EBT, especially immediately north of Orbisonia.

Pete Lerro of Lerro Productions decided to focus the charter on the EBT's true treasure -- the nearly intact shop complex in Rockhill Furnace; the EBT station is there as well, although it bears the name of Orbisonia, the larger town across Blacklog Creek from Rockhill. The roundhouse, sand house, coal tipple and water plug all make the shop complex a trip back in time.

EBT has six 2-8-2s on the property in three sizes -- No. 12 is the smallest, with Nos. 14 and 15 in the medium size range and Nos. 16, 17 and 18 the workhorses of the old coal hauler. Currently only No. 15 operates, while the rest sleep in the Rockhill roundhouse. Pete arranged for Nos. 16 and 17 to be brought outside the roundhouse for the charter, and through some pyrotechnics the two dead locomotives had some life brought to them.

East Broad Top 15 passes 17 and 16 in the yard at Rockhill Furnace, Pa.

The previous evening, an elaborate night photo session was held at the Orbisonia station, with No. 15 posing by the depot. Lerro Productions used fix lighting to allow photographers to capture many different angles over the course of a couple of hours.

At the Orbisonia station

The evening wrapped up with some classic scenes inside the roundhouse as No. 15 was put to bed. Thanks to the staff of the East Broad Top and Lerro Productions for a journey back in time.


In the Rockhill Furnace roundhouse

More photos from this event can be found in this section of Photo Lines on the website.

That's What It's All About

2010-12-01T22:34:00.001-05:00

Santa tosses presents at Clinchco, Virginia


The 50th running of the Clinchfield Santa Train in 1992

On November 20, 2010, brother Bruce and I chased the 68th running of the Santa Train on the Clinchfield Railroad (now a part of CSX) in southwest Virginia. The last time I chased this train was 18 years ago, on the 50th Anniversary, when Union Pacific sent their Challenger No. 3985 to run in disguise as Clinchfield No. 676. On that day in 1992 we spent most of the time photographing the head end -- the steam locomotive. But the real story of the Santa Train occurs at the rear, where the Jolly Old Elf tosses off tons of toys and goodies to the people of Appalachia.

The Santa Train arrives in Fort Blackmore

This year Santa had two helpers, mother-and-daughter singing duo Wynonna and Naomi Judd. Bruce and I first went into Haysi to photograph the stop there as swarms of people gathered to see Santa. Down the line at Clinchco the crowds got larger. We bypassed a couple of stops to get some head-end shots of the train on the road, but returned to the rear during the busiest stop in St. Paul. Here there were hundreds of people ready to see Santa and the Judds. And as Santa tossed off toys, I just happened to be at the right spot when a little girl smiled as she held her new stuffed bear. The Santa Train isn't about passenger locomotives and steel -- it's about a little girl's smile.

Smiles at St. Paul, Virginia

Southern Ontario Rails and Transit

2010-06-17T00:59:00.002-04:00

I was invited up to Ottawa to do a program for the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders, a large group of railfans and modelers, in April 2010. Coincidentally, my home Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, the Wilmington Chapter, had been looking to do a set of streetcar charters in Toronto. Combining the two into one trip into Canada seemed pretty logical, so on April 13 I set out with brother Bruce and friend Tom Moran for a trip north of the border.

Day 1: April 13, 2010 -- The Charge To Ottawa
Photos for both April 13 and April 14 can be found here in Photo Lines.

On the first day I met Bruce and Tom over at the airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where we ditched Bruce's car and headed north in my rental. Since the OVAR meeting was that night, we were on a bit of a time constraint, so we headed straight across the Canadian border at Thousand Islands. Once in Canada, we made a brief stop at Brockville, where we shot the signals and station.

The light wasn't real good at the station for an eastbound (which is what we had coming), so we moved around the corner from the depot and got one VIA Rail Canada train from Toronto bound for Ottawa. From there, we pressed on to Ottawa.

The OVAR meeting turned out to be a lot of fun. They are a large group (140 people at the meeting, which included a pre-meeting meal) and I really enjoyed giving the program. After the meeting it was off to a motel in Ottawa for the night.

Day 2: April 14, 2010 -- Around Canada's Capitol

The next morning we were invited to take a look at the ongoing restoration of Ottawa streetcar 696 at the OC Transpo shop. We had time beforehand, however, to go looking for a VIA train or two, and a pair left Ottawa bound for Toronto and Montreal early in the morning. We set out looking for a spot to shoot the Toronto train first, finally settling on Richmond, Ontario. After shooting there, we scooted cross country to the Montreal line, but were too late getting there for the second VIA train.

From there we went back into the city to the OC Transpo shops. We took a look at car 696, which is undergoing a full restoration to operation (which can't happen until Ottawa gets a new electric light rail system put in). Also at the shop was car 905, which had been rescued from its second career as a summer cottage.

After our tour of the two cars, we headed over to where Ottawa's diesel-powered light rail line crosses the Rideau River near Carlton University. Dubbed the O-Train, the five-mile line features two trains in service simultaneously, and all northbound and southbound trains are scheduled to meet just north of the Rideau bridge at the Carlton station. We shot many trains on the bridge, but then got out of town -- there was a shot southwest of the city calling my name.

Our afternoon destination was Dalhousie, Quebec, where a surviving water tank still stood along the Canadian Pacific main line. I had spent an afternoon there in 2009 but didn't get any trains. All I wanted was one westbound in the afternoon, and I'd be happy.

Along the way we made one brief stop to catch VIA at Maxville, Ontario, then we got to Dalhousie, which sits right on the Ontario-Quebec border. With the CPR quiet, however, we decided to gamble and leave the shot of the tank (even though it was perfectly lit) and grab a shot of VIA up at Glen Robertson, Ontario.

Well, you can probably guess what happened. Yup, as we headed back to Dalhousie a westbound CPR train passed the water tank in perfect sun. We were about three minutes too late -- in fact, the rear of the train was still on the crossing in Dalhousie as we came to a sad, mad stop in town.

Okay, that didn't work. After another long wait with nothing happening, two more VIA trains were due heading for Montreal. We decided to gamble (again) and headed just east of Dalhousie to the diamond at DeBeaujeu where the CPR main line crosses VIA's Montreal-Ottawa line. Here we were rewarded with a couple of trains -- and CPR didn't show up to make us mad this time. A couple of signal boxes with locks for both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific made for some nice "detail" shots as we waited for trains.

Back at Dalhousie the wait for a westbound CPR freight resumed. The sun was rapidly setting, and all we got was two out-of-the-sun eastbounds. The sinking sun made for some very nice silouhette shots of the tank, but that still wasn't what I was after. Very reluctantly, we finally packed up at sunset and headed for a motel in Cornwall. Once again, I had been beaten by the tank.

Day 3: April 15, 2010 -- On The Ontario-Quebec Border
Photos for April 15 can be found here in Photo Lines.

We awoke in Cornwall as the sun was rising into a clear sky. That silouhette shot we had gotten at the tank at Dalhousie at sunset the previous night kept going through my brain -- that wasn't a bad shot for a morning eastbound. The sun was out, we had some time -- "We're going back to Dalhousie," I declared.

So back we went. This time, luck was very much on our side, and it didn't take long to get an eastbound Canadian Pacific freight rumbling past the water tank. One of the primary missions of the trip had been accomplished!

With that piece of business out of the way, we heard on the scanner what sounded like a train up on VIA's line at Glen Robertson. We headed up there to investigate, and sure enough there was a Canadian National local, led by a battered locomotive, taking the switch onto the old Ottawa Central (which CN had just recently bought back). The train quickly vanished into the trees to do some switching, so we headed up to Glen Sandfield to wait him out at the crossing. Eventually he arrived and we got our shot.

Next up was a Montreal-bound VIA train, so we returned to the main line at Glen Robertson and got a broadside shot passing a farm. With that train out of the picture, we were then left to try to figure out what to do next. Hmmmmm.... We finally settled on chasing that CN train up the Ottawa Central on its way to Hawkesbury. We headed up the line and finally overtook the train at Vankleek Hill, which has a small yard used when the OC ran the line.

The train only paused for a moment here before resuming its journey up the line. We'd get him again crossing the fields at Green Lane. Alas, once in Hawkesbury we found that photo opportunities were limited. We broke off there and headed back down to the VIA main, which had two trains due through -- one Montreal-bound and one headed for Ottawa -- in fairly short order. We decided to head for the station in Alexandria to shoot them.

Our arrival into Alexandria had a bit of a surprise -- the Montreal train was already sitting in the station! As it turns out, he was running about ten minutes early, so we had plenty of time to park (more or less), get out and get a few photos before he departed. The meet occurred "just around the corner" at DeBeaujeu, so we didn't have long to wait for the Ottawa train. We shot him in the station, and again as he made his departure.

With the day pretty far along at this point, we had to make a decision -- we were ultimately heading for Toronto, but we weren't really in good range to see a lot before darkness settled in. We decided to head back the wrong direction, eastward towards Montreal, and hit the Canadian National main line at Coteau, Quebec. This is where Ottawa-to-Montreal trains join the main line, plus there are the through Montreal-Toronto trains, a yard, some freight, a station and a three-track signal bridge. Plenty of stuff to shoot.

Our arrival pretty much coincided with a westbound VIA train powered by one of the "genesis" diesels pulling LRC cars. About 45 minutes later we got a treat, as an F40 pulling an all-stainless steel train headed westward. An eastbound CN grain train was through shortly thereafter. As soon as the eastbound freight cleared, we got a westbound VIA train under the signal bridge, followed by a freight 20 minutes later. A local freight pulled into the yard, and the day finished off with one more eastbound VIA train and two more westbound VIA's. A nice show to end the day.

Day 4: April 16, 2010 -- Rain, Rain, Go Away
Photos for April 16 can be found here in Photo Lines.

We were back in Cornwall for the night and when we awoke, unlike the previous morning, we found clouds and rain. The clouds had actually moved in the previous day while we were at Coteau, but now they had precipitation along with them.

We headed west towards Montreal, and almost immediately picked up a westbound Canadian National freight. We gave chase, finally pulling off the freeway and down to the tracks at Ingleside, Ontario. Unfortunately, we were blocked by a gate here and couldn't get a really good shot, so we headed back out, this time getting the train at Maitland.

We knew we had both east- and westbound VIA trains coming, so we headed into Lansdowne where the two trains met almost in front of us (actually just a few seconds apart just to our east). Just as we were leaving, we spotted a headlight and caught a Canadian National freight heading east through the signals in town.

We continued our westward push, stopping at the VIA station in the middle of nowhere at Gananoque, Ontario. With the rain still coming down, we got a westbound and eastbound freight about 20 minutes apart. The (fairly) new construction station, built for VIA, now houses a model railroad club and a small VIA waiting room; only a few trains stop here.

We arrived at the next big town, Kingston, with the rain still falling. An eastbound VIA train was due, and as he made his station stop a westbound freight came by. Fortunately, the freight cleared before the VIA train proceeded east, so we were able to photograph both trains. The VIA train would split at Brockville, with one section going to Montreal and the other to Ottawa; interestingly, the two trains operated as one unit, complete with the Ottawa section's locomotive tucked into the middle of the train!

Up next was the train we were looking for -- a Windsor-bound train that would have F40s on the point and Budd-built stainless steel cars following -- almost a 1950s streamliner (ignoring the F40 for a moment). While this westbound train made its stop, something nice happened -- the sun came out!

The clouds had returned by the time we made our next two stops. We caught eastbound and westboundVIA trains at Napanee on the bridge located there, then we shot a westbound VIA train at Belleville. The next stop was at Trenton, where the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National run side-by-side. We caught an eastbound CP freight and a westbound VIA train on the CN, but the photo angles were pretty tight. Heading west, the CP and CN remain fairly close together, so we headed towards Newtonville, a location that has bridges over both railroads.

We didn't get to Newtonville -- at least not right away. I spotted the end-to-end wooden bridges over the two railroads at Wesleyville, and with the sun out we decided to make our stand there. The Canadian Pacific was up first, with a prefectly-lit view of a train passing the signal on single track.

Then the double-track CN got into the action with two westbounds -- a freight followed by VIA. Back over on the CP, we got a westbound passing under the wooden road bridge. We finally moved down to Newtonville, where (with the sun still out) we got an eastbound VIA train and a westbound CN freight right at sunset. Time to head to Toronto!

To be continued -- check back.

Frozen Tundra of the South

2010-01-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

As a recently elected to the Board of Directors of the National Railway Historical Society, I ventured south to Charleston, South Carolina, to attend a board meeting on January 9-10, 2010. While I briefly considered flying, I decided that I wanted to see a few things along the way, so I loaded up my iPod with some great tunes, downloaded a few trainwatching guides, programmed the scanner and headed south on the evening of January 7. The night was cold, and I encountered some snow showers below Baltimore. I met up with my brother Bruce at a motel in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where we'd begin the next day's photography.

Day 1: January 8, 2010 -- Ashland Interlude
See the photos in Photo Line

Virginia Railway Express provides commuter rail between Fredericksburg and the nation's capitol, but only one train would head north after daybreak. With the sun attempting to pop out after the previous night's snow showers, we had trouble finding a location that might provide nose lighting on the locomotive (which pushes from the south end of the train) and was out of the shadows of the trees that closely hug the track. We weren't sure if Amtrak's Auto Train had gone north yet (Julie at Amtrak's toll-free number said it hadn't arrived yet at Lorton, about 30 miles up the track). We finally found a place in the woods and snapped the northbound VRE train pushing northward.

After that the sky clouded up again and snow -- heavy snow (and not in the forecast) began falling. We went to VRE's Leeland Road station about four miles above Fredericksburg and in fairly short order we got a northbound CSX coal train and a southbound Amtrak train. We then moved to the nearby overpass for a view of a northbound Amtrak.

The ultimate goal for the day was to get to Ashland, a quaint town where the tracks roll through the middle of the main street downtown on a private median. But on the way to Ashland is the town of Doswell where the former Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac (the line we were following) crosses the former Chesapeake & Ohio. the C&O is now operated by the Buckingham Branch Railroad, and they had a local train working Doswell. We also got a northbound train rattling the diamond on the former RF&P. Meanwhile, a solid line of crystal clear sky was working its way in from the west, so we beat feet down to Ashland.

We started off in Ashland with a badly-lit northbound train. Talk on the radio, however, indicated that a bad switch several miles north at Milford had southbound trains blocked. Once the switch was fixed, a parade of two Amtrak trains and two CSX freights came through. Nice.

Next up was a very poorly lit northbound, but we could hear him talking to a southbound up the line. I had never gotten the shot of a train passing the church at Gwathmey, two miles below Ashland, so while Bruce stayed in town to get a shot near the Ashland station, I headed to Gwathmey for the southbound. Just below Gwathmey the freight met a northbound (and once again poorly lit) Amtrak train.

The day was winding down, and long shadows were creeping it at Ashland. With one more Amtrak southbound on the schedule, we headed back to Doswell, which was more open. Before Amtrak arrived, a northbound local freight appeared and stopped to work the Buckingham Branch interchange. Then in was time for Amtrak, and then it was time to hit the road. Bruce headed north back to New Jersey, and I headed non-stop south to Charleston. Okay, I made one stop -- I had to get a taco at South of the Border!

Day 2: January 11, 2010 -- Empty Palmetto Rails
See the photos in Photo Lines

Ah, the warm south -- not! The fountains in front of the Charleston Place Hotel had ice clinging to its horses. After two days of meetings, it was time to head north and I was anxious to explore what is known as the Lowcountry in South Carolina. I had several stops I wanted to make along CSX's ex-Atlantic Coast Line trackage. Since this was the I-95 of the rail world, I figured getting trains at most of the locations would be a snap.

It was sunny and pleasantly warm(er) as I stopped next to a signal bridge just south of the Charleston Amtrak station in North Charleston. I hoped to get one freight going south before I had to relocate to find better lighting for Amtrak's northbound Palmetto. Sadly, all that came was a light engine move (with the engine running backwards) and a local freight (with the engine running backwards). Amtrak was nearly on time, however, so I pushed north hoping to find a wide open spot to shoot a broadside of the train.

Driving north, I passed the dragging defect detector at Goose Creek along U.S. 52. This would start talking on the radio once a train passed over it, so I made note of the mileage. Before I got to Monck's Corner, the detector, now about ten miles behind me, went off. I had a ten-mile lead on Amtrak. Crossing the tracks on a bridge at Monck's Corner I noticed a depot to the north -- that would be where I would make my stand. I snaked through town and down to the depot, only to discover the angle that looked so promising from the bridge (a quarter mile away) was quite cluttered. What to do . . . Amtrak was closing fast.

I decided that I would press my luck and try to make Macbeth ahead of the train. I snaked back out through town, drove north on 52 and made the left turn for the one-mile trek into Macbeth. It wasn't as open as I would have liked, but when I opened the car door I could hear horns to the south. This would be the shot, like it or not. It didn't frame up half bad, and I snagged it. Without any freights in the immediate forecast, I decided not to wait at Macbeth and pushed on to the next target on my list.

The next place I wanted to reach was Etta, just north of St. Stephen (and called the best train watching location in South Carolina). The town of St. Stephen looked like it might have a depot, so I swung onto the main drag off U.S. 52, wandered to the tracks and -- yup -- there was a depot. After snapping that, I headed into Etta where the tracks cross the Santee River on a long bridge. This would be worth a wait, so I turned the scanner up (I'd hear trains calling signals miles away) and eased back for a nap. Taking a nap proved to be too easy, as the radio stayed quiet. After about an hour, the sun had pretty much moved out of position for a good shot, so I headed back north.

Lane had good potential for shooting, and I could hear a maintenance crew talking on the radio north of town. I wandered up and found a work train sitting waiting for a signal to go north. I continued on, stopping at Kingstree to shoot the Amtrak depot. By now the work train was on the move, but it was coming directly out of the sun. With no light on the nose and practically no light on either side, I settled for a shot of the train passing the Railroad Auction.

Lake City looked big enough to have a depot, so I followed the old highway into town and found a station, along with an Atlantic Coast Line caboose and observation car on display. Still no trains. The small town of Scranton had good possibilities, but still no trains. A decaying depot was still standing in Effingham a few years ago (according to reports), but investigation showed that all that was left was a concrete platform.

Finally I arrived at Florence, the end of my planned itinerary. I had been following the railroad for 80 miles and six hours, and other than Amtrak and the work train I hadn't seen much else. So much for it being a busy railroad. At Florence I found the old ACL depot and headquarters building (now used by a hospital), and the new Amtrak station next to that. I had about twelve hours of driving left to do, so I prepared to head north. As I left Florence, the first southbound freight left town heading into the territory I had just fruitlessly followed. Some days you're the windshield, and some days you're the bug.

Below L.A.

2010-01-03T01:32:00.000-05:00

In late October we had some family business to tend to in San Diego, mostly involving getting an aunt's house ready for sale, as she no longer needed it (small house -- actually what we used to call a trailer). Mom and brother Bruce boarded Southwest out of Philadelphia, heading for Los Angeles. On Monday, October 26, we went to a taping of The Price Is Right, then headed down to San Diego in the evening. Upon arrival, we found that the local church had already done most of the work, and a friend of my aunt's was willing to drive Mom around to take care of paperwork. That left me and Bruce with four almost totally free days to explore deep Southern California. Woo hoo!

Day 1: October 27, 2009 -- Sprinting Along
Photos at Photo Lines

An ocean fog had blanketed much of the coast around San Diego, so after trying to figure out what to do we headed inland to Escondido, the eastern terminus of the diesel-powered light rail Sprinter service to Oceanside some 22 miles away. We started at the Escondido station, getting a few photos. Since service is only every 30 minutes, we decided that moving from location to location by auto (instead of riding the train) would maximize our photo output. After several shots at Escondido, we moved on to the Nordahl Road station for a few trains.

At the Cal State station in San Marcos, we opted not to shoot at the station (lack of parking being one reason), so found a perch just east of the station that gave a nice elevated view of the railroad. Most of the line is on an old ex-Santa Fe branch (and indeed there is still freight service to Escondido), but the light rail line at San Marcos is on new right-of-way, eliminating a lot of grade crossings (freight still uses the original right-of-way).

At the San Marcos Civic Center station we shot a train or two passing the junction where the western end of the new right-of-way joins the original line. A long passing siding goes through the Palomar College station, so we got a few shots there, then finished up at the western end of the double track at CP Missy (named for parallel Mission Boulevard).

Hard as it is to believe, in a complete afternoon we only covered about a third of the line. That just means we have to try again sometime!

Day 2: October 28, 2009 -- Pacific Breezes
Photos at Photo Lines

Just a few months previous (March to be precise) we had been in California for Winterail in the Bay Area, but included Southern California in the trip. We had spent a day in the Del Mar area, but persistent ocean fog made for a less than fully productive outing. Today was different. We arrived in Del Mar under sunny skies and immediately knocked off a scene that we had gotten skunked on in March -- a Pacific Surfliner passing a very expensive house on the coast.

Del Mar is located about 20 miles north of San Diego and is in the heart of where the Santa Fe followed the coast from below San Juan Capistrano southward. Today it sees frequent Amtrak service (the trains are push-pull with the locomotives on the south end) and Coaster commuter service between Oceanside and San Diego (push-pull with locomotives on the north end). After successfully getting our southbound Amtrak train, next up was a San Diego-bound Coaster. Since it would be pushing (and thus the locomotive's headlight would be out), we opted for a broadside shot with the ocean as a backdrop.

A northbound Amtrak train would catch our attention next, with a northbound Coaster following. The Coaster sure looked good along the cliffs! After another northbound Amtrak, we left the cliffs and headed north of the old Del Mar station (no longer used as such) for a few more trains.

We worked our way up to Oceanside, where Coaster service ends and Metrolink service into Los Angeles begins, plus the Sprinter comes in from Escondido -- Oceanside's station hosts passenger trains from four different operators! We found a nice hill to shoot the Sprinter from just west of downtown, but were just a few minutes late getting into position. We put that shot into the memory banks to try again later in the week. After shooting the Sprinter in the station, we headed to the bridge just north of downtown and shot a southbound Amtrak.

Unlike Amtrak and the Coasters, Metrolink doesn't seem to run its locomotives consistently on one end of the train, so it's a guessing game if you'll get a locomotive or cab car leading. We hedged our bets and set up for a broadside on the bridge.

We hadn't been to San Clemente in -- gosh -- 18 years (hard to believe), and wanted to shoot there. Unfortunately, since our last visit things had changed. There's a lot more fencing and trees between the tracks and beaches and we found shooting there to be challenging. We just barely caught a southbound Amtrak, then got a going-away view of a northbound Amtrak followed by a very nice view of a southbound Metrolink train. A few more Amtrak trains and a Metrolink (cab car leading, but ncie shot) rounded out our San Clemente visit.

For a grand finale, we headed back to Oceanside to get those pesky what-end-is-the-engine-on Metrolink trains. A broadside of a northbound (with the locomotive pushing) rounded out the day.

Day 3: October 29, 2009 -- Clang Goes The Trolley
Photos at Photo Lines

The San Diego Trolley ushered in the new era of streetcars and light rail when it started in the early 1980s. Since then, dozens of cities across North America have followed San Diego's lead and put in new rail transit systems. Despite its status as a pioneer, however, I had only gotten a few token shots of the system in the past. Today would change that. We'd spend a day riding and photographing part of the trolley. (Trolley is a bit of a misnomer -- it sounds quaint, but this is one modern light rail system.)

We parked the car at the Arnele Avenue station on the far north/west end of the combined green and orange lines (since we were staying near El Cajon on this trip) and boarded a northbound car to get to the end of the line. After a stop at Gillespie Field (end of the orange line) we went on to the end of the green line at Santee Town Center, one of a few stations located adjacent to a mall (this sytem really knows where its customers want to go!). Retracing our route back towards San Diego, we stopped at Amaya Drive for a few shots. I could see a young transit cop talking on a cell phone and, sure enough, when he was finished he wandered over to us. "You can't take pictures of the trolley," he said. "There's no law against it," I replied. "I was on the phone with my sergeant and he said we can't have people taking too many pictures." "Why?" That led to the standard 9/11-security-terrorist speech. I tried not to roll my eyes. "There's no law against it. We're out here all day, and if your sergeant has a problem with that he can come find us." With that, the transit cop wandered off. Never did see another one.

Our next stop was the elevated Grantville station, where we were able to get some nice telephoto shots of the trolley passing Jack Murphy (I refuse to call it Qualcomm) Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers. From there, we paused at the Stadium station (also elevated) for some more shots.

At the Old Town Transit Center the green line ends and the blue line begins. We spent several minutes here waiting for an Amtrak train and a Coaster to come by on the parallel main line. One operator wanted her picture taken in her trolley (whatever happened to that "no photos" stuff we encountered earlier) and another operator acknowledged that a lot of "foamers" worked for the transit system. Friendly people.

Continuing on into downtown San Diego, we stopped at the ex-Santa Fe depot to shoot Amtrak and some streetcars. A Coaster was also in the station, getting ready to head north. The area around the Amtrak station is target-rich, and we found plenty to see and photograph here.

Across the street from the Amtrak station is the busy America Plaza trolley station, a transfer point between the orange line back to El Cajon and the blue line on its way to San Ysidro. The downtown area provide a lot of shooting opportunities.

The area around the Convention Center in San Diego is full of nice buildings that make for a good photographic backdrop, so after finishing downtown we hopped on an orange line train and rode it to its terminus (which just happens to be near the Coaster maintenance yard). Riding back, we got off at the Convention Center station to shoot streetcars, and even got a northbound Coaster coming out to go to the station. Nice.

Time was rapidly not getting on our side and we had to get back to El Cajon. Just to be different, we rode the orange line back. This has more street running in the city than the blue line, and it passes through some of the grittier parts of town. It was quite a contrast to the area by the Convention Center. We rode non-stop to the Grossmont Transit Center, passing old railroad stations in Lemon Grove and La Mesa (and even a steam engine on display in the latter). At the Grossmont Transit Center, where the green line rejoins the orange line, we headed away from our final destination, returning to Jack Murphy Stadium to get a few shots that the light hadn't been quite right to get in the morning. Believing that to tell the whole story you need to photograph people interacting with the transit system, I shot a passenger buying a ticket from a vending machine. After finishing up at the Murph, we headed back to Arnele Avenue and our car for the return trip to El Cajon.

Day 4: October 30, 2009 -- Heading To the Harbor
Photos at Photo Lines

We needed to bid farewell to the San Diego area on this day and get back up to Los Angeles for the flight home. After taking care of some loose ends in the morning, we set out and took care of some photographic loose ends. First up was getting a trolley passing the steam locomotive on display in La Mesa. Then, using a timetable for a guide, we intercepted a couple of Amtrak Surfliners, one near Sorrento Valley and another at Carlsbad. At Oceanside we stopped to get the shot of the Sprinter from the bluff that we had not quite gotten right a few days before.

We had a motel reserved near Los Angeles International (preparing for an early-morning flight the next day) so we dropped Mom at the motel and Bruce and I headed for San Pedro. Bob and Diane Gallegos (from Milwaukee) were also in California, so we met up it them to chase the San Pedro streetcar around. Primarily a tourist operation, the streetcar serves the cruise ship dock area of Long Beach, bringing back memories of the old Pacific Electric that used to serve San Pedro.

Bob grew up near Long Beach and knew his way around, so after getting the streetcar we set off exploring the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Despite it being a prime target for terrorists smuggling in small thermonuclear devices (according to the press), the Ports have a surprising number of public access points to watch containers being unloaded and to watch the Port's railroad, Pacific Harbor Line.

We came across a ship unloading containers from CSX; these weren't containers full of Chinese imports, but rather empty containers for domestic use that were constructed overseas (domestic containers are larger than ocean-going ones). We all clicked away at the stack of new containers and got some great stock images of port activity.

Finished with the containers, we headed towards Anaheim Street looking for Pacific Harbor Line action. We were rewarded with a train crossing the bridge onto Terminal Island, which we shot from a marina. We later caught up with a BNSF train on its way out to ITS.

All good things must come to an end, and that was the case for our trip. Bob and Diane, like Bruce and I, had dinner plans, so we said farewell and went our separate ways. A nice dinner, a short night, and it was back on Southwest to Philadelphia, leaving sunny California behind.

Winterail-fanning -- 2009 Edition (Part 2)

2009-08-21T22:03:00.004-04:00

With a busy travel schedule, we haven't posted anything for about a month. Whew! But we're back and should get on to a more consistent schedule once again. One of the trips was to Duluth, Minnesota, for the convention of the National Railway Historical Society. We'll get to that trip in a couple of days, but first let's finish up our California trip from March 2009.

Part 1 of this story can be found here.
Photos for this story can be found here.

Day 4: March 13, 2009 -- Around the Upper Central Valley
We have a bit of a time constraint on this day. We're hosting the annual Railfan & Railroad/NRHS Stockton Slide and Pizza Party in the evening, and the afternoon will be spent buying wristbands and pizzas, and generally getting set up. Still, there's some time in the morning to look around the area between Stockton and Modesto, California.

We wander the fields around Escalon, looking for a spot to shoot. A northbound San Joaquin service Amtrak train is due; the bad news is the trains run in push-pull configuration with the locomotive always on the north end, making properly-lit photos a bit of a challenge. Nonetheless, we find a broadside-ish location and snap the train as it rolls through.

From there we head down to Riverbank, which has a former Santa Fe yard. A northbound BNSF Railway train is ready to depart, so we set up at the bridge over the Stanislaus River north of downtown and get a nice broadside shot. We then travel south of the Modesto Amtrak station (which actually sits quite a ways out of town) and get a southbound passenger train on a bridge; once again, the locomotive is on the north end, making for a challenging shot.

The big attraction in the area east of Modesto is the Modesto & Empire Traction, a former electric railroad now powered by diesel and serving a large industrial park. Until recently, a fleet of General Electric 70-Ton end-cab switchers was the railroad's primary power, but environmentally-friendly genset locomotives (as well as larger second-hand EMD switchers) have eroded the ranks of the 70-Tonners. With a little bit of poking around, we find one of the genset units busy at work near the yard.

Further exploring the industrial park, we encounter a large group of railfans, and we soon see what has caught their eye -- a trio of the 70-Tonners is working near the railroad's offices! We join the group of photographers and watch the classic workhorses switch around.

Soon, though, it's time for us to move on. Heading back towards Stockton, we note that a southbound San Joaquin train is due through, so we pause at Escalon to shoot it. We're rewarded with a southbound BNSF local first, however, with the Amtrak train not far behind. It's only a little past noon, but duty calls and our shooting comes to an end for the day.

Day 5: March 15, 2009 --- Heading Back To San Francisco
Okay, actually this is day 6; the previous day was spent at Winterail watching the multitude of high-quality slide shows, but no trains were photographed. Thus, this is actually our fifth day of shooting.

The weather is iffy in most places, but the Central Valley almost always has sun, so we abandon our plans to go to Altamont Pass in favor of sticking with the Valley. We start out back at Riverbank for a northbound Amtrak train, then peek in over the fence at the Modesto & Empire Traction shops for a look at the 70-Tonners sitting outside. It's back to Riverbank, however, to get a southbound San Joaquin on the Stanislaus Bridge.

Continuing south beyond Modesto, we find a former Santa Fe unit behind a razor wire fence at a grain elevator near Denair. It wasn't that long ago that this elevator's units sat unprotected in the open overnight, but the proliferation of graffiti (which used to be confined to freight cars, but is spreading to locomotives in the west) has led to higher security measures. A northbound Amtrak train is shot nearby.

Bruce needs to be at the airport before me, so we start working our way to the Bay. On the way, we make a quick stop at the yard in Tracy, where we find Union Pacific power tied up with California Northern diesels. From there, it's off to the airport; it's raining in San Francisco.

After dropping off Bruce, I decide to head into the city to photograph MUNI streetcars. My first choice is to hit Market Street and the restored PCC cars, but a parade has just finished and all of Market Street is jammed with traffic; parking is non-existent. I circle back and follow the Church Street line up the hills outside of town and soon wind up at Mission Dolores Park. Hmmmm. I decide to shoot in this area, but problematic parking puts me several blocks away. Not to worry, though -- the rain is letting up, and a pleasant walk back to the park reveals some very interesting architecture in this residential area. There are places where the J-Line swings through tight spaces between houses to travel on private right-of-way (and avoid Church Street's steep grades), and I pause to get a few shots there on the wet streets.

At the park, I find that not only do the modern streetcars of the J-Line pass here, but the vintage cars of the Market Street (F-Line) pass here as well on their way to the carbarn. No PCC cars come by, but I do get a few shots of ex-Milan (as in Italy) cars passing the park.

Finally, evening is moving in and my red-eye flight time is getting closer. I finish off my day at the Millbrae station on Caltrain, located convenient to the airport as well as an In-N-Out Burger location. A couple of night shots and I pack up the gear and head to the airport, leaving California behind until next March.

Following the Hi-Line

2009-07-16T20:01:00.009-04:00

From the Mountains to the Prairies -- Part 3
Part 2 can be found here.
Photos for this section can be found here.

Day 4: September 8, 2008 -- They Call the Hill "Marias"
The whole point of staying in Cut Bank was to be in position to work our way east along the former Great Northern "Hi-Line." But with the Rocky Mountains clearly visible to the west and perhaps some unfinished business to tend to, we head back into the hills for another day on Marias Pass.

Our first stop is at Meriweather (named for Meriweather Lewis of the Lewis & Clark expedition -- this was the territory they passed through) to get the lonely grain elevator against the sunrise sky. Not long after, we encounter our first train of the day, an eastbound BNSF train at Blackfoot.

The eastbound Empire Builder should be along soon, and we wind our way back into the mountains, staking out the footbridge at the Izaak Walton Inn at Essex. We get the train there, then briefly stop to shoot the BNSF helper power at the nearby engine facility. Then the chase is on! We get ahead of Amtrak in the snowsheds, Shed 7 to be precise, near Java. From there we go to the summit of Marias Pass and shoot the train passing the Continental Divide sign. Using the station stop at West Glacier to get around the train, we set up one more time as the Builder meets a westbound freight at Grizzly.

The power on the westbound is a bit eclectic, with a BNSF "swoosh" locomotive on the point, followed by a Burlington Northern green unit and a Soo Line unit in candy apple red. We chase this train west, pausing at a small pond near Bison. However, with the sun still strongly favoring eastbounds, we head back towards Essex and intercept our next quarry at Sheep Creek Trestle just east of Essex. This train has BNSF power sandwiching a Norfolk Southern unit, with a Union Pacific unit running fourth.

We go back up into the snowsheds and shoot the eastbound at Shed 7. Next we get him with a nice mountain backdrop at Bison and an even better backdrop at Grizzly. Next we follow him to Spotted Robe, and once he clears a westbound gran train appears over the hump with a pair of DPU's on the rear. The sun is now around enough to make westbounds worthwhile, so we stay with the train and get him at Bison and again at the S-curves at Marias.

Now we hear there's a geometry train checking the tracks and moving west, so we head back up to Shed 7 again. Sure enough, a two-car passenger train (of sorts) pops out of the snowshed behind a GP30 in BNSF's Heritage I paint scheme. Cool.

Motoring along, we wind up at a location we had missed the previous day, the overlook of Tunnel 4 near West Glacier. We hear that there's trackwork going on at Red Eagle, but soon it clears up and our grain train (that we shot way back at Spotted Robe) pops out of the tunnel for a stunning view. We know the grand scene would overwhelm our little track geometry train, so we proceed to the other side of the East Glacier station at Belton and get him there.

In the name of greed, we head back to Tunnel 4 in search of another westbound. We get rewarded by an eastbound with six units on the point (four of which wear the Cascade green of Burlington Northern), followed by an eastbound grain train with a matched trio of BNSF power. Finally another westbound arrives, this one a mixed merchadise train with a Santa Fe warbonnet trailing in the two-unit consist. Right on his heels is a stack train with another warbonnet, this time as the trailer in a three-unit consist.

It's time for the westbound Empire Builder, so we head all the way back across Glacier Park and set up for the shot we got cloud-dinked on the day before at Bison. This time we're successful. With the day winding down, we head for our motel at Cut Bank (again), but pause at Durham to get a train in silhouette against the Montana Big Sky.

Day 5: September 9, 2008 -- Hi-Line Across Montana
Directly outside our motel window is a spectacular view -- the BNSF bridge over Cut Bank Creek in the town of the same name. The bridge is a prime target for today. With the light favoring an eastbound (well, actually we're under clouds), we venture west in search of a train. We finally encounter an eastbound near Blackfoot. At Meriweather we find a westbound grain train, and this captures our attention enough that we get it on both sides of the town of Browning (including a nice S-curve on the west side of town). He meets a bare-table train (empty piggyback flats) going east and we shoot this train at the Lewis & Clark monument overlook near Meriweather.

We pause briefly to shoot a westbound manifest train at Fort Piegan, then head back into Cut Bank to get the baretable train on the bridge under improving skies. We hold our position at the bridge and get the eastbound Empire Builder under rapidly improving skies. Next is a westbound stack train that we shoot broadside on the bridge.

With no trains imminent, we head into Cut Bank and do some exploring. We find the Amtrak station, and nearby is a string of wooden grain elevators (alas, with one of them being demolished). From there we head east onto the plains, pausing to shoot the grain elevator at Ethridge. Eventually we wind up in downtown Shelby where a local is switching in front of the station.

Ultimately a westbound stack train draws our attention, so we attempt a broadside shot at the elevator at Ethridge with very mixed results (although two horses add to the charm). We do far better with the train crossing the bridge at Cut Bank. Heading back east, we encounter a grain train just west of Ethridge. From here our eastward trek continues back through Shelby until we encounter a manifest train at Dunkirk, where we get him passing the elevator. A mis-timed chase has us missing the head end off the overhead bridge in Shelby, but we do get some military vehicles mid-train.

Back to the east we head, exploring the small elevator towns along the way. Devon has three nice wooden elevators (but no town), while Galata features two elevators and stock pens on the edge of its small town. Lothair, another town with no town, has two elevators, including one without its side sheathing, revealing the rustic wood beneath. Tiber has three good-looking elevators.

Finally we hit our first big town since Shelby at Chester. The "welcome to Chester" sign features wheat stalks and a wooden grain elevator, and peering past the sign you can see the BNSF main line and two elevators downtown. Wouldn't it be nice to get a train here? We really need a westbound. No sooner have we gotten east of town than a westbound shows up, and we scramble back to our spot with the sign and the elevators. We continue our westbound chase, getting the train passing the elevators at Tiber, Lothair, Galata (not enough time to get into town, so we settle for a broadside) and Devon. Heading back east, we encounter a stack train and once again don't have enough time to get into downtown Galata, so once again we settle for a broadside.

Okay, enough of this. We need the shot in downtown Galata with the elevators and stock pens, so we set up in town anticipating the westbound Empire Builder. And we wait. And we wait. Finally a call to Amtrak confirms our fear -- somehow the Builder snuck past us. BNSF to the rescue, however, and we get a westbound freight pounding past the corrals.

Sunset is coming, so we head back towards Chester and pause to shoot the town sign on the east end of town (featuring an F-unit and a grain elevator) as the sky turns color. We stop east of Joplin to get the town's elevator-enhanced skyline against an orange sunset. Finally we stop at Rudyard to get MMA Grain's ex-Rarus Railroad switcher. In the gathering twilight, we get a westbound BNSF freight, then after sunset we break out the flash and do several night shots. Satisfied, we head into Havre for the night.

Winterail-fanning -- 2009 Edition

2009-07-13T23:34:00.007-04:00

Things are a bit quiet right now, so with nothing new to report in 2009 let's go back a few months to March and look at a trip I took with my brother Bruce to California. The reason for going was to attend the big railroad slide show, Winterail, in Stockton. But with air fares cooperating, we decided to fly into Los Angeles and spend a few days in Southern California before heading up to the Bay Area. Photos of this trip can be found in Photologues here.

Day 1: March 10, 2009 -- Black and Silver "Green" Machines
Our all-morning flight gets us into L.A. International right about lunch time, and we immediately head out for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. At the Port is the Pacific Harbor Belt, a railroad that was just named Railway Age's Short Line of the Year for its innovative roster made up entirely of low-emissions locomotives (and all painted in a Santa Fe-inspired and quite attractive silver and black).

We check in at the office, located at Pier A Yard near Wilmington, and meet railroad president Andrew Fox (I had met Andrew a few years before while visiting here with friend Dave Crammer). After congratulating him on his recent award, I asked him where would be a good place to photograph his railroad -- after all, Port security seemed tight in the post-9/11 world. Andrew quickly gets out a map and begins marking all the publicly accessible locations where trains might be found. He then gives me his card and cell phone number, in case I get hassled somewhere.

When I ask about photographing around the shop, he indicates that he was about to take a break to enjoy the Southern California sunshine, and takes Bruce and I for a pleasant walk where we're able to photograph a large chunk of the roster. Once we're done at the shop, we bid farewell and head out, map in hand, looking for trains.

We wind up circling the port a few times, but finally we find not one, but two trains running practically side-by-side on opposite sides of a small river from the Anaheim Street bridge. Once that was done, it's time for more circling, until we find a switch job working the Yang Ming facility near San Pedro. (Alas, the Big Red streetcars that serve San Pedro are not running on this day). After another couple of circles of the Ports, we find nothing (while there are a lot of accessible places in the Port, there are a lot of inaccessible places as well). The only real find is Union Pacific's heritage unit painted for the Western Pacific, the first heritage unit I've seen. Alas, it's completely unshootable. We pack it in and head south along the coast.

Day 2: March 11, 2009 -- Along the Pacific Coast
The morning starts out with ocean fog. Lots of it. We think we see bright spots, but it always shuts down again. Anyhow, undaunted (well, maybe a little daunted) we head for Del Mar and an appointment with Amtrak's Pacific Surfliners and the Coasters that serve San Diego-bound commuters. We start on the bluffs behind some very expensive houses, where we get a Coaster pushing south (locomotives are always on the north end, so southbound Coasters have cab cars leading), a Coaster pulling north and Amtrak going south (Amtrak, on the other hand, always has the locomotives on the south end).

We relocate to a small bridge just south of town and get two Amtraks and a Coaster in fairly quick succession (and since it's a broadside shot, direction isn't important). Back to the bluffs for a southbound Amtrak, then we head over behind the Del Mar horse track to get a broadside of a northbound Amtrak on a bridge.

With the sun finally starting to break through, we go to another set of bluffs on the south end of town (overlooking a very expensive home) to photograph a variety of Amtrak and Coaster trains. With a northbound Amtrak due next, we head over to the Soledad Lagoon in Torrey Pines State Reserve for a broadside of the train passing under old Highway 101. Then it's off to the Del Mar Racetrack, this time from the west side on the shoulder of the 101 for a southbound Amtrak and a northbound Coaster.

With the day growing short, we head north to Oceanside to add two more railroads to our mix -- Metrolink, which serves the Los Angeles commuter market, and the Sprinter, a diesel-powered light rail line between Oceanside and Escondido connecting with Metrolink, Coaster and Amtrak. We start off with a northbound Metrolink train pushing out of the Oceanside station, followed by a northbound Amtrak train in push mode. We then get our first look at the Sprinter as it arrives, and before it can make its turn to go back to Escondido, Amtrak comes rolling south. Shortly thereafter we get the Sprinter on its way back east.

Since we haven't seen the Sprinter before, we decide to try to find another location and wind up at the first grade crossing east of where the Sprinter's line veers away from the ex-Santa Fe surf line. Then its quickly back to the surf line for a northbound Coaster. Next up is a northbound Metrolink train -- the last northbound we saw was in push mode, so we set up at the south end of the San Luis Rey River bridge. Bzzzzt! Wrong! This train is pulling north, so we get a poor going away shot of a cab car. We get marginally redeemed when Amtrak comes south across the bridge a few minutes later. We then scramble south of the Oceanside station to get a Coaster pushing south.

With the day rapidly ending, we try to head for San Clemente but realize we have no chance of getting anything in sun there, so we wheel back into Oceanside. We finish up with Metrolink and Coaster action on the river bridge from the sunny side, and end with silhouette shots of Amtrak after the sun went down. Now it's off to the Tehachapi Mountains.

Day 3: March 12, 2009 -- Almost Heaven, Tehachapi Loop
We get up in the morning at the Quality Inn in Tehachapi and begin heading back through the mountains. No trains. We get all the way to the opposite end of the mountains at Caliente when finally we find a train heading towards Bakersfield. We immediately run into Mike Schaller from Virginia, and together we photograph the BNSF train from the hills near the Caliente horseshoe.

Next we find an uphill BNSF double-stack train, so we follow the dirt roads up and over Tunnel 3 at Bealville and get the train exiting there. We then go to the new Loop overlook (this had been a walking path just a couple of years ago, but now has vehicle access and a nice parking area) and in the process overtake a BNSF piggyback train. We get this train completely wrapped around the famed Tehachapi Loop at Walong, then go up the road just a little to get the stack train we had seen at Tunnel 3, this time exiting Tunnel 10.

Backtracking downhill to Woodford, we pick up an uphill Union Pacific general merchandise train (this trackage is jointly operated by BNSF and Union Pacific, inherited from predecessor roads Santa Fe and Southern Pacific respectively). We then go to a second overlook of Tunnel 10 and get the UP train there.

Heading all the way back downhill to Caliente, futilely looking for trains, we finally encounter an uphill BNSF piggyback train led by a red and silver ex-Santa Fe warbonnet. We get this train in the S-curves below Caliente, then make what is a very short drive for us but a very long way for the train to go over to Tunnel 2 and get the train exiting the bore. Rumor has it that BNSF wants to double-track most of the line through the Tehachapi Mountains, and if that comes to fruition all of the tunnels we had photographed this day (Tunnels 2, 3 and 10) would be eliminated and replaced by deep cuts. We snag the piggyback train again at Woodford, then get it crossing over itself at the Loop's Tunnel 9 (this tunnel would survive the double-tracking project), then get it again howling through Monolith past the cement plant there.

Trains still aren't running very much, and we get a BNSF general merchandise train running against the sun. To cure that, we follow him all the way to Mojave to get him under a signal bridge there. We had just missed a UP cement train going west at Mojave, but after getting the BNSF train we wheel back to Tehachapi in plenty of time to get him going under a classic ex-Santa Fe cantilever signal bridge. Continuing the chase, we try for the over-under shot at Tunnel 9, but the train is too short -- way too short -- to wrap around the entire loop. With the late afternoon sun casting a warm glow, we get the train heading downhill through Bealville, then scoot down the steep highway into Caliente to get him heading through the horseshoe.

The day is done -- or so we thought. As we pack up and head towards the Bay Area, the highway and the tracks come together just before Bakersfield at Edison. Here we find all the rail traffic that hadn't run during the day. We get our cement train meeting a BNSF stack train, overtake a BNSF merchandise train, and finish with a stack train coming out of the setting sun. Goodbye sunny Southern California.

On the Edge of Glacier Park

2009-07-08T21:39:00.012-04:00

From the Mountains to the Prairies -- Part 2
Part 1 can be found here.
Photos from all parts can be found in Photologues here.

Day 2: September 6, 2008 -- Rocky's Road

Wake up, call Amtrak. The eastbound Empire Builder is on time and heading for Whitefish, Montana. We get up and head towards the depot when the radio starts squawking. The Builder has encountered a red signal signifying a potential breach of a rock slide fence. The dispatcher gives the train permission past the signal at reduced speed. Soon the train reports that it has encountered a large boulder on the tracks -- too big for the crew to move -- at Vista.

We locate Vista on the map and wind our way along Whitefish Lake. At the final grade crossing before the small lake road peters out, we see the rear of the train just to the east. We walk along the train and get to the head end, and sure enough there's a large boulder between the rails. The dispatcher has to roust a front-end loader operator out and get the equipment to the train, not an easy task. We get a few photos, then head back into Whitefish to wait. A little more than a half hour later, the Builder finally arrives in Whitefish, it's on-time journey no longer intact.

A BNSF grain train has departed Whitefish heading west, so we return to Brimstone (a place we had been the previous day) and get it there. It has DPU's (Distributed Power Units) on the rear, so we get the going-away shot of those. From this point the train heads into Flathead Tunnel (at seven miles long, it's the second-longest in the United States). The road takes us up and over the tunnel, and we get the DPU's (once again going away) from the top of the west portal.

Chasing the train west, we wind up back at Tamarack, but lose our train. Ah, he's gone into the hole to wait for an eastbound, so we set up at a cut and get the eastward autorack train. A small bluff at Tamarack provides a nice scene of our westbound grain train crossing a small bridge shortly thereafter. Continuing the chase towards Riverview, just outside of Libby, we encounter an eastbound grain train in somewhat bad light, and settle for one more going-away view of our westbound from the overhead bridge at Riverview.

An eastbound general merchandise train has entered the picture, so we proceed back east to the rock face at Fisher River to get him, and get him again at Wolf Prairie. Behind him is another eastbound grain train, so we pick him off at the small bridge at Tamarack. Staying put, we get a westbound grain train there that comes to a stop. Aha, they're running a hot intermodal westbound around him, but we can't quite get into position to get the eclectic head end of that train -- a BNSF "swoosh" unit, a Burlington Northern green unit and an ex-Soo Line leaser -- so a grab shot has to suffice.

From the overhead bridge at Rock Creek (not far from the west portal of Flatrock Tunnel) we get an eastbound stack train, then turn around and get a westbound grain train about 45 minutes later. As soon as the westbound clears, we get an eastbound merchandise train with an ex-Santa Fe warbonnet on the point with BN green and a BNSF Heritage II unit trailing. We push back west to Brimstone where we bag an eastbound stack train with two BN green units leading, then get a westbound intermodal train.

Finally we slide into the small town of Olney on our way back to Whitefish. Here we are greeted by a westbound grain train, and as he goes by we see an eastbound grain train appear. Since the line goes to single track just west of Olney, the westbound slows up and we get the eastbound DPU's passing the westbound head end. Finally, with the light all but shot, we get a westbound merchandise train passing the marsh from the road bridge into town.

With the westbound Empire Builder due through, we head back to the Whitefish station after dark for some photos. I get the train with the statue of Rocky the Goat (the symbol of the Great Northern, whose line this was originally), then head to the front of the train for a few shots before it departs for Seattle and we depart for bed.

Day 3: September 7, 2008 -- Into Glacier

Like yesterday, today starts with an on-time Empire Builder. Unlike yesterday, there are no rock slides to delay it. Since we're heading east towards Glacier Park, we opt to catch the Builder east of Whitefish at Columbia Falls.

Once the Builder is out of the way, we poke around town and find the Mission Mountain Railroad. One of their locomotives, a GP35 lettered for the Palouse River & Coulee City, is located near the mill served by the railroad; a Helm Leasing SW1500 switcher is located in a nearby yard. Pushing east, we encounter an eastbound merchandise train at Paola, where we get a grab shot. Heading back west with the train, we get a nice shot as it exits Tunnel 3.8 near West Glacier, then bag two more nice shots on either side of the town of Coram.

I had been intrigued by the rock cliffs at Hungry Horse, where the tracks cling to a ledge above a lake. It had looked like the opportunity to shoot a train here wouldn't happen as we pushed east towards Glacier, but now with the westbound in the picture we chased it back to the cliffs for a nice shot. A futile chase to Columbia Falls gave us a few minutes to track down the Sommers Lumber Company Shay locomotive on display in the town park, then we returned to Hungry Horse looking for an eastbound to chase to Glacier. Soon we had our train and we shot it along the cliffs, then chased it to the entrance to Glacier National Park at West Glacier for another photo. Continuing east with the train, we shot it from the overhead bridge at Red Eagle, and again from the pedestrian bridge near the Izaak Walton Inn at Essex.

Continuing east, we popped out on the far side of Glacier Park ahead of an eastbound train with five matched BNSF Heritage II units leading a train across the Two Medicine River bridge (yeah, everyone has gotten that shot, but it is a nice shot). A westbound merchandise train was waiting in the hole just east of the bridge at Grizzly, so we held our position and shot him as well, and he was followed a mere ten minutes later by a westbound stack train.

We wheeled back west with the stack train and wound our way up to the snowsheds, getting the train exiting Shed 7. We stayed with the stack train and got it from the overhead bridge at Paola, and since the light was a lot better than the train we had gotten in the morning, we continued all the way back to Tunnel 3.8 at West Glacier and got him there as well.

We headed back east in search of trains, and got all the way to Bison, just west of East Glacier, where we picked up a westbound grain train. After getting him at Bison, we then set up at the sign marking the crossing of the Continental Divide at the summit of Marias Pass and got him there. After getting the DPU's passing the sign, we headed to the snowsheds and got the train exiting Shed 8, then got him again at Java East. Hustling into Essex, we were able to scramble onto the pedestrian bridge at the Izaak Walton for a shot, then got the DPU's going away past the Inn.

Wanting to get back to the east, we paused briefly to shoot a westbound stack train at East Java, then went all the way past East Glacier where we found a westbound grain train draped over a hill at Spotted Robe waiting for the westbound Empire Builder to run past. We got the two trains side-by-side, then used the Builder's station stop at East Glacier to hustle ahead to Bison for another shot; alas, clouds dinked us when the Amtrak train showed up. Heading back to Grizzly (between East Glacier and Spotted Robe) we got the westbound grain train (and second one following) as they headed towards the Rockies with thunderstorms on the horizon. We then said goodbye to the Rockies and headed onto the Montana prairie to Cut Bank for the night.

Quebec-Ontario Passenger Railroading

2009-07-04T16:38:00.011-04:00

White Mountain Railfest and Ottawa -- Part II
(Part one can be found here. Photos for both parts can be found in the Photologues section here.)

Day 4: June 15, 2009 -- Tanks But No Tanks
The morning was gloomy. Yuck. I had not seen the new power operating on the Agence métropolitaine de transport line between Vaudreuil-Dorion and Gare Central (Central Station in Montreal) so that was the first order of business. The Dorval station was a whopping three minutes from the motel, and the first train I shot had an F59 (one of the new locomotives) leading. The next train had a rebuilt (by Alstom) GP9 leading, followed by another train with an F59. Two more trains (GP9, then F59) rounded out the morning. At Dorval the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific are side-by-side (and remain so all thee way to Dorion), with AMT using the CPR and VIA Rail Canada using the CN.

With the commuter rush dying down, I needed to get some Canadian currency from the nearby RBC branch, and as I was making my way to the bank I missed a westbound CN freight. Dang! But once the exchange was made I headed to Beaconsfield where a pedestrian walkway spanned both railroads. Here I bagged an eastbound CPR freight, then over on the CN I caught the VIA train to Windsor that operates with stainless steel Budd coaches. An eastbound VIA train, this one with the green Renaissance cars, concluded the action at the footbridge.

A mis-timed move to the Beaconsfield station resulted in a missed CPR eastbound freight, but once at the station I saw an eastbound AMT train, this one with a GP9 and this one in the first rays of sunlight to break through the gloom. Continuing west, I wanted to get a VIA westbound on the bridge at Vaudreuil-Dorion, but arrived just as the train crossed the bridge. The next VIA westbound was an hour away, so I decided to wait it out.
Standing on the shoulder of the highway bridge, I thought I noticed the westbound signals on CN light up all red (hard to tell now that the sun was coming out and the angle I had). Get the camera ready and -- yup -- an eastbound freight came onto the bridge. The VIA train going west soon followed, and I was on my way west towards Ottawa.

There were back-to-back VIA eastbounds on the way, so I stopped at a four-track signal bridge halfway between Vaudreuil-Dorion and Coteau to get them in fairly abysmal light. From there it was off to the diamonds at DeBeaujeu where the Canadian Pacific main line crosses VIA's/CN's Alexandria Sub. I had been to DeBeaujeu before, but never shot a VIA train on the diamonds. With two VIA trains due, it was worth the visit, and before they showed up I also nabbed a CPR westbound. (As it turned out, the two VIA trains met in the siding just west of the diamonds).

From here it was off to Dalhousie, literally on the Quebec-Ontario border. Friend George Pitarys has showed me this location a few years ago, where a railroad water tank still stands by the CPR. Upon my arrival I noticed the tank had been nicely repainted, and a town park was put in around its base. I decided that a westbound shot of a train passing the tank would be great, and the sun was out nicely at this point.

I hadn't emptied any of my digital camera cards yet on the trip, and I was running out of space, so while waiting I turned on my laptop to clear some cards -- and discovered that all of Dalhousie is on wireless internet! Well, this meant I just had to e-mail George with a "greetings from the Dalhousie tank" e-mail. A few minutes later my cell phone rang -- it was George and he and his wife Candy were only 30 miles away, just checking into a motel in Cornwall on the first leg of a cross-Canada adventure! They asked if I wanted to join them for dinner -- well, of course! They said they'd wait until I was finished at Dalhousie, so I waited patiently for my westbound past the tank. And waited. And waited. I could see thunderheads in the western sky, and soon I was counting down the minutes until the sun vanished. Three. . . Two. . . One. . . Done. No train past the tank on this afternoon (despite a wait of over two hours). Time to pack up the camera and head for Cornwall where I had a pleasant meal at St. Hubert's chicken with George, Candy, Hal Reiser and Tom Carver. From there, it was off to Ottawa for the night.

Day 5: June 16, 2009 -- Oh, That O-Train
I was in the lobby of the Comfort Inn for only a few minutes when Dave Stremes of the Bytown Railway Society showed up (after taking the bus there). A few minutes later Ray Farrand drove up, and away we went to check out Ottawa's non-VIA rail action. Our first stop (after the mandatory Tim Horton's pickup) was across the Ottawa River in Gatineau where we checked out the Quebec Gatineau, a Genesee & Wyoming subsidiary. Not much happening there (and wouldn't be until noon), so we scooted back across the river.

The O-Train is one of two diesel-powered light rail lines in North America and operates a five-mile line southward out of Ottawa. While not serving downtown directly, it does feed into an express bus system and the trains are quite busy. We went to the Bayview station of the O-Train where we shot two sets of up-and-down trains (Bayview is the north end of the line and all trains immediately turn back south upon their arrival). We then went to the Carling station on the O-Train and then walked south to get the train in a deep cut. Driving further south, we went to the line's tunnel and stood basically on top the north portal shooting southbound trains, still in a deep cut.

Ray knew of a great sandwich shop, and despite the long, long lines we quickly had a tasty hoagie (don't know that they're called "hoagies" in Canada) and headed back to the Quebec Gatineau. We found them getting ready to make their one move of the day, shifting a paper mill. We chased them to the paper mill and enjoyed some switching action from the "grassy knoll."

Now it was time to head back to Ottawa for more O-Train action. We headed to a great location where the O-Train crosses the Rideau River just south of (and across the river from) Carleton University. The river was down, so we could get almost to mid-river on rocks, and we also got some nicely framed photos from the shore line.

Now it was time to get ready for the evening. The purpose of being in Ottawa in the first place was a presentation I was making to the Bytown Railway Society at the Science Museum. After a tasty dinner and working through a technical glitch with the museum's sound system, the program went rather well -- the Bytown group is a great audience -- bringing to an end a productive day.

Day 6: June 17, 2009 -- Corridor Finale
Somehow I managed to leave the motel five minutes too late to catch a Toronto-bound VIA train leaving the Ottawa station, but a quick check of the timetable showed that I could easily beat it to Brockville (where the line joins the Montreal-Toronto main corridor). Since Brockville was on my hit list anyhow, I made the quick run down there and waited. It didn't take long for the westbound signals to light up and I got ready to shoot my VIA train. Except a westbound CN freight showed up. So I waited and waited and waited some more, but still no train. With a westbound due, I decided to go west of town seeking a shot, but all this did was get me out of position for two eastbound VIA trains -- I got a grab shot of one of them on a fill.

Okay, take a deep breath and regroup. The sun was still good enough for a shot of an eastbound from the overhead bridge at the Brockville station, and there was an eastbound due. Also, the westbound train to Windsor with the stainless steel cars was due through as well, so I settled down to concentrate on those two trains without getting myself out of position. The payoff came when the eastbound rolled into the station in good light.

A Canadian National local that had been working the yard just west of the station came through next, moving under the bridge to get to the crossovers so it could spot a boxcar across the main line from the station. While it was spotting the car, I moved down to the grade crossing and set up for the stainless steel train. It showed up, I got the shot and all was well again.

The weather was still somewhat marginal, so instead of spending all day in Canada and getting home late I decided to start working towards the border. However, I was approaching the town of Gananoque, a place I had never shot before. Additionally, there was a mini-rush of four VIA trains scheduled through there in the span of about 40 minutes, so I figured it was worth checking out. I discovered that the depot was pretty far out of town (and contained the local model railroad club layout), and with about an hour before the VIA rush I scoped out the signal bridges about a mile east. While doing the scoping I got a westbound CN freight passing the signals, and then a few minutes later got an eastbound freight snaking through a sag in the topography.

The sun popped out for the first VIA train, a westbound (which didn't stop), and it got hazy again for the second VIA train (also an eastbound that stopped long enough to notice there were no passengers boarding or detraining). Next up was an eastbound (the stainless steel train from Windsor) with a second train (Renaissance cars) right on its heels. That wrapped up the rush and it was time to head home.

Unlike the border crossing into Canada a few days earlier where the customs agent was friendly, the U.S. agents were snippy and short, making people (U.S. citizens, mind you) feel like they had committed a crime by making a border crossing. U.S. customs agents are simply the worst. Anyhow, with customs behind me, I headed through Syracuse and Binghamton without stopping, and finally arrived at home.

White Mountain Railfest

2009-07-01T22:14:00.010-04:00

White Mountain Railfest and Ottawa - Part 1

Note: We're changing the way we do blogging here. Instead of trip reports where every day is posted all at once, we'll be posting small portions of each trip separately. This will result in more frequent updates in more reader-friendly sizes. And instead of sticking to just one trip, we'll be bouncing back and forth between something current and something older. Here we'll take a look at the first part of a recent trip, this one to the White Mountains and then on to Ottawa, Ontario. Enjoy.

Back in January, Dick Towle of the Flying Yankee Restoration Group stopped by the office to discuss what was hoped to become an annual event -- White Mountains Railfest. With the Hobo Railroad (current home of the Flying Yankee) leading the way, a three-day event was planned for June 2009. Here's a report from the event.

Photos from the event can be found in the Photologues section.

Day 1: June 12, 2009 -- Flying Yankee at Night
With non-optimal weather in the forecast, I left New Jersey and drove pretty much non-stop to Lincoln, New Hampshire, home of the Hobo Railroad. Once there, I looked up the folks from the Flying Yankee Restoration Group and went over the logistics for the evening's night photo session. Friend Jeff Smith joined me, and after going over all the details, we headed for pizza.

The scheduled start time for the session was 7:00, but darkness didn't fall until well past 9:00. Once it got dark, though, the fun began. We started off with a shot of the Flying Yankee in its tent, posed with a 1954 Cadillac. You couldn't tell by looking at the shots, but the under-restoration Yankee was missing some glass and all its wheels. There's work to be done, but the classic trainset is starting to look good.

The timing was planned so we'd swing around and try a shot at the station with the Hobo Railroad's equipment with the photo line facing west into a dusky sky. Our timing couldn't have been better, as we got a nice purple sky behind the train and depot. Several shots were made here, then we headed further out into the parking lot for scenes with the railroad's Rail Diesel Car. A few more shots at the west end of the station, and it was off to bed.

Day 2: June 13, 2009 -- Hobo Day
The Hobo Railroad hosted the all-day events of Saturday. The main trip originated out of the Lincoln depot and headed beyond the usual trackage covered by the regular passenger trains, with the special going all the way to Ashland. Along the way, photo stops were made near Woodstock along the Pemigewasset River and at a Christmas tree farm below Plymouth.

At Ashland passengers detrained at the restored station for a tour. A few scenes with railroaders were set up for the benefit of photographers. It was agreed that Ashland would make a great night photo location for future events. Soon it was back on the train, with another photo stop at the Plymouth depot and a final stop at a bridge over the "Pemi" near Lincoln.

The Cafe Lafayette Dinner Train hosted Railfest in the evening, with an outstanding meal (I had the scallops) served while the train headed along the river. A special photo runby and group photo was made near Woodstock. After arrival back at Lincoln, Jeff and I (along with a couple of other folks) did an impromptu night photo session of some more of the Hobo Railroad's equipment. It was a fun day.

Day 3: June 14, 2009 -- Through the Misty Mountains
Rain had been a constant threat throughout the weekend, and Sunday morning it had arrived. It didn't dampen the spirits of Railfest attendees, however, as they gathered at the White Mountain Central in North Woodstock, New Hampshire (and literally right around the corner from the Hobo Railroad). The WMC had their Climax logging locomotive fired up, and soon we were heading north along the "Pemi" with the Wolfman in pursuit. (The WMC is part of Clark's Trading Post, one of the oldest family theme parks in the country; Clark's is famous for its trained bears and the Wolfman provides plenty of entertainment during the train rides).

After a few runbys, the locomotive was serviced for the regular runs later in the day, including taking water and wood (yes, the Climax is a wood burner). Photographers were able to shoot the servicing scenes. Steam is steam, be it a tourist operation of the present or regular service of the past, and steam scenes are timeless.

Up next was a tour of the White Mountain Central shops, where a Shay logging locomotive and a Maine Central REO railbus live. The shop was straight out of the heyday of short line steam, with all the tools and clutter (that's clutter in a good kind of way) laying about. There were plenty of targets for photographers here. The Shay hasn't run since the 1950s; the WMC also has a Heisler (which sees service), so it owns one each of the three types of geared logging locomotives. Once the shop tour was done, White Mountain Railfest came to a conclusion.

Since it was only lunch time, Jeff and I headed to the Mount Washington Cog Railway near Fabyans. I had heard that a couple of out of service steam locomotives were behind the shop and I wanted to check them out. After lunch in the railroad's restaurant, we headed down to the shop where we found a steam-powered work train being put together. We quickly got permission to walk around the shop area, and soon we found 0-2-2-0 No. 8 disassembled for maintenance (and not looking like it would be reassembled anytime soon) and the oldest locomotive on the line, No. 1 (the Mount Washington) vanishing into the weeds. The Cog is still an active railroad and treats its equipment not as historical artifacts but as working machinery. Like the conventional railroads of the 1950s, the Cog is now dieselizing and the steam locomotives are simply being pushed aside.

The shop door was open, and we were welcomed in to see the Cog's two newest diesels under construction inside; both were scheduled to enter service in less than a month. In an adjacent section of the shop, two more steam locomotives rested; the Cog has six steamers in service. While the railroad is dieselizing for financial and operational reasons, some of the employees we talked to seemed less than enthusiastic about the departure of steam.

At this point Jeff said farewell and headed for Boston. I was due in Ottawa in two nights, so I continued north. I made a brief stop at Whitefield, New Hampshire, to photograph the surviving ball signals at the former Boston & Maine / Maine Central diamond, then headed into Vermont. A stop at St. Johnsbury yielded a nice shot of the depot during a break in the clouds, and I followed the Washington County Railroad (former Boston & Maine, now a part of Vermont Rail System) north to Newport. At Newport there was power from both Vermont Rail System and the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic sitting near the surviving roundhouse; alas, a storm prevented any more sun from shining on this day. I got some shots under menacing skies, then headed towards the border.

At the border crossing I found a friendly customs agent who liked trains. When I told him I was heading into Canada to photograph the railroads he gave me a quiz. Apparently the location where the customs point is located was once known as Rock Island, and he asked me what significance Rock Island had in the U.S. I told him about the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, and he said I passed the rail enthusiast test and was waved into Canada. (He also told me something I didn't know -- Delson, Quebec, home of the Canadian Railway Museum, was named for the Delaware & Hudson). I headed past Montreal and tied up in the western suburb of Dorval near the main lines of both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, ready for the next day.

Entry Into Montana

2009-06-23T21:25:00.005-04:00

From the Mountains to the Prairies -- Part 1

Note: We're changing the way we do blogging here. Instead of trip reports where every day is posted all at once, we'll be posting each day separately. This will result in more frequent updates in more reader-friendly sizes. And instead of sticking to just one trip, we'll be bouncing back and forth between something current and something older. We introduce the new format with the beginning of a trip from 2008 that went through Montana, Saskatchewan and North Dakota. Enjoy.

In September 2008 my brother Bruce and I headed to Big Sky country. We had an ambitious 17-day itinerary planned, with a best-case scenario taking us into Montana, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota, and (if everything went perfectly) Wyoming and Nebraska might get included. We flew into Spokane, Washington, and made a bee-line for the first shot I wanted to get -- the view from the Bottle Bay Road overlook of Lake Pend O'Reille near Sandpoint, Idaho.

Day 1 -- Entry Into Montana

Photos illustrating this entry can be found here.

We land at the Spokane airport after a long flight from Philadelphia. The weather doesn't look too cooperative, but we soon have our rental car and are quickly out on the road -- a little too quickly, perhaps. I wind up coming up fast on a car in front of me and suddenly realize it's a police car. I slow down, but he slows down even more, pulls in behind me and turns on the lights. I pull over and he pulls up behind me. I was going something like 64 in a 50 zone. I explain to the officer that I had just picked up the rental car at the airport and wasn't used to it, as my car back home is much older and lets you know when you're going fast. The officer is satisfied with that explanation (surprisingly enough) and we're back on the road with just a warning. Phew!

Soon we're at the Bottle Bay Road overlook of Lake Pend O'Reille (pronounced "pond ou-ray") near Sandpoint, Idaho, the first stop I wanted to make. The weather is dull, but a westbound BNSF train appears on the bridge in fairly short order. We get the shot of the empty coal train, including a trailing DPU (distributed power unit). Since we're going to be passing by here on the way back (and the weather can't be any worse then, can it?) we decide to press on into Montana.

Following the ex-Great Northern into Montana, we soon overtake a train as we approach Troy. We're ahead of the train as Route 2 crosses the railroad, and we soon bag the eastbound mixed merchandiser with a BNSF "swoosh" unit on the point. Heading further east on Route 2, we encounter a westbound grain train led by a unit in the BNSF "Heritage II" scheme, which we photograph passing the Libby, Montana, Amtrak depot.

Backtracking towards Troy, we get another westbound grain train along the Kootenai River at Riverview. With Whitefish as our evening destination, we press on eastward, encountering a westbound in remote Wolf Prairie. We finish off several miles outside of Whitefish at Brimstone where a westbound stack train (behind a pair of Santa Fe warbonnets!) and an eastbound intermodal train are captured in the fading light (not that there was any light to start with on this gloomy day). Tired, we head into Whitefish, awaiting an early morning encounter with Amtrak's Empire Builder.

Indiana Wants Me

2009-05-26T23:49:00.020-04:00

A full selection of photos from this trip can be found in Photologues. Photos appearing on this page can be purchased at ShopDaylightImages.com.

The genesis for this trip started after Summerail in Cincinnati in August 2008. I headed from the Queen City into southern Indiana to photograph trains passing the remaining few semaphore signals on the ex-Monon Railroad, now a part of CSX Transportation. The line is little used, with one train a day the norm. But on Mondays CSX sends a local from Mitchell, Indiana, into Louisville, Kentucky, and the Indiana Rail Road has a train operating on trackage rights from its Hiawatha Yard through Mitchell and on to Louisville, making for two trains over the line in a day. That fateful August Monday I chased the Indiana Rail Road through the blades, only to miss the best shot on the line at Hitchcock, Indiana, due to traffic congestion in the nearby town of Campbellsburg. Regrouping, I got to Hitchcock in time for the following CSX train, only to have clouds ruin the shot. Since that day, I had vowed to get back to Hitchcock.

In March 2009 I had planned to get to the semaphores on the return leg of a trip to Chicago, but persistent rain changed that plan. My brother Bruce and I then started working our calendars, clearing a few Sunday-Wednesday blocks to potentially make a run to Indiana from New Jersey if the weather cooperated. A pair of high pressure systems moved into the heartland and it looked like May 18-20 would be pristine in Indiana. On Sunday, May 17, we made our move and headed west.

Plans were rapidly developing for the trip. Thanks to intelligence from Mark Mautner, Mike Biehn and others, we found that the semaphore chase should get us to Louisville in time to chase the Louisville & Indiana's evening job north. Furthermore, on Tuesday we could catch the Alco power of the Southern Indiana and then head over to Paris, Kentucky, where Transkentucky Transportation was running coal trains with four GE diesels on the point and four more pushing. Four railroads, all of which should run, but none of which were guaranteed to run. It was a schedule built like a house of cards. Could it hold up?

Day 1 -- May 17, 2009
Southern Indiana is a long way from New Jersey, and we know it will take most of a day to get there. Happily, along the way there is a railroad that I had wanted to check out -- the Fayette Central tourist operation in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. I had seen photos of the line's Rail Diesel Car (authentically painted for the Baltimore & Ohio) running on street trackage in Uniontown, and I really wanted to get shots there. I noticed on their schedule that they ran north out of Uniontown on Saturdays and south on Sundays, and after searching Google Earth I figured the street running would be used on days the car went south. Thus, a Sunday stop there would work right into our plans.

With the forecast calling for more clouds than sun, we decide that a 5:00 a.m. departure to get to Uniontown in time for the first trip of the day at 11:00 wasn't necessary, so we plan to arrive at about 1:00, in time for the first trip to come back and before the second trip departed at 2:00. We get to Unionton in plenty of time, and after circling the town trying to figure out the track layout (Uniontown was served by the B&O and the Pennsylvania Railroad) we find the street trackage and set up with about 20 minutes to spare.

While waiting for the RDC, we start to notice the track -- the flangeways are clogged with dirt, indicating that no trains had used them recently. Uh, oh. Maybe the RDC ran north, or maybe it didn't run at all... But then we follow the street trackage south, and it unexpectedly ends at a small business. This wasn't the through route the car would use to get to Fairchance. We soon deduce that the photos in the magazines of the RDC in the street had to be a staged shot. Now totally confused, we head back to where signs indicated the trips depart from and wait. It isn't long before the RDC appears on its return from Fairchance. At least it's running.

Once the train arrives at the loading area, we start talking with the crew. Sure enough, the conductor of the train is the mastermind behind the photos of the street running. I opine that I really would like to get my own shots in the street, at which point the crew states that it could be worked out (this was the second operating day of the season and ridership was light; if no one shows up for the 2:00 run to Fairchance, the crew offers to head over to the street running instead). No one shows up for the 2:00 run, and with the offer of good publicity in Railfan & Railroad, the crew lets us ride in the RDC over to the street trackage to get our photos.

This turns into our own little photo charter, as we make a stop near the ex-PRR freight house for a quick runby, and then head down Beeson Street where the RDC stops in each block while we walk ahead to set up for photos. Finally, with all the photos in the bag we ride the RDC back to its storage location where we also get the chance to photograph the railroad's Alco diesel (painted in B&O colors).

With a very successful stop accomplished, we thank the crew profusely then resume our trek to Bedford, Indiana. Phone calls from our Indiana contacts are promising -- it looks like the Indiana Rail Road will indeed be operating on schedule Monday morning. The plan is working so far.

Day 2 -- May 18, 2009
Be on the street by 8:30. That's the word we got before retiring at Bedford. Sometime before 7:00 a.m. the phone rings; Mike Biehn on the line. "The train has to set off a bad order car, but should be in Bedford around 9:00. I'm leaving Cincinnati (almost two hours away) now." Fifteen minutes later Mark Mautner calls. "The train is leaving Hiawatha Yard now." Fantastic. We get out and pick our spot on the south end of the street running in Bedford.

The town clock strikes nine and still no train. Not to worry, though, as a short time later we hear horns to the north. I phone Mike and let him know the train is approaching town. "I'm two blocks away," he replies, and just about the time the engine's headlight appears on the north end of town Mike comes screeching to a halt and hops out with his camera. On the point is nicely painted SD40-2 No.4001 and it makes a nice sight as it passes our location.

From here we head down to Mitchell where, if things go according to schedule, there should be a CSX local waiting. We get there, and no local. Bruce and I opt to head down to Orleans, the location of the first semaphore, just in case the local got out early. Nope, no CSX in Orleans. We set up camp at the northern semaphore in town and wait for Mike to show up, closely followed by the Indiana Rail Road train.

Once that shot is in the bag, we wheel to the semaphore set on the south end of town, comfortably beating the train there. Then it's on to the set at Leipsic (where the semaphores for each direction are located on the same side of the track, an unusual configuration). Out of Leipsic, and we nail the train twice near Saltillo, passing a single semaphore at each spot.

The busy town of Campbellsburg is coming up, but so is the shot that I've been obsessing about since August. Hitchcock is just three miles beyond Campbellsburg, so Bruce and I opt to bypass the blades at Campbellsburg and Smedley, heading straight to Hitchcock. Mike gets greedy and stays with the train at Campbellsburg.

So here I am at the shot I drove 600 miles (one way) to get. This time there's a blue dome overhead. I check the camera once, twice, three times, to make sure everything is working. All is set. Mike shows up, so the train can't be far behind. Headlight. One last check. The train gets to the semaphores and -- click -- I got it. The purpose of the trip has been accomplished and the rest is now gravy!

The congested town of Salem is next, and we manage to get through that just in time to grab a broadside shot of the train passing the court house. Then there's one last set of semaphores to get, this time at Farabee. Despite a long walk and drive out of Farabee, we still beat the train to Pekin, where we get a nice shot off a hill of the train in town. Just a few miles farther, we catch the train running in a private median between two streets in the town of Borden, then a few miles beyond that we get an across-the-field shot near Carwood.

With the chase now five hours long and the busy outskirts of Louisville coming up, we decide to push ahead of the train and scope out the street running in New Albany. We quickly find the street running, then decide to take a quick break for lunch, figuring we were way ahead of the train. This proves to be our first mistake -- while returning from lunch we hear the CSX local heading north! We had just missed it on the street trackage. Dang! Nonetheless, we get our train heading down 15th Street in good light. The chase has come to an end, and what a chase -- six shots with semaphores and two stretches of street running (plus the median running in Borden). Hard to argue with that chase!

After the chase we run into railfan Lee Gordon in New Albany, then Mike suggests we head over to the waterfront to look for a Norfolk Southern westbound until we need to be in position for our next chase. Once on the viewing platform along the Ohio River we run into Brad McClelland (who I haven't seen in years!). We do get an NS westbound, but the light has just crossed over to the north side of the tracks when it shows up. Nice shot, but it could have been better.

We head to Jeffersonville, just east of New Albany, to get in position for the northbound run of the Louisville & Indiana train to Columbus, Indiana, due out at 6:00. Quite a gathering of railfans is present at the convenience store just north of the railroad's yard and, sure enough, at about 6:15 the train appears and the chase is on. We opt to catch the train crossing a deck girder bridge just north of Cementville (the bridge still reading "The Pennsylvania Railroad"), then get the train again at Sellersburg. A few across-the-field shots are accomplished, then we get it again curving through Henryville. Next up is a driveway shot north of Henryville, followed by a scene passing a church in Underwood. A long across-the-field shot is done at Vienna, then we get the train passing a small depot in Austin. Whew!

We're still not done, however, although the roads conspire against us, with nothing running near the track. We grab a couple of bang-bang shots at Chestnut Ridge, just south of Seymour. From here Mike heads back to Cincinnati, while Bruce and I fight through Seymour to get one last shot at the cemetery in Jonesville. The sun sets, and we head back 45 miles to Jeffersonville to tie up for the night. Our "house of cards" trip is holding up -- three railroads attempted, three railroads in the bag.

Day 3 -- May 19, 2009
We wake up in Jeffersonville and our first goal of the day is the Southern Indiana. This small railroad serves a cement plant in Sellersburg, Indiana, and once a day makes the five-mile trek to the CSX interchange in Watson. We need to be over in Paris, Kentucky, by 2:00 for the Transkentucky Transportation's northbound coal train (assuming it runs), so we have a bit of a time constraint on the Southern Indiana.

We find the engine house of the railroad, but no one is around, and both of the Alcos are missing from the engine house. We head over to the cement plant and, after some circling around, we find the locomotives. Fortunately, they are parked fairly close to a parking lot, so we drive into the plant and get as near the engines as possible. From here I track down the crew to find out what's going on. "We're stuck here," says the brakeman. Seems a bad loading hose in the mill has switching shut down. Worse yet, trackwork on the line means the run to the interchange won't occur until the afternoon. Seems our luck has run out.

The way the locomotives are parked, the light won't be good on them for photography for another hour, so we decide to head over to Watson where a former Baltimore & Ohio tower is still standing. We follow the line and note that photo opportunities are limited. Arriving at Watson, we see trackwork on CSX and sadly note the tower is in deep shadow and will remain so for quite awhile. Time to head back to Sellersburg. We briefly ponder leaving the short line and heading somewhere else, especially if it turns out TTI isn't going to run either. A quick call to the TTI reveals that they have coal sitting in Paris and they will "probably" run, so rather than go off on an adventure somewhere else, we decide to stick with the plan and hope the Southern Indiana heads to the interchange at some point.

Circling the plant, we discover that the locomotives have started switching, so we start shooting. We get some nice shots from the adjacent golf course, with golfers putting on a green while the locomotives work beyond them. Then the Alcos head back into the plant and we are able to get some nice shots from the grade crossing that bisects the plant. The locomotives move forward, and suddenly the brakeman is waving and pointing forward. They're heading for the interchange! At this point it's only 11:00, so our decision to stick it out paid off.

We quickly get a shot at the first grade crossing beyond the mill. Funny thing happens, though, at the second grade crossing. The train comes to a stop. "Time for lunch," says the brakeman. Movement east won't happen for another 40 minutes. Well, that should still leave time before breaking for Paris.

To kill time we follow the line once more, planning our photo strategy. When we get back to the train, we wait another 15 minutes before the crew arrives and quickly they're off. We noted that there weren't any good shots until milepost 1, almost to the interchange, so we head there and wait. Once we get that shot, we get stymied by a slow-moving truck that prohibits a second shot arriving at the interchange. Rounding a curve, we're surprised by a small traffic jam -- CSX is in town switching as well!

With this turn of good fortune we take a few shots of the Alcos shuffling about (the runaround move puts them back on a curve I had wanted to get earlier before the truck slowed us down). Time is ticking, though, so we grab a shot of the CSX train and make our break for Paris. We have just enough time to get there before the train starts working at 2:00.

Arriving in Paris, we find the train doubling together in the yard right on schedule, so we head north to seek our first photo location. The coal trains operate with four GE's on the point and four pushing on the rear, so the decidedly north-south orientation of the line favors going-away shots of the pushers. We hear the brake test on the scanner, and shortly thereafter we bag the helpers pushing past the Bourbon Drive-In Theatre. The chase is on!

Next up is a rather nice shot of the train going away through a through-truss bridge in Millersburg. In Carlisle the tracks break just enough south to let us get a decently lit shot of the head end, and walking back along the curve we get the rear end also well-lit -- a two-fer! This is followed by a very nice elevated view of the head end approaching Myers, and a quick drive to another nearby spot gives us another good view of the helpers.

Cowan and Ewing don't have angles that float our boat, so we set up for a going-away view at the depot at Flemingsburg Junction, followed by a nice rural view at Mill Creek. We finish the northbound chase with a nice overhead view near Lewisburg as the train approaches its northern destination of Maysville.

At Maysville the train has to pull all the way through town to cross over CSX's main line to reach a coal transloading facility, so we find a perch near some bird houses just west of the Amtrak station for what could have been a killer shot except for stored boxcars on a siding between the train and the Ohio River. Once the train reaches the crossover we beat feet back to the highway bridge over the Ohio and get a few shots. By 5:30 the train is in the transloading facility.

Now we wait. With a little bit of luck the train will head south before dark, and with a little more luck CSX will send a westbound past us while we wait. We set up at the Amtrak station to wait it out. Sadly, we don't see CSX. But on the other hand, our train is pushing out at 7:00 in good shape for a bit of a southbound chase. For the return trip with empty hopper cars, TTI puts all eight locomotives on the head end. Cool!

A quick call to Mike Biehn gets us oriented -- head for Strodes Run Road. We do just that and find a multitude of nicely lit angles. Unfortunately, we can only get one so we wait on a hillside for the train that shows up surprisingly quickly. After getting the shot we try to negotiate the narrow road, but have to settle for only a grab shot near Lewisburg.

From here we try to beat the train to Mill Creek, but we can't quite get to the position we needed to be in before it showed up -- in retrospect we shouldn't have stuck with Strodes Run Road after the first shot but instead should have hopped on Route 11 and gone directly to Mill Creek. From here we're fighting long shadows, and we don't find anything else until we're way down the line at Carlisle where a hillside provides an elevated view as the power picks its way through a thin sliver of setting sunlight.

Suddenly the "house of cards" portion of the trip is over. Five railroads to chase, and all five ran when they should have in good light. The house held up. Wednesday is largely a "drive home" throw-away day, and anything that's bagged is gravy.

It's now way later than I would have liked it to be. My original plan was to finish the chase at about 7:00 and then drive three hours and see where we were. Instead it's 8:30 and we're just getting underway. Bruce starts perusing an Amtrak timetable and notices that the eastbound Cardinal will be making a station stop in Charleston, West Virginia, shortly after 8:00 tomorrow morning. Charleston is a bit farther than what I wanted to drive, but the Cardinal gives us a morning target, so Charleston it is. We have two options from Charleston for Wednesday -- head north to Morgantown and do the former Monongahela lines, or head east and follow CSX into the New River Gorge. Despite the late arrival at Charleston I stay up and peruse maps, and finally make a decision on where to head the next morning.

Day 4 -- May 20, 2009
One option for getting home is to take a fairly direct route towards Morgantown, spend maybe five hours on the former Monongahela lines and then head home. A second option is to head into the New River Gorge in West Virginia, visit some classic Chesapeake & Ohio towns like Thurmond and Prince, and hit the road for a straight shot home at about 2:00. Since I didn't have my complement of Monongahela maps and resources, that option would be tough. On the other hand, Amtrak's Cardinal has opened up a few possibilities. I have always had bad luck in Thurmond, with either clouds or no trains working against me. This day the forecast has lots of sun and the Cardinal guarantees at least one train through town. We decide to head for Thurmond and get the Cardinal and then wait for one CSX freight. If all that comes together, we'll head over to Prince and try for shots at the art deco ex-C&O station.

We wind our way down into the valleys surrounding Thurmond and soon we're in town. Thurmond is just a flag stop for the Cardinal, but we find passengers waiting at the fomer C&O wood frame station. Shadows have much of the trackage covered, but the rapidly rising sun has the shadows retreating. A coal train is tied up just north (railroad west) of town. Close to on-time, we hear horns and soon the Cardinal is rumbling through town behind a lone GE unit. Once out of town, we get some good news -- the signals clear up so we anticipate a CSX eastbound. We are not disappointed as a coal train rumbles through not long after the Cardinal has vanished.

With the day running like clockwork -- we got the Cardinal and an eastbound freight in short order -- we head over to Prince (a mere eleven miles away by rail, but a long drive around the mountains by road). Our goal here -- get a train passing the art deco train station with its raised lettering on the platform ends. We're in Prince before 11:00 and figure we have three hours before we have to dig into the nine-hour drive home.

Coming into Prince, we see a train waiting to head into Quinnemont on the Piney Creek Sub. We also find a westbound sitting in the station. We aren't in Prince very long before the wesgtbound (which is not very well lit) is moving -- I opt to shoot the train from inside the depot passing the windows. Shortly after he clears, the train on the Piney Creek Sub crosses the New River and passes the station area. We need the train on Track One against the platform -- we get it on Track 2. The train has pushers, but rather than wait for them at the depot (where they'll be poorly lit), we hop into the car and head into Quinnemont, getting nice shots of the head end rounding the curve near the yard office and the rear units going away under a C&O cantilever signal bridge. The head end power is cut off, and soon both sets of power are side by side as the train switches. We hear the crew say they need to head to Thurmond after switching, so we keep that in mind.

Heading back into Prince, the sun is swinging off the station for eastbounds, but just as it's getting bad a coal train heads east out of Stretcher's Neck Tunnel -- the train we had seen tied down at Thurmond earlier. Once again we're foiled as the train takes Track Two, away from the platform.

Our crew off the coal train that needs to go to Thurmond has its new train together, and we set up at the now-lit west end of the platform. Yup, the train takes Track Two away from the platform. To top it off, the nose door is open. Yuck.

Our 2:00 cut-off is now upon us, but things are getting interesting. A train is being assembled to go up the Piney Creek Sub, and the end of the bridge over the New River is lit -- very well lit. We decide to hang around, but there's plenty of switching to do. The light keeps getting better, but the hour keeps growing later. Finally, at about 4:00 the train leaves Prince and rumbles over the bridge for an excellent shot.

The original plan had us getting back to Bruce's at 10:00, then I could head home from there which should put me in at about 1:30. The delay caused by the train heading up the Piney Creek means there's no way I'm making the final leg of that drive, and I decide I'll tie up at Bruce's that night. That means we still have another hour we can now spend in Prince, hoping to get our platform shot. Maybe we'll even stick around for the westbound Cardinal!

Getting back to the station, we quickly discover that the trees around the station will put the Cardinal in shadow when it arrives, so we don't need to stick around for that. We do, however, finally get our train on Track One. Unfortunately, it's an eastbound coming right out of the sun. No good. With our new departure time finally approaching, another eastbound appears, this time on Track Two. Hoping that it has pushers, we head to the west end of the platform for the going-away shot. Alas, all we get is the last hopper on the train. Time to hit the road for home.

Epilogue
Arrival at Bruce's is at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, and I get up at 6:30 to finish my drive home and go into work. Looking back on the trip, I can't help but marvel at how everything fell into place -- we had five railroads on the original list, all of which were supposed to run, but any of which could simply not run for any of a niumber of reasons. Every railroad ran when it was supposed to, and even on the days where we had multiple targets planned everything fell into place. Getting Amtrak and CSX in Thurmond was a nice bonus, and after reviewing my shots I decided that the shot of the first eastbound in Prince wasn't so bad (even if the train was on Track 2). The only disappointment was missing CSX on the street in New Albany, but actually it wouldn't have been lit very well anyhow.

All in all, it was quite a trip. It was built like a house of cards, but the house held up beyond my wildest expectations.

A Train Named Soo

2007-11-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

A full selection of photos from this trip can be found in Photologues. Photos appearing on this page can be purchased at ShopDaylightImages.com.

Another great photo freight opportunity presented itself in October 2007, this time in Wisconsin. Historic Transport Preservation, a group dedicated to recreating scenes of past modes of transportation (particularly railroads) chartered Soo Line 1003 from Hartford to Randolph and Fairwater, Wisconsin, on October 20-21. The host railroad would be the Wisconsin & Southern. After initially planning to drive all day Thursday, October 18, to get to Wisconsin, I decided at the last minute that I didn't feel like doing all that driving. An internet search yielded an Allentown (Pa.) to Milwaukee air fare for about $200 on two days' notice -- that's cheaper than the gas to get there! Thus, I flew beyond the Cheddar Curtain.

Day 1 - October 18, 2007
Landing in Milwaukee early in the morning, I was greeted by cloudy skies and overall drab weather. Why did I fly? I really decided that getting into town a day early wasn't gaining me anything, so I picked up the rental car and sort of meandered north and west out of town, generally towards the Wisconsin & Southern. High on my to-do list for this trip was to get a train passing the Miller brewery at a location called Grand Junction. I found Grand Junction surprisingly easy (a previous trip there with Railfan & Railroad columnist Bob Gallegos made me somewhat familiar with the location) but the skies were dismal.

At this point I had a brainstorm. Good friend Jim Wrinn worked in nearby Waukesha, so I gave him a call to see if he wanted to meet up for lunch. I've known Jim for probably 20 years, back when I was just a railfan from the north and he was actively involved with the North Carolina Transportation Museum and the Norfolk Southern steam program. Now I was editor of Railfan & Railroad, and Jim had become editor of our rival magazine, Trains. Despite the rivalry, we remain good friends and he agreed to meet for lunch. With an hour to kill before Jim got out of a meeting, I headed to Waukesha's ex-Wisconsin Central depot and caught a Canadian National (now the owner of WC) southbound going past (somehow with the sun out). Then it was off to meet Jim.

Following lunch (at Dave's Famous Barbeque where we enjoyed southern-style pork) Jim invited me back to the office of Kalmbach Publishing, parent company of Trains. I know most of the Trains staffers on a first-name basis and it was good to touch base with Dave Ingles, Rob McGonigal, Kathi Kube, Matt Van Hattem, Andy Cummings and the rest of the gang. Jim photographed me in front of Kalmbach headquarters and again turning in my visitor's pass before sending me on my way. "Stay close by and keep in touch," he said. He wanted to ask his wife, Pam, if she wanted to get together for dinner.

I headed to Duplainville, a railfan favorite location where Canadian Pacific's ex-Milwaukee Road trackage crosses CN's ex-Wisconsin Central. First up was an eastbound Canadian Pacific freight, followed by Amtrak's Empire Builder heading west on CP (both in sun -- I was really lucking out on this mostly clody day). A local freight zipped by both directions on the CN, but I didn't shoot it. After a little while, I decided to try a location I hadn't been to before and headed for Brookville. I photographed the restored station as the sun set, but alas no trains came on the CP. From there it was off to Wawautosa to meet Jim and Pam for dinner, then head back to the Super 8 near the airport for the night.

Day 2 -- October 19, 2007
Friend Jeff Smith was arriving at the airport from Philadelphia early in the morning, and I made the quick drive from the motel to the airport just after his plane landed. If anything, the weather was worse today than yesterday. We headed up to Hartford where Soo Line 1003 was being prepped for its ferry move to Brandon (the locomotive lives in the antique car museum in Hartford). We arrived in Hartford, saw the locomotive outside under steam, and pretty much just hung out in the car in the parking lot until departure time, as the weather still wasn't conducive to photography. Even after the locomotive departed the museum, picked up its train and headed for a coal stop in Burnett, we still didn't take any photos -- we were happy just to shadow it as it made its way along.

At Burnett the locomotive was coaled and the skies brightened just to the point where we thought about taking photos. We paused at a nice grade crossing just outside of town for our first shot, got in at another crossing about halfway to Waupun, then again blasting past the feed mill in Waupun. The cow farm just south of Brandon would be our last stop.

Once in Brandon the locomotive crew offered a photo runby, which we gladly accepted and photographed, then we all enjoyed dinner and a quick meeting with trip organizer John Craft before starting a night photo session. Victor Hand and I lit up the 1003 by the Brandon mill using flashbulbs, then the locomotive was moved into the town park for some scenes lit by fixed halogen lamps. Finally, the lamps were turned off and the train headed for Fairwater, where Saturday's activities would start. As the train accelerated out of town, I listened to the locomotive working in the darkness across the fields and reflected that this sound was background noise to generations of Americans over the decades. I savored the moments until the train was out of earshot.

Day 3 -- October 20, 2007
The bad weather gave way to sunny skies by Saturday morning, and a group of about 40 photographers gathered around the 1003 in Fairwater shooting all kinds of servicing, detail and roster shots right up until departure time. After a spirited steamy runby in downtown Fairwater, the train was backed to the west side of town where a pond and a feed mill provided photographic fodder for five runbys. What a start!

After finishing at the mill, we headed back towards Brandon, stopping at Brandon Road for another set of runbys. Then a stop in a playground just outside Brandon allowed for another pair of runbys before heading into town for runbys, lunch and water for the engine. A Subway lunch was provided, but several folks took advantage of the fried brat sandwiches available in the city park.

After lunch the photographers descended upon the cow farm just outside of town to get 1003's southward move, and we got another shot just outside Waupun. At Waupun, the train made a stop just north of town while the photographers gathered near the mill in the town's center. Once everyone was in place, the train crew really put on a show blasting through the center of town at track speed. Wow!

Above Burnett another pair of runbys were held, albeit under cloud cover. By Burnett the sun (and an antique car) were present for another runby before coal was added to 1003's tender. The train then went into Horicon and changed lines, coming out on the branch to Randolph. While the train was in town making its moves, the photo line formed at a crossing west of town for a nice shot. From there, everyone was on their own to find a spot somewhere between Horicon and Fox Lake Junction -- we wound up at Sunset Beach, which looked like a not spectacular shot, but the ensuing image came out looking okay.

The grand finale was at a causeway along Beaver Dam Lake just outside the town of Beaver Dam. Using a private residence, we were able to get many shots of 1003 silhouetted on a causeway while the setting sun provided an ever-changing backdrop. The last runby was made just after sunset and we all headed off for a good night's sleep after an amazing day.

Day 4 -- October 21, 2007

Sunrise in Randolph found the photographers shooting scenes of the train crew preparing 1003 for the day, as well as glinty sunrise shots. Once the train was ready to go, we were told to find a spot somewhere between Randolph and Sunset Beach, then after getting that shot we were to gather at Sunset Beach. I knew the big field right in Randolph was as good as anyplace, so Jeff and I set up there, along with the father-and-son team of Bill and Mike Raia and others. Bill Raia was the man to stick with, as he was the liaison between the photographers and the train crew and he had the radio to communicate with the train -- the train wasn't going to get past him! If you knew where Bill was, you knew you were ahead of the train.

The 1003's freight consist was a mix of modern hopper cars and modern gondolas, and some had been badly vandalized with graffiti. An effort had been made to get most of the graffiti cars near the middle of the train, allowing for attractive shots of both the 1003 and the Soo Line caboose that trailed the train. Just before departure from Randolph, however, it was noted that the gondola up against the 1003 was badly vandalized, so a switching move was required to move the offensive car further back into the train. Our decision to stay at the field proved to be a good one, as we had a front row seat as the 1003 shuffled like a local train from the 1950s, setting out and making up its train. Once the train was together, 1003 backed through town and came roaring through for the benefit of the townsfolks (and us in the field).

Hitting the car, we headed for Sunset Beach where most of the photo line was already set up at a nice pond just off Fox Lake. Here the 1003 made a nice series of runbys and everyone was able to capture a variety of angles. Then it was off to Horicon for lunch (and water for the locomotive). Before departing Horicon we photographed some of the Wisconsin & Southern diesel power there, and a simulated "hooping up orders" was done by the train order board, with the photo line doing the moving while the 1003 stayed in one place.

Out of Horicon, we set up for a shot just outside of town. From there the checkerboard roads and diagonal tracks kept us behind the train until we broke ahead near Woodland. Suddenly the 20-car motorcade descended into town and the first half dozen cars shot by the side road needed to access the tracks. With those cars wheeling around and turning into the side road from one direction and the other half of the motorcade not making the mistake and turning in from the other direction, it was like dueling motorcades as the cars poured into the side street. With about 90 percent of the photographers gathered at one spot, including Bill Raia and the radio, we had 1003 perform an unplanned runby through town.

Outside Woodland, the next planned runby was at a grade crossing that was fairly nondescript. The grade crossing just prior to that, however, featured a nice farm; fortunately, the back-up move for the primary runby spot took the 1003 back to the other grade crossing so folks were able to pick where they wanted to be. After that, it was off to the next crossing east where another nice farm was located. Here several runbys were planned. What wasn't planned was an antique car rolling up to the crossing. The car and its owners were quickly recruited as photo props and actors for several runbys.

Sunset was rapidly approaching, but so were clouds. The next runby location, at the cemetery in Rubicon, featured a couple of antique tractors. As the final runbys were held, the clouds swallowed the sun for good. Still, it had been an excellent day and an excellent weekend. The 1003 returned to Hartford and we said our goodbyes to each other and headed our separate ways.

Day 5 -- October 22, 2007

Jeff was catching an early flight back to Philadelphia, so I dropped him at the airport in Milwaukee. The dismal skies had me thinking about trying to find an early flight home, but Tuesday's forecast was good -- I decided to tough it out through Monday and hope for a better tomorrow.

I headed up to Slinger in search of Wisconsin & Southern action. At Slinger the WSOR crosses the CN's ex-Wisconsin Central, and approaching town I heard a northbound CN train. I set up on the overhead bridge at Ackerville and caught it there. I thought I heard a southbound WSOR train on the scanner, but the wait at Ackerville produced nothing. I followed the WSOR back through Hartford (there was the 1003 being cooled down before going back into the museum), Rubicon and Woodland (where I spotted a high-rail maintenance truck on the tracks -- no trains here) and went to Horicon. A check at the offices revealed there were no WSOR trains in easy reach, so I headed down towards the CP's ex-Milwaukee main line in search of action.

I finally landed at Richwood, where I shot Amtrak's Empire Builder heading east, followed by an eastbound freight. Trackwork had things gummed up and most of the eastbounds came to a halt, so I headed up to Atsico where I bagged a westbound (and missed a westbound). I headed back to Richwood where the westbounds were still rolling and caught the westward-heading Empire Builder bracketed by two freights. Bob Gallegos joined me after work, and we were later joined by Amtrak engineer Craig Willett who just happened by -- he had been running the eastbound Builder I had shot earlier. Finally, an eastbound rolled past (pretty much in the dark) and Bob and I headed for dinner in the restaurant that now occupies the former Milwaukee depot in Oconomowoc.

Day 6 -- October 23, 2007

I stayed in Hartford that night, and headed out first thing to check on the Wisconsin & Southern at Horicon. Once again, nothing doing. Okay, if I wasn't going to get the WSOR, there were two shots I really wanted before heading home on a 4:00 flight. The coaling tower over the former Chicago & North Western at Clyman Junction was high on my list, as was the shot at Grand Junction near the Miller brewery back in Milwaukee (the shot I had tried to get on Thursday). At least my airline gamble had paid off -- there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Bob Gallegos had given me a primer on interpreting signals at Clyman Junction, so I headed to the eastbound signals. Both green, which didn't mean much. I took a long drive around to the westbound signals and -- zounds -- a red signal. That meant an eastbound was imminent at the junction. I rocketed back to the coaling tower and pulled up in a cloud of dust just in time to almost get the shot I wanted as two light Union Pacific engines moved under the structure. Dang! The engines were heading up the branch that comes in near the coaling tower, and the conductor who was out throwing switches was friendly. I asked if there was anything out on the main line. Sure enough, there was an eastbound about 20 miles away. Excellent!

It took almost an hour, but soon I heard horns to the west. There were about three good angles at Clyman Junction, but I only had one train. I set up for the shot I wanted the most and waited. Much to my surprise, the train pulled up and stopped in the prime spot for photography directly under the coaling tower. It had to make a pickup from the adjacent yard, and each switching move took the engines back and forth under the coaling tower. To say I cleaned up would be an understatement.

With Clyman Junction a certified success, it was back to the other shot I wanted -- Grand Junction back in Milwaukee. The bad news was I only had about a one-hour window to get the shot before I had to head for the airport. The good news was the eastbound Empire Builder was scheduled to fall within that window. The best news was that the train was reported on time, according to Amtrak's Julie. The shot was crucial, though, because the Miller brewery had the classic Miller "bow tie" logo on a large sign on the roof, and with the pending Miller-Coors merger, the sign might not be long for this rooftop.

Arriving at Grand Junction, I noticed the sun hadn't quite swung around as much as I'd have liked, but it would do. I patiently waited. Uh, oh. A westbound CP freight suddenly came up from behind me. Please clear before Amtrak arrives... Okay, it cleared but -- here comes another westbound. Please clear....

Now I was looking at my watch. I had a 4:00 flight, and Amtrak should have come through at about 2:10. It was now 2:25 and I really had to go to the airport... Wait, I hear horns. Amtrak pulls through the shot at 2:27, my cameras are packed back into my luggage by 2:35, I'm at the airport by 2:55 dropping off the rental car, through security by 3:15 and I arrive at my gate at 3:25, with almost 40 minutes to spare before take-off. Success, indeed.

North Woods Railroading

2007-11-20T22:43:00.000-05:00

A full selection of photos from this trip can be found in Photologues. Photos appearing on this page can be purchased at ShopDaylightImages.com.

"Come to Minnesota," friend Steve Glischinski said. He was putting together a freight charter on the North Shore Scenic out of Duluth in early September, and he further enticed me with the possibilities of other adventures -- there would be a night photo session featuring Soo Line equipment at the former Soo depot in Superior, Wisconsin; Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 No.261 would be powering excursions with a nearly-matched set of Milwaukee cars trailing; the all-Alco powered Minnesota, Dakota & Western was being sold to short line conglomerate Watco, which would likely lead to the end of the vintage diesels plying the line; and even though Canadian National had recently purchased the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range, there were still a lot of trains with matched sets of Missabe power hauling ore. Making this trip was an easy decision.

Day 1 -- September 7, 2006

An early flight from Newark put me into the Twin Cities before lunch, and I quickly grabbed my rental car. The attendant at the exit booth asked where I was heading. "Duluth," I replied. He quickly gave me directions to I-35 and concluded by saying, "...and if you don't hit any moose or goats you'll be in Duluth in two hours."

Wheeling out of the airport (and through a detour the attendant didn't tell me about), I was soon passing through St. Paul. Trains from Canadian Pacific, BNSF and even Twin Cities & Western tried to lure me off the interstate, but I figured by the time I exited and tried to get to them they'd be gone and I'd have wasted time. Besides, I had a goal -- get to the Iron Range. Distractions behind, I pushed north and decided my only break would be just short of Duluth, where I'd check out the Duluth & Northwestern.

The D&NE was quiet -- it looked like their lone active switcher was ready to head into the engine house for the day -- but I did find one of the railroad's steam locomotives on display in a park. After photographing 2-8-2 No.16 I headed into Duluth, hoping to find a DM&IR (uh, CN) train heading northward.

The quest for a train on the ore dock proved futile, but an ore boat loading at the dock was recorded. Heading up Proctor Hill and into Proctor, I stopped to photograph the Yellowstone steam locomotive on display in the park. From there, a quick drive through the roundhouse area yielded nothing, and so it was time to head north into the hinterlands, hoping to either run into a southbound train or -- even better -- perhaps overtake a northbound.

Talk about a plan coming together. The road and tracks pulled along each other just below Munger, and off in the trees I could see limestone cars heading north. Cool. I got ahead of the train just north of where the former Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific (also now CN) crossed the DM&IR on an overhead bridge and I got my first shot of the trip of DM&IR power. After getting the train passing the signals at South Coons, I continued north with the train as it slipped into the siding at Kelsey. Hmmm, this means a southbound was coming. Since the road and railroad are within sight of each other all the way to Iron Junction, I saw no harm in heading north to intercept the southbound -- which I did at Zim. The surprise was that the southbound was led by a pair of CSX units!

Heading back south, I shot the CSX units at the north end of Kelsey, then resumed my northward chase with the limestone train. At Iron Junction there were a few railfans hanging out waiting for a southbound T-Bird (the shuttle that runs between the Thunderbird North mine and the taconite plant at Fairlane) and as I joined them it was becoming apparent that both trains could be meeting right in front of us. As it turned out, the T-Bird arrived just seconds ahead of the limestone train, so we shot the southbound then wheeled around to shoot the meet.

Once the ore train cleared, I headed back south to the Fairlane plant at Forbes, where the T-Bird was just pulling in. Even better, a southbound ore train was waiting to come out (with a sister road engine from the Bessemer & Lake Erie second in the consist). I chased the southbound back through Zim to Kelsey, then dropped back north to pick up a merchandise freight at Zim. By Kelsey the light was fading, bringing the day to an end. As always, the DM&IR did not disappoint.

Day 2 -- September 8, 2006

An early rise put me on the road northward to get my next quarry. I was heading for International Falls (often mentioned as the coldest place in the continental U.S. on any given winter day) to shoot the Minnesota, Dakota & Eastern. The newspapers in the area were carrying the day's big news -- the sale of the MD&E to Watco had fallen through. The Alcos had been given a reprieve.

After checking in at the office, I started following a couple of the local jobs around. S2 No.18 would be my morning companion, and I followed it and its crew as it worked the various yards and leads around the Boise Cascade paper mill. A second switcher was working across the river in Canada, but the arrival of two trucks carrying windmill blades had the area around customs all tied up. I decided that venturing into Canada might be more time-consuming than it was worth, so I stuck with the switcher on the U.S. side.

On the scanner I heard a Canadian National train approaching the international bridge into nearby Ranier, so I scooted the five miles east and caught the train on the bridge. I then shot it as it made its customs stop in front of the impressive depot. Not unexpectedly, I drew the attention of a customs agent who came over to see what I was up to. I explained that I wanted a shot of the train in front of the depot. That was fine, he said. He just didn't want anyone taking photos of their new high-tech top secret security camera on the bridge. Okay...

Once the train was clear of customs, I headed to the Route 11 overhead bridge, getting the train there as it pulled into the small yard south of the highway. Then it was back to International Falls for one final check of the MD&W. Parking at the chamber of commerce building, I walked around the back and discovered -- the building had a bay window. Wait a minute -- this is the former Great Northern depot! After shooting the building, I wandered inside where I found only offices and a very nice lady who showed me the entire interior. She mentioned that an old freight depot had been moved away from the tracks into town (but I never found it on a later search). She also mentioned that they were quite proud of the new top secret security camera that was on the CN bridge...

Once away from International Falls, it was back on the road towards the DM&IR. My timing was pretty good, as I caught a southbound hitting the diamond at Ramshaw, followed very quickly by a shot of the train at Spruce. A good rule of thumb on the DM&IR is "if you don't know where any trains are, go to Thunderbird North and look for a T-Bird." I took my own advice and found not one, but two T-Birds there; one was just finishing loading while a second was waiting to go into the mine. Fortuitously, I heard a northbound train on the DW&P and headed over to the diamond at Ramshaw to get it, then headed to Iron Junction where I got a northbound BNSF "all-rail" train followed by the southbound T-Bird. The T-Bird was dutifully chased to the Fairlane plant where, true to DM&IR form, another T-Bird was waiting to come out.

About this time I ran into Steve Glischinski who was chasing with Steve Smedley, making for a confusing trio of Steves ("Hey, Steve." "What?" "Not you.") We caught a southbound CN merchandise train at Iron Junction, followed by a BNSF all-rail train. As the all-rail train headed south, the T-Bird came trucking north. Ya gotta love the DM&IR. With a night photo session scheduled for Superior that evening, the other two Steves headed south. I stuck around to shoot the sign for the yard at Keenan (still proudly saying "Missabe") and shot the next T-Bird as it prepared to launch from Fairlane.

Once in Superior (Wisconsin, that is) I found the former Soo depot which is now a store but has been fully restored by its owner. The highlight of the restoration is the operating Soo "dollar sign" neon sign on the roof of the station. The Lake Superior Railroad Museum sent a Soo Line FP7 and GP30 over from Duluth, and about 75 photographers (most in for the Soo Line Historical Society convention) enjoyed the night photo session. Kudos to Angela Terry, wife of Railfan & Railroad columnist Jeff Terry, who braved a basement full of spiders to turn the neon sign on and off during the session.

Day 3 -- September 9, 2006

The "real" reason for this trip was the Saturday photo charter on the North Shore Scenic, part of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, from Duluth to Two Harbors on former DM&IR trackage. Power for the trip would be Great Northern NW5 No.192, with a mixed train consisting of a few freight cars, a GN caboose and a combine temporarily relettered for the GN through the miracle of magnetics.

The first stop was along the harbor where some nice scenes were captured from various angles. Next was the bridge over Tischers Creek in Lakeside (from private property that Steve Glischinski had arranged for), followed by a stop in downtown Lakeside. The only clouds of the day hit us during a photo stop at Palmers, where a vintage sedan was used as a photo prop. Our train then ducked into a siding to let the regular North Shore Scenic train (powered by the Soo Line GP30) scoot past. We then backed down to the large bridge just south of Palmers, where we waited out the clouds for some sunlit shots. The final northbound shot was posed under the DM&IR bridge just outside Two Harbors.

At Two Harbors a lunch stop was made, but most photographers eschewed food to do some photography as the GP30 posed with the NW5 at the staion-turned-museum in town. The GP30 then departed south. Our train followed not far behind, but the necessity to turn our train on the DM&IR wye led to a substantial delay. Nonetheless, the move through the DM&IR yard allowed for some shooting from the train of locomotives and shop buildings that couldn't be taken otherwise (at least not without some serious trespassing). Finally clear of the DM&IR, a photo stop was made next to the approach signal for the junction between the North Shore Scenic and the Missabe.

At Knife River the somewhat forlorn station had a new sign applied by Steve G. for the photo stop there. Then it was a race against the setting sun to a bridge just outside Duluth for a photo stop -- arrival was just in time as shadows were rapidly swllowing the bridge. Backing north to Lakeside, our train took the siding as the "pizza train" from Duluth came north, making its stop to pick up its dinner right there at the siding -- Domino's really does deliver! Then it was back to the museum in Duluth, followed by a group dinner at a local sports bar.

Day 4 -- September 10, 2006

Okay, based on my original plan I was supposed to be heading for the Twin Cities by now to chase Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 No.261 on a couple of short excursions. The weather forecast for south of Duluth was fairly awful, however, while Duluth was supposed to have sun for most of the day. Thus, I stayed north.

The day was supposed to start with a photo session in the yard of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, where a few steam locomotives that are normally kept under the train shed would be brought out into the sun. Meanwhile, the Soo Line Historical Society was having a fan trip on the North Shore Scenic, powered by Soo Line GP30 No.700. A bunch of us went chasing the excursion, starting near Duluth. With the photo session beckoning back at the museum, the chasers mused whether to continue chasing or head back -- then it dawned on everybody that anyone who would be attending the photo session was already out here chasing! A group decision was made to hold off the photo shoot until after everyone got the shot of the excursion on the trestle at Palmers.

With that out of the way, it was back to the museum. While there was switching being done in the yard, I ventured inside to do some shooting (since it was still before normal visiting hours I could use my tripod without impeding traffic). The Yellowstone inside the museum is mounted on rollers and every 30 minutes or so the drivers turn. Neat. I was then offered a tour of the restoration shop, which I accepted. Back outside, Northern Pacific 2-6-2 No.2435, Duluth & Northwestern 2-8-2 No.14 and a variety of diesels were all photographed (Jeff Terry provided a concoction of used motor oil and flares to produce smoke from the steamers) before calling it a day before lunch.

Kevin Madsen was out looking for trains in Duluth and phoned in that a train would be heading up Proctor Hill shortly, so a large motorcade left the museum for milepost 2 on the DM&IR. We were only there literally seconds before a train headed up the grade, and a few late arrivals missed it. Not to worry, though -- that wasn't the train Kevin had seen (don't know where that one came from!) and the one we were looking for would be along shortly (which it was). A chase up Proctor Hill through a church parking lot (impeded by the fact that church was just letting out) got some fleet-of-foot folks a second shot.

Steve G. suggested a quick tour around Duluth to fill out the afternoon, so we headed over to the bridge at Tischers Creek to get the regular northbound North Shore Scenic train, powered by a DM&IR SD9. The Soo Line Historical Society train was due back soon, now with the FP7 leading, so we shot that at Lakeside. Then the scanner reported a DM&IR train approaching Two Harbors, so we raced up there just in time to shoot that. Then we heard a train on the scale at Highland, so we had to go after that. Then, while we were in the area, Steve called a contact at Cliffs Northshore Mining where he found out that, yes, there was a train in the area. We headed deep into the woods to get the train near Norshor Junction and again even deeper in the woods. Finally, the fastest way out of the woods would be to go through Iron Junction. So much for a short tour around Duluth!

A BNSF train was heading south, so we got him at Keenan followed by a nice shot passing a house at Kelsey. A northbound limestone train was in the siding at Kelsey, so we shot him there and again at Iron Junction. Finally, a train was coming out of Fairlane, this one with a DM&IR unit painted in CN colors. We shot it, then headed back to Duluth. I was heading for the Twin Cities and beyond, so my five-hour drive began a little later than I had counted on. The good weather ran out on the way down, and when I arrived in LaCrescent for the night it was pretty rainy.

Day 5 -- September 11, 2006

It didn't take long to find Milwaukee 261 in the rain in LaCrescent on this wet morning. The 261's caretaker and usual engineer, Steve Sandberg, invited me up into the cab to get out of the rain. The 261 wasn't supposed to be here on this day, but its trainset was -- the coaches were heading to Iowa for a trip using two imported Chinese QJ steamers the next weekend, and when diesels couldn't be found to ferry the coaches south, it was decided to use the 261. The nearly matched all-Milwaukee trainset was interrupted only by a couple of private cars near the rear of the train.

The moist air made for a steamy show as the 261 did a bit of switching to get out of LaCrescent. I headed down to Norma for my first shot and was soon in a spirited chase heading for Iowa (keeping in mind that I had a mid-afternoon flight out of Minneapolis). I found a real nice spot in Brownsville, then shot the causeway at Reno. Entering Iowa, I got a couple of locations near New Albin, then finished off the chase at Lansing. It was time to head back to the airport.

Pennsylvania Past Blast

2007-11-13T20:47:00.000-05:00

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For nine days the past returned to eastern Pennsylvania. During the week-plus-two-weekends you could find a Canadian National 0-6-0, 2-6-0 and 2-8-2 under steam, EMD E8s from the Pennsylvania and Erie running on the main line, and even passengers boarding a GG1-powered passenger train. Some of it really happened, some was done with smoke (literally!) and mirrors.

Day 1 - November 3, 2007

This was the first day of the Lackawanna Railfest at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton. The brainchild of Charlie Liberto, it was designed to be the biggest event at Steamtown since the grand opening in 1995. With lots of ambition (but a small budget) plans were made to bring in guest locomotives from all over the east. Some were just wishful thinking, some were actually committed then couldn't make it, and some actually arrived for the event!

Planning got started in early 2007, and I was asked to coordinate the night photo session, along with Pete Lerro of Lerro Productions and park ranger Kenny Ganz. By October 16 the plan was in place -- but soon became a moving target (I think Garth Brooks called it "roping the wind"). By the day of the event the night session was down to "let's see what's sitting where and we'll do something with it." (This is not intended to be a slam on Steamtown -- the Railfest introduced all kinds of challenges, but the park rose to the occasion every time).

The marquee event for Saturday was a trip from Scranton to the Delaware Water Gap, with diesels from the Delaware Lackawanna (a pair of RS3s scheduled) leading the train east and double-headed steam leading the train back. I got a late start, but soon made the 35-minute drive from home to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, with my arrival occuring during the train's lunch stop. I discovered that a) the RS3s did not make the trip and b) there was only a single steam locomotive to pull the train back -- Canadian National 2-8-2 No.3254.

The train was west of town at Gravel Place shuffling the consist for the return trip, but when it arrived back in East Stroudsburg I was pleased to see that good friend Seth Corwin was engineer. Seth had some recent health issues that made his return to the cab questionable, but he was back! The crew was confident that the 3254 was capable of powering the long train up the tortuous grade through Devil's Hole by itself, so the diesel helpers were sent to the top of the grade at Pocono Summit (where they waited -- just in case).

Come departure time I set up at the concrete Lackawanna tower at Gravel Place and waited for the train. It wasn't a long wait, and 3254 came roaring past -- I had never seen a train move that fast through Gravel Place before. Into the car, and soon I was ahead of the train again at Cresco, where two carloads of passengers were unloaded. Knowing that there would be a photo runby about two miles west, I wasn't in any big hurry to leave Cresco to head for my next location beyond the runby at Mount Pocono, but most of the chasing vehicles had dispersed. Only a handful of us were left when the decision was made to hold the runby right there at the Cresco depot. Glad I didn't leave! Seth put on a great show during the runby, and while the train reloaded I headed for the overhead bridge near the grain mill at Mount Pocono.

A bunch of us were on the bridge waiting, while the solid cloud cover (wasn't the forecast for sun?) tried to break up. Small patches of sun on the surprisingly late autumn foliage teased us. We eventually saw smoke on the horizon and got set. And waited...

We saw more smoke on the horizon. Ready...set...wait.....

Finally, a chaser who had shot the train at Devil's Hole reported that it was barely crawling by. We pretty much figured out that the train had stalled on the grade. Unfortunately, the diesels that should have been sitting in the siding just west of us had run on to Tobyhanna -- the steam crew got such a good start out of Cresco that they thought they'd make the grade and told the diesels to go on ahead. When the diesels appeared to the west, we knew for sure the train had stalled. It wasn't long before the diesels came back west again, this time with the train behind them.

I thought about giving up the chase at this point -- I figured the diesels would stay on the head end all the way back to Scranton. But when the sun popped out -- it looked like for good -- I quickly went in to Tobyhanna, just in case. This turned out to be a good move, as the diesels were cut away to run light to Scranton. Alas, by the time 3254 headed west, the clouds had come back.

Meanwhile, I had a night photo session in Scranton I was supposed to be coordinating. The train was scheduled to arrive in Scranton at 4:30, and the 3254 was supposed to be ready at the roundhouse by 6:30. With a departure from Tobyhanna that was after 5:00 it would be difficult for the steam crew to make it over to the roundhouse on time, but I figured we'd improvise. I knew the planned set-ups for visiting diesels were not going to happen due to last-minute cancellations by a couple of operators, but I walked through the park's core complex and quickly identified about four scenes we could shoot. We'd make it work. Pete Lerro was going to provide fixed tungsten lighting of CN 3254 and Canadian Pacific 2317 at the roundhouse, and the Lumedyne lighting crew of myself, Frank Etzel, Jeff Smith, John Tully and Fred Jones would work the diesels.

While Pete and his roadies began running generators and wires, I got the 47 paying customers organized and as soon as darkness fell we began the night session, starting with a photo of Canadian Pacific GP38-2 No.7312, still in Delaware & Hudson paint and named for legendary engineer Bernie O'Brien. Word reached us, however, that there was a derailment out in the yard, and we wouldn't get any steam locomotives in the roundhouse area. Pete tore down his lighting set-up and headed out to the Union Pacific Big Boy to get set up there.

Our group broke into half, taking turns shooting two EMD E8s side-by-side. Pennsylvania 5809, owned by Bennett Levin's Juniata Terminal, had come to Scranton powering a private car train. Erie E8 833, owned by Jimmy Wilson's New York & Greenwood Lake, was in Scranton for a series of excursions the next weekend. They made quite a sight. Then the two halves went off separately with one half shooting Bennett's other PRR E8 (5711) next to Ken Briers's 1940 Pennsy pick-up while the other half shot Delaware Lackawanna's SC2 No.426. While the two groups were swapping, we were suddenly surprised by the appearance of Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 No.2317 on the turntable -- we thought the steam couldn't make it to the roundhouse! The tired crew graciously waited while we snapped off two quick photos, then they -- and the 2317 -- headed off to bed. We resumed our diesel trek, with each half-group getting the shot they hadn't gotten yet, then we all headed for the bright lights of Lerro Productions out by the Big Boy.

Pete had his lights ready to go, and as soon as the photo line was ready his pyrotechnic crew placed smoke bombs near the cylinders and down the stack of UP 4012. For about three minutes it looked like the Big Boy breathed again. After the bombs went out, another set was lit off, then a third set. It's a wrap!

As I passed under Bridge 60 leaving the park, I noticed 3254 up on the bridge -- and a very awkward-looking coach at a bad angle behind it. They had a long night ahead...

Day 2 -- November 4, 2007

This would largely be a day devoted to the Pennsylvania Railroad. I was to coordinate some side-by-side steam running at Steamtown for the Railfest in mid-morning, but there was time to chase Bennett Levin's PRR E8s as they took the private car train north out of Scranton up the former Lackawanna main line. The obvious shot would have been the massive concrete viaduct at Nicholson, but cloudy skies would make that a very contrasty shot. I opted instead to go to Factoryville Tunnel where I could minimize the cloudy-bright sky.

Finding the tunnel proved a bit tricky (thanks to Mike Burkhart who looked it up in an atlas and gave me directions over my cell phone), but once set up it didn't take long for the train to arrive. I opted to chase further north, just missing the train at Kingsley but getting it at Alsen. The dispatcher needed to send the train through the siding at New Milford because of a bad signal, so when I bagged the train at the south end of the siding I knew I could catch it at the north end (which I did).

Now it was time to head for Steamtown and the side-by-side steam running. I remembered that I had ranger Kenny Ganz's cell phone number, so I gave him a call to check on the status of the derailment. The news wasn't good -- the derailment was still there and it blocked the only way in and out of the park by rail. CN 3254 was trapped outside the park, CP 2317 was trapped inside the park and side-by-side steam wouldn't happen. Even worse, the scheduled trip to Moscow had been cancelled. When I got to Steamtown I could see the extent of the derailment -- not much damage, but the derailed coach had really dug into the ground. A temporary road was being built to the coach to expedite the moving of a crane. Meanwhile, the park service was doing a good job of making lemonade from a lot of lemons -- they were offering free (if not short) shuttle rides behind 2317 and allowing people up close to the derailment. When folks saw the derailment they thought, "that's different" and most were then quite understanding of why the Moscow trip didn't run.

Since my services weren't needed at Steamtown (and I had another commitment for that evening three hours away), I decided to make my exit. Before leaving, though, I stopped in to visit Mark Brennan (head of interpretation at Steamtown); park superintendent Kip Hagen happened by, and we discussed the current Railfest and Railfests of the future (including 2010 when the National Railway Historical Society holds its convention in Scranton). I opined that, despite all the turbulence below the surface as the plan changed by the minute, all the folks in attendance were having a good time and were being presented a well-run event. Kudos to Steamtown.

From Scranton I headed down the Pennsylvania Turnpike to King of Prussia, then headed down U.S. 202 and 30 into Lancaster County. Pete Lerro had a night photo session scheduled for the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania where he hoped to recreate scenes of the PRR. With a late night planned and an early wake-up the next day, I stopped to check in at my motel first before heading to the museum. And being it was the biggest football day of the year so far (Super Bowl 41.5 -- Patriots vs. Colts, followed by Cowboys-Eagles) I bought a small radio so I could keep up with events on the ol' gridiron during the night session.

As darkness fell, the Lerro Productions team went into action. Pete has a roadie crew that consists of wire stringers, actors and pyromaniacs. Soon the lights were run, the actors were in place and the photographers gathered around PRR 4-8-2 6755 and 4-6-2 3750. To bring life to the locomotives, the pyros ignited chemicals inside and around the locomotives, and suddenly we were in Altoona in 1950.

After several shots of the M1 and K4, the photo line swung around to shoot 4-4-2 460 and 2-8-0 7688 in a bumping post scene that could have been from a big city terminal. Engineers, firemen and hostlers were all depicted by the acting crew.

To cap off the evening, we moved under the museum's trainshed for a unique indoors night photo session. Pete's tungsten lights were turned on and the museum lights were extinguished and scenes of a GG1 on a passenger train and a 4-4-2 being serviced were created. Ken Briers's 1940 PRR pickup truck that had been a part of the Steamtown session the previous night appeared and was used for an LCL boxcar scene. The E44 under the shed was used and we finished off with a Consolidation being serviced. Nice stuff. We actually finished a bit early, and I caught the final couple of minutes of the Cowboys beating the Eagles before hitting the sack.

Day 3 -- November 5, 2007

The fields of Lancaster County could pass for the fields of southern Ontario. Thus, when Canadian National 2-6-0 No.911 headed into the rising sun just after 6:00 a.m., the Mogul and its freight train looked right at home. This was going to be an all-CN day on the Strasburg, using two north-of-the-border veterans.

Canadian National 2-6-0 No.89 came to the Strasburg following the shake-up of the Steamtown U.S.A. collection after the death of Nelson Blount in the late 1970s. Since Pete Lerro wanted to use old automobiles for some scenes, the 89 number wouldn't be appropriate (CN gave it that number somewhat late in life) so through the magic of vinyl lettering and a newly cast number plate, No.89 became No.911, the number it had worn early in life.

The other CN locomotive at Strasburg is the 0-6-0 known as No.31. As the tourist railroad's first steam locomotive, 31 got its number by dropping the first and last digits of its CN number. Finally, in 2007, all four digits were back and Strasburg 31 was once again CN 7312. No.7312 powered a mixed train throughout the day, shuttling photographers from location to location.

After sunrise in a field just outside Strasburg, the photography moved to Biler's Crossing near paradise. Levi Fisher, his horses, and dogs Snowball and Frisky were part of many photos, and a vintage bicycle and truck were also utilized. Following the shots here, it was back to the East Strasburg yard (which had been cleared out just for this event) where 911 and 7312 shuffled back and forth in what could have been any small town in Canada. Special thanks to Steve Gilbert for the outstanding vinyl lettering job on Strasburg's caboose.

Following lunch, CN 911 had been mysteriously replaced by CN 89 and it was off to a farm just outside the East Strasburg yard for a few shots. From there it was off to Groff's Grove where 7312 was attached to the rear of the freight to simulate a yard switcher giving the road freight a boost out of the yard. Finally, a double-header was run (does anybody have a vintage photo of a CN 2-6-0 leading a CN 0-6-0 on a freight?). No.89 was then sent back to Strasburg to turn for sunset while 7312 entertained the photographers at Groff's.

It was back to a field near Strasburg where sunset shots were going to be attempted. What color there was in the sky (the sunny day was rapidly detreiorating) vanished just before the runbys, though, asa huge cloud bank swallowed the sun.

No sun, no fun? Hardly. It was night photo session time, with 89 and 7312 making timeless scenes around the water plug. From there it was off to the shop, where the two CN locomotives were joined by Great Western 2-10-0 No.90. Through the generosity of the Strasburg shop crew, we finished off with more timeless scenes inside the shop. A long day and rain conspired to bring the day to a close. All that was left was three hours on the road in the rain.

Day 4 -- November 11, 2007

With a week to rest up, I began eyeing the calendar as November 10-11 approached. The Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society was sponsoring fund-raising trips featuring its newly-restored Nickel Plate sleeper City of Lima. Power for the trips would be Jimmy Wilson's Erie 833. Bad weather kept me home on Saturday as the E8 powered a morning Scranton-Moscow trip and an afternoon Scranton-Cresco trip. But Sunday's weather was looking real good.

The sun wasn't out when I got up early Sunday morning, but a look at the brightening sky told me the clouds overhead was actually fog -- and fog should burn off. Nonetheless, the fog stayed as I made the 90-minute drive into the Poconos, but as I arrived at my first photo location in Elmhurst the sun broke through for good. I walked along the Elmhurst Reservoir to one of my favorite shots from on top the reservoir wall, and just before the train's arrival I was joined by friends John Tully and Fred Jones. The E8 soon appeared with its train, and the chase was on.

Next stop was at Gouldsboro (named for railroad tycoon Jay Gould) where the ELDCPS had scheduled a photo stop. Somehow the managed to park the locomotive in the only spot for half mile in each direction where there was a shadow on the nose, cast by the crossbuck at the grade crossing. From there I went to Tonyhanna for a shot. Up next would be the overhead bridge at Mount Pocono, but that was completely shadowed in; a compromise location would be Devil's Hole grade crossing.

The next shot I wanted was at the cut at Henry Crossing near Paradise Valley, but it was also shadowed in. I settled for a shot near the grade crossing. Finally, the last eastbound shot was at the deck bridge near Analomink.

Since I was one of the last people to arrive at Analomink, I didn't have the best angle for the bridge shot. And with the train's turnaround point being only a mile or two down the road, I stayed in Analomink and secured a prime spot for the bridge shot while most of the rest of the motorcade went with the train. It didn't take long for the train to come back, and with that shot in the bag I went back to Henry Crossing for another shot. With the E8 trailing the entire train, the going-away shots were still quite nice.

Next up was the train's photo stop in Cresco, where once again the E8 was parked in the shadows. A little adjusting a few feet either way would have put the locomotive in sun, which would have been nice for the paying passengers. The chasers, meanwhile, set up a photo line just a few carlengths up the track, so when the train departed they got a nice shot of the E8 passing the Cresco depot.

Finally, it was off to Mount Pocono for a shot of the Delaware Lackawanna Alco on the west end of the train, and it was time to go home.

Summerail at Cincinnati

2007-11-01T22:04:00.000-04:00

The images for this section appear in Photologues. Use the link at left.

Ohio in August is hot, sticky and downright unpleasant. That makes it the perfect month to hold a major slide show in a cool air conditioned auditorium. Summerail at CUT (Cincinnati Union Terminal, the grand former train station in the Queen City) provides a great opportunity to meet with friends from all over the midwest (and, indeed, all over the country).

August 11, 2006
On the Friday before Summerail, brother Bruce and I got a late start from New Jersey. We figured about the only interesting place we could get to in daylight on the way to Cincinnati was the tower across the Potomac River from Hancock, Maryland. Thus, we hammered out I-70 and crossed the Potomac into West Virginia.

The tower sits along the former Baltimore & Ohio, a final survivor of a string of towers between here and Martinsburg, West Virginia. Still an "armstrong" tower where the operator muscles levers attached to rods which are in turn attached to the signals and switches, it's an anachronism living on borrowed time.

We knew the westbound Capitiol Limited was due through Hancock about the time we would be there, and since it was only coming from Washington, D.C., it figured to be pretty close to on time. A call to Amtrak's Julie confirmed that the train was indeed on its schedule.
Just about the time Amtrak was due through, a westbound CSX train passed the tower in the late afternoon setting sun, making for a nice shot. An eastbound wasn't much later than that, coming out of the sun. Horns to the east indicated Amtrak might be imminent, but alas it was another westbound freight, this one led by Norfolk Southern power.

With a long drive still ahead of us, we were getting a bit antsy as Amtrak's estimated arrival time slipped by 30 minutes and kept slipping. We made due by photographing the classic B&O color position lights, which would also be doomed by the modernization project that would eventually end Hancock's status as an active tower. And we waited some more.

Finally, about an hour late, the Capitol Limited passed the tower. We dutifully photographed it, then packed up and pushed west. Arrival in Cincinnati would be well past midnight.

August 12, 2006

This would be Summerail day, but activities at CUT wouldn't begin for a few hours. We had previously arranged to meet with Frank Keller from Colorado Springs at a predetermined (and early) hour, so sleep was not in abundance. We drug ourselves out of bed, met Frank and crossed the Ohio (our motel was actually in Kentucky) seeking trains and a meeting with our tour guide, Willie Davis of the Cincinnati Railroad Club.

We got off to a pretty good start, catching a CSX train on the long approaches to the former Cheaspeake & Ohio bridge across the Ohio, capturing a train on the Cincinnati side. A ride along Queensgate Yard in Cincy produced a northbound train with Union Pacific power waiting to get out. A southbound Norfolk Southern train was spotted entering NS's facility aprallel to Queensgate. Then we went on to St. Bernard in northern Cincinnati where a large gathering of fans were clustered at one of the best train watching spots in the city. A southbound CSX train was followed by our UP power we had seen earlier. Behind the UP locomotives was a string of Tropicana orange juice refrigerator cars -- Tropicana gets a delivery of fresh Florida juice every morning. A southbound NS train was seen next.

The most interesting power of the morning came next, as a CSX GP30 painted in the new Royal Blue scheme came north through St. Bernard. This was worth a second look, so we chased it to the Proctor & Gamble plant where it would do more switching. Now our morning time was over (too short but quite productive) and it was time to head to CUT.

At CUT the first order of business was meeting up with event organizer Dave Oroszi for a photo of all the day's presenters in front of the magnificent art deco half-dome building. A railroadiana sale inside got us out of the heat, and finally it was show time.

The dinner break found over a dozen of us heading for dinner at the Skyline Chili parlor under the C&O bridge in Covongton. A southbound train was dutifully recorded by most of us from inside the parlor, but Steve Glischinski from Minnesota was quick on his feet and got outside for the shot (adding an element to our inside shot).

We then went to the Marriott Courtyard, where Mike Schafer and Joe Petric had a ninth-floor room overlooking the C&O bridge. After waiting for a train (and harrassing George Hamlin and Doug Koontz on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away) we were rewarded with a northbound train. We discovered that, with a little wedging, we could get 14 photographers out onto the balcony all at once (fortunately, the balcony is built into the hotel's frame and is not freestanding). A second northbound train came before it was time to head back to CUT.

Our return trip was interrupted, however, by a third northbound train -- and this one stopped on the bridge in perfect position with clean, good looking power on the point. Torn between getting back to CUT on time or shooting the train, Bruce, Frank and I opted to miss the first evening show and snapped away from the hotel's windows (once a southbound passed). Then, once back on the Cincinnati side we shot yet another southbound on the C&O bridge approaches and our northbound that we had just shot at the hotel. We then raced back to CUT where our timing was perfect -- we had only missed one show!

After the rest of the shows, we took some shots inside the rotunda of CUT, then headed for a post-show snackfest on a barge in Newport, Kentucky. Then it was off to bed.

August 13, 2006

Another early wake-up... This time Bruce, Frank and I met up with Willie Davis and the father-son team of John and Mike Biehn to tour the Rathole, Norfolk Southern's formerly tunnel-filled line (thus the name) in southern Kentucky. We headed south about three hours, getting below Somerset, then began our adventure in the mountains near Cumberland Lake.

Since this was Frank's first visit to the Rathole, a mandatory stop was made at the deep cuts outside Tateville. NS did not disappoint, and we soon had a southbound train. We then headed to Parkers Lake, one of John's favorite locations, where we caught numerous trains in the varied scenery that can be found within just a mile or so of the overpass here. Another requirement, lunch at the Goodie Shack in Burnside, was also met.

As the day wore on, we made our last stand overlooking the massive bridge across the Cumberland at Burnside. Here, though, our luck ran out. We waited and waited for a northbound, and all we got was a southbound. John had to get to work back in Cincinnati, so he left, but for those of us remaining, futility prevailed. We did get one last southbound as we left Burnside. A stop was made at Steak 'n Shake in Lexington before getting back to Cincinnati.

August 14, 2006

We had a heads-up that a special freight train would be operating on the Wheeling & Lake Erie out of Huron, Ohio, on Tuesday, so most of this Monday was spent meandering through the Buckeye State towards Lake Erie. Our first stop was at Leipsic, where an abandoned tower protects a crossing between CSX and NS. The good weather we had enjoyed for the trip hd vanished, and we got a CSX local shuffling back and forth past the tower before moving on.

Deshler was the next stop, a major junction on CSX where the ex-B&O main line crosses a line to Toledo on a diamond. A tower also stands here. A railroad park now occupies the southwest quadrant of the diamond, and we spent some time here. Our final gloomy stop was made at another busy Ohio junction town, Fostoria, where the ex-B&O main crosses ex-C&O and ex-Nickel Plate lines. A couple of trains here, and we were off to Huron for the night. On the way we passed our special train, tied up in the dark near Huron. Our plan was coming together.

August 15, 2006

The aforementioned plan had a train of brand new coal cars, just built by FreightCar America in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, running for FreightCar America's company photographer. The Wheeling & Lake Erie provided sparkling clean power for the train. The Wheeling's paint scheme is based on the old Denver & Rio Grande Western black and orange, and Frank Keller (remember, he's from Colorado) has adopted the Wheeling as his favorite eastern road; thus, he was anxiously awaiting this move as well. Our host on the Wheeling was Mark Demaline.

The move was perfect for our trip home. The train would load at Huron, then head to the steel mills at Mingo Junction, Ohio, right on our way home. A late afternoon arrival at Mingo would give us a long, but not unbearable, six hour ride home from there.

Arrival at the port in Huron found our train not there yet, so we busied ourselves shooting power from the adjacent and recently closed ConAgra elevator. Finally, our train showed up and rounded the balloon track, then sat for awhile before loading began. We noticed our morning was slipping away.

With the loading process taking a long time, we headed over to the former New York Central main line (now Norfolk Southern) where it crosses Sandusky Bay on a causeway. We got a two-car local at Gypsum on the west end of the causeway, then headed over to Bay View on the east side where a property owner let us wait along the shores shooting trains. Finally, we went back to Huron, where our train was finally loaded and ready to go. The afternoon was slipping away now.

Out of Huron, the train headed over W&LE track to Shinrock, where it would enter Norfolk Southern trackage to get into Bellevue. The power needed to change ends here, as well, since the switch off the Wheeling led east on NS and our train needed to head west. But first, NS had to send an eastbound train through, then a westbound, then another eastbound. Finally, a slot could be found for our train to get out onto NS for its move.

With the runaround complete, our train headed for Bellevue with us in hot pursuit. We got a nice shot at Kimball, and another nice shot at the big junction in Bellevue. From here our train headed dead east, not good for photography in late afternoon with the sun in the west, so we pressed east to Hartland where we found a nice high-nosed unit working the west end of the yard. Another westbound train, this one led by a blue leaser unit, graced our lenses right at sunset. Our ore train that we were supposed to chase all the way to Mingo Junction was still behind us, and still hours away from Mingo as the sun set.

Postscript

We headed east across Ohio with a long trip still ahead of us. Fortunately, neither of us had to be back in New Jersey first thing Wednesday morning, so we tied up in Pennsylvania for the night. We finished the drive non-stop the next day, ending our Summerail '06 adventure.

Delaware & Hudson

2006-08-21T22:11:00.000-04:00

The images for this section appear in Photologues. Use the link at left.

The Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley operates on a former branch line of the Delaware & Hudson between the D&H main line at Cooperstown Junction, New York, to the home town of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Operated by the Leatherstocking Railway Historical Society, the C&CV has put on a railfan weekend for each of the past several years, with a photo freight and night photo session highlighting the event. This year's railfan weekend was held on August 5-6, enticing me to D&H-land.

August 5, 2006
Heading north along the Delaware River in southern New York State, evidence of the major floods that struck the region were quite evident. Roadside ditches had turned into raging rivers during the storm, and asphalt had been eroded almost everywhere. The floods had taken out Interstate 88 near Unadilla, New York, but it appeared that New York Route 17 was almost lost as well, as a pier appeared to be nearly undermined at Deposit. Swinging away from the Delaware and heading northeast along Canadian Pacific's former Delaware & Hudson line, the destruction left by the storm was even worse -- in Bainbridge, many houses had mobile homes parked in front while homeowners repaired their dwellings. Between Sidney and Unadilla, traffic diverted off I-88 at the washout slowed passage along usually-quiet Route 7.

Approaching Otego, nearly where I'd leave the D&H and head north to the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley, the scanner picked up a transmission from a westbound (southbound) CPR/D&H train. Almost every town has access between parallel Route 7 and I-88, and almost all those access points cross the D&H on a bridge. I used one of those access points to shoot the D&H train, led by an SD40-2 in the paint scheme of of the short-lived CPR subsidiary St. Lawrence & Hudson. I headed back west with the train and snapped off another shot at Wells Bridge before resuming my trek to the C&CV. Somehow, a second southbound snuck past me between Otego and Oneonta, where the tracks are within sight of the highway for most of that stretch.

Heading north from Cooperstown Junction, I soon encountered the south end of the C&CV's passenger trackage at Milford (the southernmost eight miles is only used for equipment moves). The regular passenger train was being assembled using C&CV's Alco S4 No.3051wearing a black paint scheme inspired by the D&H. The photo freight would get S4 No.3052 in a battered blue paint scheme -- despite the rough paint, the Alco still sounded good. The photo freight followed the passenger train northward to Cooperstown, then once the passenger train headed back south the freight made frequent photo stops. Among the highlights were a stop at a through-truss bridge over the Susquehanna River, the Dreams Park station (Dreams Park is home to several baseball diamonds where 120 youth teams per week come to play and train) and the obligatory stop passing the light house behind Pop's snack stand.

That evening the Cooperstown Blues Express made its run between Milford and Cooperstown, with a live band playing in the gondola and pizza and beer available in the dining car. It was a pleasant evening under the stars. Upon return to Milford, black No.3051 was commandeered for the photo freight, which then headed back north (at 11:00 p.m.!) for more photography at the pond behind Pop's (yours truly and Jeff Smith provided the flash lighting). The night photo session concluded with the train's well-past-midnight arrival back in Milford. I then headed off to a D&H caboose to get some sleep.

August 6, 2006
A very short night in the caboose ended when the bed & breakfast next to the railroad came alive way too early. I rose and bid farewell to the folks at the C&CV (especially Society President Bruce Hodges) and headed back to the D&H. Crossing the main line at Cooperstown Junction I noted that the signal was lit for a northbound move (the signal is always lit, and I presumed the green aspect meant the next move the dispatcher knew about would be a northbound). Good. One of my objectives for the day was to get a morning northbound passing the old D&H Coal Company silos at Cobleskill. I decided to work back against the northbound and pick him up somewhere south of Oneonta.

Getting to the sout side of Oneonta, I checked the signal at the south end of the siding at the old D&H yard. It was lit green (I thought this signal was constantly lit as well -- that would prove to be a mistake). Based on the green signal, I was now pretty sure that the next move would be a northbound. Heading back to Otego, the southbound signal was red -- that makes sense. But the northbound signal was dark -- hmmm. Still assuming that the signal at the south end of Oneonta was always lit, I decided the train hadn't made Otego yet, so I headed further south, finally stopping at Unadilla (going farther south might complicate a northbound chase due to the I-88 detour traffic). I made my stand at Unadilla and waited.

And waited.

After almost two hours of waiting, the northbound had yet to arrive. With the sun now swinging around to favor a southbound chase, I headed back north hoping for an afternoon southbound. Crossing the tracks at the south end of Oneonta, I noticed the signal was -- out. That meant when I had seen the signal lit green earlier, the northbound train was mere minutes away from where I was, and I had somehow missed the train between Otego and Oneonta as I drove south -- the same stretch where I had missed the second southbound train the day before.

New stragtegy -- I drove to Cobleskill, arriving there at about 1:00 p.m. The plan was to wait until 3:30 for a southbound. If no southbound appeared before then, I'd return home via Kingston. But if a southbound appeared, I would be set for a very nice chase in good afternoon light. I found a good photo location and promptly fell asleep, hoping the scanner would wake me up before a train arrived.

I woke up to the sound of a southbound train passing my location at 3:05. I opened my eyes in time to see a Canadian Pacific AC4400 leading a pair of Soo Line SD60s (one red, one white). I missed the first photo opportunity, but the chase was on!

It wasn't long before I heard the engineer reporting to the dispatcher that one engine was dead and another was missing one set of traction motors. This sufficiently slowed the train down on Richmondville Hill that I was able to catch the train a couple of times. A switch thrown against the train at the south end of Richmondville Siding further slowed the train's progress. But once on the downhill side of Richmondville Hill, the train provided a spirited chase. A number of the classic spots were hit, including the D&H signal gantry at Afton. Harpursville Trestle was lit on the north side (a side I hadn't shot before) and the chase ended with sweet light at Belden Tunnel, just ten miles shy of Binghamton. Niced chase!

As I headed back towards Route 17 via Harpursville I spotted another southbound in the valley. A brief thought was made of chasing this train, but I decided that by the time it got to Belden Tunnel the light would be shot. It was time to end the trip on a happy note. The only highlight of an uneventful ride back home along the Delaware River was hearing a train on the scanner working the ex-Erie line somewhere near Coshecton in the dark (I can never find a train on that line in daylight!).

Buckeye Rails 2006

2006-08-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

All the images from this trip can be viewed in Photologues. Use the link at left.

The National Railway Historical Society held its 2006 Convention in New Philadelphia, Ohio, from July 18-22. I was joined by my brother Bruce and we headed for Ohio to check out the event, plus do some railfanning along two interesting Ohio shortlines, the Ohio Central (which would host three of the Convention trips) and the Wheeling & Lake Erie.

July 15, 2006
We left New Jersey in the morning, making a stop along Amtrak's ex-Pennsylvania Railroad main line at Christiana to get a Keystone service passenger train passing the freight house that has been restored by the Lancaster Chapter NRHS. Just before the train's arrival, a heavy rain swept through, and my auto-focus camera focused on the raindrops for my telephoto shot of the eastbound -- it made for an interesting image. The camera recovered in time to get a properly-focused shot at a normal focal length.

This day had the real potential to have nothing happen. We decided to make a run for Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pennsylvania, arriving there in mid-afternoon (for being the area's biggest tourist attraction, there are amazingly few signs pointing to the Curve). A westbound freight was sitting in Altoona as we passed through, and I thought this might be the first train we'd see at the Curve.

Boy, was I wrong! There was a constant parade of trains in both directions on this piece of Norfolk Southern's ex-Pennsy main. As soon as one train would clear, another would appear, and we even had trains passing each other on the curve in front of us. A slightly late westbound Pennsylvanian brought an end to our time at the Curve a little after 5:00 p.m.

The morning rain had yielded to afternoon clouds, and it wasn't long after our arrival at the Curve that the sun started to make an appearance. In fact, the vast majority of the trains we shot at the Curve were in sun. With plenty of sun left, we ventured into downtown Altoona and Alto Tower, one of the last manned interlockings on the former Pennsylvania Railroad. We weren't there long before a downhill (eastbound) train passed an uphill (westbound) train, with rear-end helpers on both trains passing in front of the tower.

From Altoona we headed down to Duncansville to check out the Everett Railroad, where we found three locomotives in the sun. Finally it was off to the summit of the Alleghenies at Gallitzin to shoot trains coming out of the tunnel there. The sun was almost shining directly down the tracks, allowing for shooting trains with sun on them while they were still inside the tunnel. The day ended at the helper station at Cresson before we headed to Wheeling for the night.

July 16, 2006
The hard part about railfanning the Ohio Central and Wheeling & Lake Erie is finding trains. We started the morning in Mingo Junction, Ohio, where we made a quick check of the Norfolk Southeern yard. Not much happening, so we headed west along the Wheeling & Lake Erie to where it shares track with the Ohio Central between Jewett and Bowerston, Ohio. A W&LE light power set was at the east end of the joint track at Jewett, ready to head east on the OC, sso we chased the units to Miller's Station where they proceeded down to the Nelms No.1 coal mine.

Continuing our drive along the OC and W&LE, we found nothing happening anywhere, so we headed for Brewster, home of the W&LE shops and dispatching offices. Here we found out that there were a couple of trains working between Brewster and Hartland Station, so off we went in search of them. At Creston the W&LE parallels CSX's ex-Baltimore & Ohio main line, so we decided to wait there for the W&LE to send an eastbound. We were rewarded with a CSX westbound during our wait, then the eastbound (with a blue EMD leaser on the point) arrived. We shot it just outside Orrville, and from there the roads and the tracks work on diagonals with each other, making chasing quite difficult.

We thought there was a second train on the way, so we went back to Creston where a CSX hi-rail truck was heading west. We camped out between the CSX and W&LE grade crossings in town, and soon a W&LE hi-rail truck headed east. Our second train was a pick-up truck. Dang! We decided to head back into Brewster to see what was happening there, but as we passed near Orrville we heard our first train just finishing work at Orrville Junction, so we tried to give chase. We just missed it, however, at two well-lit locations, but heard a westbound leaving Orrville Junction. We quickly reversed direction and headed for Lodi where we were relieved to hear the train switching just east of our location between Lodi and Creston. Good! It had been a couple of hours since we took our last picture (and here it was pushing 5:00 p.m. and we had seen only one moving train all day!).

We headed for Spencer, Ohio, where the W&LE has a diamond and heads in four different directions. Our train showed up at Spencer with one of two high-nosed GP38s in the Wheeling red and yellow in the lead, and a locomotive in the W&LE's Rio Grande-style speed lettering tagging along on the rear. We chased the train to Hartland Station, catching it a couple of times on the way. After switching at Hartland, it headed westward and we decided to drop down to the CSX main line at Nova to see what was happening.

Still standing at Nova is an unused wood-frame Baltimore & Ohio tower, and we hoped for a westbound train before the sun set. Alas, the train showed up just after sunset, but we were able to get pleenty of glinty light images of the tower before calling it a day. It had been a slow morning and afternoon, but the evening was worthwhile.

July 17, 2006
We actually had some "insider" information on the Wheeling's operations on this day, and our source told us that a westbound would be out of Mingo Junction in mid-morning. We headed for the big trestle at Valley View, but according to our calculations it would be close. We got to the trestle at about 11:00 (the train was departing Mingo at 10:30) and waited. And waited. Did we miss the train?

We heard a track foreman get permission to work between milepost 105 and Smithfield, just west of our location. Sadly, we figured our train must have gotten by us and had passed MP 105 (we were at 96), so we trudged back to the car. As soon as we got to the car the scanner came to life as the train we were looking for was just passing milepost 94! We reced back through the briars and brush back to trackside and got our train with a high-nosed GP38 in black and orange on the point with two more black and orange units on the rear. (Actually, the lead unit was not providing any power -- the conductor was riding that unit to work the lights, bell and horn. The engineer was in the trailing units, which were doing all the work pushing the train.)

The chase was liesurely, to say the least, and we caught the train a few times (including passing the station at Weems) before it reached the Ohio Central at Jewett. At Jewett the train reversed directions onto the Ohio Central for the run to Miller's Station and Nelms No.1. Another Wheeling train was coming east on the Ohio Central heading for Mingo Junction, but the dispatcher stopped him at Jewett "for two or three hours" so a rail train could get some work done.

We found the rail train near Pittsburgh Junction, and shot it as the crew called it a day. The rail train then headed to Wayco (milepost 105) to tie up for the night. With the rail train out of the way, or last shot would be of the eastbound passing through Pittsburgh Junction at sunset.

July 18, 2006
The first day of the Convention started off with a trip from Dennison, Ohio, to the Ohio Central's interchange with Norfolk Southern at Gould Tunnel (just west of Mingo Junction). We were joined by John Dziobko, Jr., for the chase, and Frank Ferguson and Mike Burkhart tagged along behind us in their car. We were somewhat dismayed when the excursion left Denniosn with an Alco C420 running backwards leading the train, so we didn't make a real effort to get ahead, although we shot it at Bowerston, Scio, Jewett, the big cut near Cadiz Junction and Miller's Station.

At Miller's Station we thought a train was going to go into Nelms No.1 after the passenger train cleared, so we waited around for something to happen. Well, nothing happened, so we eventually headed for Panhandle where we discovered our mystery train had just headed up the branch to Apex and was unshootable until it returned four hours later. Oh, well. We followed the route of the passenger train, scoping shots for its return trip, and eventually we waited at the overhead bridge near Reeds Mill for the train to return from Gould Tunnel.

Soon the passenger train came back, now with the C420 properly oriented and trailing an ex-Amtrak F40 (still in Amtrak paint). But our real goal was to get the photo freight that was following. The freight had been put together for photographers on the passenger train to shoot during photo runbys. It wasn't long before the photo freight showed up -- an Alco RS18 leading a string of vintage freight cars, with a red caboose trailing. We chased the train to Panhandle where both the excursion and the photo freight cleared to allow our mystery train from earlier in the day -- an Ohio Central constructioin debris train -- to come off the Apex branch and onto the main to head for Gould Tunnel. As things worked out, the passenger train and photo frreight were going to do photo runbys at Panhandle, so we took off after the debris train and chased it all the way back to Reeds Mill. Once the train vanished into the valley heading for Gould Tunnel, we returned to Panhandle just in time to resume our chase of the photo freight, which was now heading back to Dennison and on to Morgan Run (home of the Ohio Central's shops) while the passenger train went up the Apex branch.

We caught the photo freight several times, finally letting it go at Port Washington as it headed for Morgan Run. We then dropped back to Dennison where the passenger train hadn't yet arrived. We worked back against it, setting up at a big cut near Bowerston. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about an hour, Mike headed down to road to get a cell phone signal and called a friend back in Dennison. Sure enough, the train had passed us somewhere between Dennison and Bowerston and was sitting (and had been sitting for 45 minutes) in Dennison. So ended another day.

July 19, 2006
The Convention was visiting the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad on this day, which operates a former Baltimore & Ohio line from Cleveland through Akron to Canton. A washout on the far north end of the line forced the trip to begin in Brecksville, and it was there that Bruce and I met our guide for the day, Jerry Jordak.

Jerry knows the CVSR pretty much inside out, so the photo opportunities were plentiful as we chased along. A good photo runby was held along the highway just south of Peninsula, and another not-so-great runby was held north of Akron. At Akron the passengers formed a long line in the hot sun to get their box lunches, but the NRHS crew got everyone fed and into the shade or back on the train in record time.

Out of Akron the photo opportunities were still plentiful, and we finished the chase at McKinley Park in Canton where another runby was held. At the station in Canton all the passengers were put on buses to return to New Philadelphia or visit other attractions. We opted to chase the empty train back to Brecksville in great afternoon light, highlighted by getting the train passing the Goodyear blimp hangar at the Akron airport. After arrival at Brecksville we headed for dinner at a Skyline Chili parlor, then headed back to New Philadelphia.

That night the Ohio Central hosted a night photo session at the Morgan Run shops. Ex-Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 No.1293 was the star of the session, and the first shot was of the steam locomotive meeting a Norfolk Southern run-through coal train pausing for a crew change at Morgan Run.

After the coal train departed, Mark Perri and Denis Connell lit up the 1293 a couple more times, and the session ended around midnight with a shot of Grand Trunk Western 4-8-4 No.6325 sitting cold behind the shop.

July 20, 2006
The Ohio Central was again the host for the NRHS as a trip was operated from Dennison to Newark. As was our standard operating practice, we picked up John Dziobko and chased the trip. The first part of the trip found the C420 leading the Amtrak F40, but at Morgan Run both diesels were removed and No.1293 was put on the point for an all-steam trip to Newark. A photo runby was held at Trinway, and as the trip progressed the skies deteriorated. By Newark it was pretty cloudy.

The trip's return was delayed by a meet with a coal train coming out of the power plant at Conesville, requiring the passenger train to hold at Trinway. Since it was stopped anyhow, it was decided to do a photo runby despite the worsening weather conditions. As the train unloaded, rain could be seen comingt in from the west. But it wasn't until lightning struck fairly close by that the runby was cancelled and everyone was put back on the train.

With the steam train sitting at Trinway, we headed to Conesville to find the coal train. We caught it just leaving Conesville and chased it to Dresden, just beyond Trinway (we had a real close encounter with lightning -- a mere 30 yards away hitting a phone pole -- as we shot the train at Adams Mills). Once the train was gone from Dresden, we raced back to overtake the steam train, catching it once at the station at Coshocton before it arrived at Morgan Run and lost its steam engine. With the F40 leading, we shot the train once more at West Lafayette, then headed to Dover to check out the R.J. Corman operation there.

That evening Bruce, Frank, Mike and I (after dinner with other members of the Wilmington [Delaware] Chapter NRHS) went off looking for the Wheeling's rail train, which we hoped would be tied up at Wayco and available for night shots. Alas, it wasn't to be found (which we found out after driving for over an hour), so we drove another hour up to Minerva where we did a night photo session on Ohi-Rail's power sitting around the yard. It was a very late arrival back in New Philadelphia.

July 21, 2006
I needed to be back in New Philadelphia by early afternoon to attend the NRHS business meetings, but Bruce and I met up with Frank and Mike at Brewster where we had a pre-arranged tour of the Wheeling & Lake Erie's shop (where we found the power off the rail train we had been looking for the previous night). We then hung out near Orrville where we hoped to shoot a Brewster-bound freight, but it never showed up (we must have passed it somewhere between Brewster and Orrville). Bruce then hitched a ride with Frank and Mike, while I headed back for New Philadelphia. That evening I attended the banquet where the guest speaker was Ohio Central property manager (and ex-Chessie company photographer) John B. Corns.

July 22, 2006
The final day of the Convention featured a circle trip over the Ohio Central and Wheeling & Lake Erie out of Dennison. Frank and Mike had departed for home, thanks to weather than had been bad since mid-day of the Newark chase. Bruce and I picked up John and off we went in the rain, getting the diesel-powered train with the RS18 leading at West Lafayette.

At Morgan Run the power was run around the train and 4-6-2 No.1293 was added to the point. Just out of Morgan Run, as the train went up the northeastward leg of the triangular trip routing, a photo runby was held (despite the gloomy wet skies) and we caught the train a few more times before it made a stop for the passengers to buy cheese (yes, that's right) at Pearl. At Sugarcreek the steam locomotive was removed and the Orrville Railroad Heritage Society's GP7 led the train into Brewster.

Out of Brewster, with the GP7 still leading, the trip made a fast run down the Wheeling & Lake Erie on the southeastward leg of the triangle, and we were only able to catch it once on this stretch (thank goodness Pete Swanson and Nick D'Amore were chasing -- they had just missed the train at the spot where we were heading, and if they hadn't been racing out of the location we would have stopped and waited and would probably still be there). At the joint track in Bowerston we caught up with the train as the consist was shuffeld to put the RS18 in the lead for two photo runbys, then it was back to Dennison and the end of the Convention. Talk between the dispatcher and excursion indicated a train would be heading towards Dennison from the west, so we continued eastward and intercepted the train at Newcomerstown. We chased it back through Dennison and on to the big cut at Bowerston before calling it a day.

July 23, 2006
Like the first day of the trip, this last day had the real potential to be quiet. Sadly, that's the way it worked out. We started out by waiting along the joint OC/W&LE track in the morning, hoping to get something. Nothing came. Back to Mingo Junction, and everything was quiet there. I had never been to Benwood Junction, so we checked that out. Quiet. We did find the place where the Wheeling & Lake Erie crosses Norfolk Southern on a diamond in Bellaire, and a dead locomotive in Canadian American paint at Warrenton provided just about all the entertainment we'd get all morning and into the afternoon.

Looking to head east, we headed for Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, where the ex-Western Maryland right-of-way over Salisbury Viaduct is now a bike trail. The bridge provides a panoramic view of the ex-Baltimore & Ohio main line, so we went there hoping to see something on CSX. After waiting over an hour, we got an eastbound train, and a westbound soon came by. Just at sunset, as we were crawling through the brambles back to the car, we heard another eastbound and raced to Meyersdale to shoot it. Sunset marked the end of the trip, save for a long drive home through the darkness on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which is largely built on the right-of-way of the partially constructed South Penn Railroad -- but that's another story for another time).

Convention Notes
Buckeye Rails 2006 was a largely unspectacular convention by necessity; with no Chapter stepping forward to host the 2006 Convention the event was run by the NRHS National Convention Committee, headed by Carl Jensen. As such, the staff for the event came from all over the U.S., and much of the planning had to be done via e-mail and telephone, with little on-site planning. Therefore, a simple Convention was planned. The other side of the coin is that the Convention was extremely well executed, with no major delays, no bus snafus and no food shortages. Kudos to the Convention staff for pulling off a well-run event despite all the logistical hurdles. Now it's on to Chattanooga for 2007!

Genesee Railroading

2006-07-13T23:31:00.000-04:00

All the images from this trip can be viewed in Photologues. Use the link at left.

When the Rochester Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society asked me to put on a program for their annual banquet, I thought it would be a great opportunity to transfer one of my multi-media slide shows to digital (taking advantage of my relatively new digital projector), so armed with my revised Up From the Apple show and my new Steaming Along program, I was Rochester-bound.

June 10, 2006
The weather was dull and overcast as I hit the road, following the ex-Erie main line along the Pennsylvania-New York border towards Binghamton. The dull weather meant I wasn't in any particular hurry to get trackside, so a bit of exploring was in order. My first stop was at the ex-Erie depot in Coshecton, New York, recently restored by the local historical society.

As I passed through Hancock, I realized I hadn't checked out the former New York, Ontario & Western depot in the nearby town of Cadosia in quite awhile. Once a major junction point on the O&W, Cadosia was where the coal line from Scranton joined the main line between Cornwall on the Hudson River and Oswego on Lake Ontario. The tracks have long been gone from Cadosia, and on my last visit the depot (converted to a bar) sat in a big open area next to what was once the marshalling yard for the O&W's coal trains. It took me a few minutes to find the depot on this trip, as the empty abandoned yards that surrounded the structure 20 years ago had grown in with trees, and I didn't recognize the area immediately. But soon I was at the depot (now a garden center) and noted that the freight house was also still standing. A large trestle had stood just behind the depot with a view down into Hancock, but growth has obliterated the view.

Next up was a stop in Binghamton, where a local freight for the New York, Susquehanna & Western was cutting locomotives out of the consist just south of town. They had some work to do, so I buzzed across the Susquehanna River to Conklin Yard (former Delaware & Hudson, now Canadian Pacific) where a coal train was backing in. A quick run down to Terrace Drive on the south end of the yard led to the discovery of a couple of switchers working, then it was back to the NYS&W, where the local freight was now ready to head into Binghamton. I caught it passing an eastbound train that was tied down waiting for a crew.

I had wanted to shoot the Susquehanna's passenger operation in Syracuse, so my next stop was at OnTrack's Syracuse University station, where I caught the Rail Diesel Car making its scheduled 2:20 p.m. stop. Thing was, it wasn't turning back to Syracuse like it was scheduled to, but instead was heading to the balloon festival at Jamestown Beach. The railroad was running special trains all day (no mention of this was made on their website when I had checked a few days earlier -- in fact, the schedules on the website, the schedules posted at the stations and the actual "official" schedule were completely different from each other). Not wanting to get caught up in balloon traffic, I headed west of Syracuse along the ex-New York Central (now CSX) main line and caught a westbound train (after heading all the way into downtown to the main OnTrack station to check the balloon festival schedule, since it wasn't posted at the outlying stations) then headed back to Jamesville (norrth of Jamesville Beach) to await the last northbound festival run. The local police were doing a booming business in Jamesville, picking off unsuspecting ballon fans as they passed through the town's speed traps. Much to my surprise, the northbound train wasn't the RDC's but was instead a locomotive-hauled passenger train. Duly recorded, I decided to head back to my spot on CSX west of town and shoot trains until dark, then make my way to Rochester.

As I headed west, I noticed the solid bank of clouds appeared to end farther west, so I decided to drive until I reached sun and then stop. By the time I reached sun, I had covered about half of the 60 miles between Syracuse and Rochester, and a quick check of my watch indicated that I could get to downtown Rochester by 6:00 and attempt one of my "priority" shots of the trip, a CSX train crossing the Genesee Falls in downtown. Off to Rochester!

Once I arrived at the falls, I was pleased to see that a lot of the seediness that I remembered from a previous trip had vanished. A nice park led to the footbridge that parallels the CSX bridge over the falls, and provided a very pleasant train-watching spot. CSX fully cooperated, and it wasn't long before I had three trains shot crossing the bridge. With that shot in the bag, I decided to try a couple of other spots recommended to me by local railfans, and headed towards the Main Street overpass at the west end of Goodman Street Yard. Once again CSX cooperated, and I had that shot accomplished in short order. back to the falls for one more train, then up to the Amtrak station (just east of the falls bridge) to shoot an Amtrak train just after sunset. Time for bed.

June 11, 2006
First quarry this morning was a shot of a train passing the Kodak building in downtown Rochester. An early morning eastbound Amtrak train was selected as the target, but arrival at the shot (just west of the falls bridge) was in time to get a late-running Lake Shore Limited in addition to the train I was seeking. With that shot accomplished (twice) I cruised around re-aquainting myself with Rochester, a city I hadn't visited for about ten years. Driving around, I eventually settled on CP 367 in the town of Brighton, just east of downtown and within sight of the east end of Goodman Yard. A train or two later and it was time to leave.

I was meeting Chris Hauf of the Rochester Chapter at the group's Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in the town of Henrietta at a location known as Industry, where the Chapter has restored the Industry depot. Chris gave me a tour of all the Chapter's equipment and the restoration shop, then I rode a track car (can't call it a "speeder" because you'll scare the general public, even though it never tops five m.p.h.) over a mile and a half of track to another museum, the New York Museum of Transportation. While the R&GV Museum is devoted to the freight and passenger railroads of the region, the NYMT is more geared to streetcars and other non-rail transportation modes. I returned back to Industry on the speeder, then returned to CP 367 for some more CSX and Amtrak action (some of it even in sun!) before heading off to the banquet to put on my shows.

After the banquet I decided to try some night photos at CP 367, as it is guarded by two New York Central style signal bridges, complete with searchlight signals, at both ends of the interlocking. I caught two eastbounds side-by-side at the west end, then headed over to Goodman Street Yard for a couple of shots, then finished off with a westbound passing an eastbound at the east end of the interlocking. Another day in the bag.

June 12, 2006
The weather forecast for the next two days was bad, so I decided to cut the trip a day short and not head into Buffalo for a day of shooting. Instead, I got up at the motel (located just a few miles from the museum in Henrietta) and set out for Lakeville, home of the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad. A quick check at their office revealed that a train was heading for Rochester, so I headed back north and set up next to the museum building at Industry to get the train's passange. Been on the road for over an hour and I was only five minutes from my starting point. I continued the chase (there were two four-axle Alcos leading the train) to the south end of Rochester, then turned west with the railroad to Genesee Junction, where I somehow lost the train. Thinking that it might have turned south at the junction (it was supposed to go north to the Buffalo & Pittsburgh yard at Brooks Avenue, but it didn't appear that happened) I headed south as well. No sign of the train. Oh, well...

The tracks of the Dansville & Mount Morris appeared along the freeway as I headed south, and I decided that more exploring was in order. I got off the freeway and looked for any power the D&MM might have in Dansville. I didn't find power, but I did find the old passenger depot, located about a half mile below the current end of track. Thinking the power might be at the B&P interchange seven miles north, I followed the railroad to the interchange point, only to discover there was no yard (or power) there -- just tracks in the trees. Heading back to Dansville, I checked out what is probably the only customer on the railroad, the Foster Wheeler plant. If the railroad had any power, it was probably tucked inside the plant somewhere. Back on the road...

Next up was the B&H Rail shop in Cohocton, New York. I couldn't find anyone around to check in with, but I did find an ex-Minnesota Commercial six-axle Alco and a Bath & Hammondsport Alco switcher sitting outside the shop. Amazingly, the only sun of the day came out while shooting the two units together.

After passing through Bath I started keeping a watch out for the Bath & Hammondsport train that might be returning from the Norfolk Southern interchange at Gang Mills. Sure enough, I spotted the westbound train as I sped eastward on the freeway about seven miles outside Bath -- and I had just passed a freeway exit. I had to drive another five miles and then double back, but I was able to shoot the train (once again with two Alcos on the point) twice outside Bath and once passing the coal silos in town. The day was waning.

Passing Gang Mills yard, I heard a train on the radio get permission to pull up to the yard office. Then the dispatcher warned the crew to watch out for a westbound train that should be there by the time they reached the yard office. I got through Corning (the big town next to Gang Mills) and heard the radio announce the train's passing of a defect detector, which also announced the train's location. I could see the tracks as I drove along and -- there -- a milepost indicated that I was about four miles from the train and closing. Thankfully, there was an exit just a mile ahead that featured an overpass over the railroad, and I wasn't there long before bagging a westbound Canadian Pacific train operating over Norfolk Southern. Continuing eastward, I was passing the town of Owego when I heard another westbound calling signals. I got off at the next exit and U-turned back west for a 14-mile backtrack to Smithboro, where I caught the last train of the trip with Norfiolk Southern power.

A final check at Binghamton revealed nothing shootable at either end of Conklin Yard, and a return along NS down the Delaware River presented nothing before darkness set in east of Hancock. The trip was over.

Eastern Pennsylvania - Steam and Main Lines

2006-07-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

All the images for this entry can be found in Photologues. Use the link at left.

With a few days to do some short trips from home, I headed into Pennsylvania to check out the action.

May 20, 2006 - Steamtown to East Stroudsburg
For Armed Forces Day, Steamtown National Historic Site operated an excursion beyond its usual route between Scranton and Moscow, traveling all the way to East Stroudsburg. Canadian National 2-8-2 No.3254 was scheduled to pull the trip, so I headed to Scranton in time to chase the departure.

The scanner came to life as I approached Scranton, but ominously I could hear the crew calling the train as "Nickel Plate 514." This would indicate a diesel was on the point. Sure enough, upon my arrival I discovered that Nickel Plate GP9 No.514 would be ahead of the steamer for the trip, the reason being that the 3254 had just come out of the shop after a lengthy repair and didn't have its road-worthiness tested. The diesel would be an insurance policy against a mechanical problem.

With the diesel on the point, I decided to let the excursion proceed without me in pursuit, and instead visited the Steamtown shop to check on the progress of Pennsylvania Railroad 4-6-2 No.1361, Boston & Maine 4-6-2 No.3713 and Baldwin Locomotive Works 0-6-0 No.26 (and to check out how my new Nikon D200 handled interior shop lighting). All were in various stages of disassembly, with two workers heating what appeared to be the tender frame of No.26 with acetylene torches. Work on all three locomotives has apparently progressed past the teardown point, and re-assembly (a time-consuming process) has begun. Nonetheless, I wouldn't anticipate seeing any of the three locomotives operating until sometime in 2007 at the absolute earliest.

After the shop visit I took off after the excursion, as the plan was to remove the diesel at Gravel Place (about three miles outside East Stroudsburg) and have steam make a grand entrance into town. As I passed Tobyhanna on I-380 I heard the excursion just leaving its servicing stop there, so I motored in to Devil's Hole to get a shot there. After Devil's Hole, I checked out the shot passing the concrete signal tower at Gravel Place (no shot there due to heavy brush) and headed into East Stroudsburg. Sure enough, the diesel had cut away and the large crowd in attendance got a good look at No.3254 as it pulled the train into town.

Since it was only around noon, I headed down to the New Hope & Ivyland to check out 2-8-0 No.40. The locomotive had been painted and lettered for the "Lancaster & Chester" (a South Carolina short line that owned No.40 at one time) for a set of winter photo charters, but was scheduled to be painted back into its New Hope & Ivyland scheme. While I had numerous shots of it lettered L&C on freight trains, I didn't have any of it lettered L&C on a passenger train. The New Hope shop forces had been busy, however, and upon my arrival I discovered that the L&C lettering was already a thing of the past. Nonetheless, I shot No.40 a few times before calling it a day.

May 27, 2006 - PicnicRail
Each year I'm asked to put on a slide show at PicnicRail on Memorial Day Saturday. PicnicRail is a joint picnic involving several Chapters of the National Railway Historical Society (Hawk Mountain Chapter's Phil Reppert is the organizer) and several other railroad historical societies. It's held in Blandon, Pennsylvania, just outside Reading, at a picnic grove directly adjacent to Norfolk Southern's former Reading Company main line.

Starting out from New Jersey, I spotted some Norfolk Southern power beneath the Delaware River bridge in Portland, Pennsylvania, so I made a brief detour to shoot it. Then it was off to Fleetwood on the NS main line, where the town's historical society has restored the "Fleetwood" lettering to the end of the old Cadillac Fleetwood body plant along the tracks. back-to-back westbound freights and an eastbound passed through town, then my brother (who had driven up from South Jersey) and I moved one town east to Lyons. On the way I heard a westbound train on the scanner and sped down to the tracks, only to discover it was a light engine move running in reverse -- not the most photogenic subject! The trailing unit was a BNSF Railway GE locomotive, but there was no good going-away angle available where we were.

Once in Lyons, we shot an eastbound train led by a Union Pacific locomotive, and a couple of NS westbounds appeared. Also the light engine move re-appeared, this time running east but still running backwards -- apparently the power had run from Allentown to Reading to be turned and was returning to Allentown. This time, however, we had a well-lit going-away angle to shoot the BNSF unit.

With traffic dying down and the sun setting, it was time to head to Blandon and the picnic. Great conversation and a barbeque chicken dinner were had by all, and after the slide show it was time to head home.

May 29, 2006
Let's get one thing straight right away -- Memorial Day 2006 was hot! Nonetheless, the forecast was for sun, so I decided that perhaps a visit to a tourist railroad might be in order. I hadn't checked out the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railroad, the new (in 2005) operation of the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern, so I headed for Jim Thorpe.

A quick stop at the station was made to photograph the LGSR train sitting in front of the former Central Railroad of New Jersey depot, and the F3 diesels owned by the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society and the Tri-State Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (and used in tourist service in Jim Thorpe until 2004) were also committed to film. Then it was off to Glen Onoko, the southern gateway to the Lehigh Gorge. Two railroads shared the gorge at one time -- the Lehigh Valley, which is now used by the Reading & Northern/Lehigh Scenic as well as Norfolk Southern, and the now-abandoned Jersey Central. The CNJ roadbed is now a hiking/biking trail (and quite popular), and provides great access for photography along the former Lehigh Valley.

The first train departed Jim Thorpe at 11:00 a.m., and I shot it framed by some trees just north of Glen Onoko. The LGSR operates with two Reading & Northern SD50s, one on each end, so I tried to choose locations that provided a good going-away shot as well as a standard comin'-at-ya. The train headed into the gorge, and I continued walking north, stopping at a nice location where the tracks curve past a signal. I shot the returning 11:00 train there.

With over an hour to kill until the next train appeared, I stopped at a convenient picnic table and finished off the bottle of water I had brought with me (did I mention it was hot?). I then walked further north and found a nice retaining wall where I could shoot the 1:00 train coming and going, which I did. With about 30 minutes between the time the northbound 1:00 train passed and its southbound return, I continued walking north, but soon discovered that the tracks curved to the point where the sun was on the wrong side for photography, and the line continued to be elevated on a retaining wall, precluding crossing the tracks to the sunny side. I soon hit a point walking north where I calculated that I couldn't return south in time to get to a good photo location, so I was committed to walking north and hoping I could find a good photo spot before the train showed up.

I was walking at a fairly brisk pace (did I mention it was hot and I had finished all my water over an hour ago?), hoping to reach Oxbow Curve where the tracks would curve back to a more favorable sun angle. Alas, I was about five minutes too short, and had to settle for a not-too-bad shot of the train exiting Oxbow (although the going-away shot was lousy). I was now finished with the 1:00 train and just had too wait for the 3:00 train a little over an hour away.

Now it was reality time. I had walked in over two miles from Glen Onoko and had to work my way back. I trudged out of the gorge and back to my car, where I thirstily guzzled a very hot bottle of Diet Coke (at least it was wet) before walking into the large bridge over the Lehigh River at Nesquehoning Junction for the 3:00 train.

The tower guarding Nesquehoning Junction had been covered by heavy brush for years, but when the Reading & Northern re-opened the Lehigh River bridge to freight traffic a couple of years ago, they removed the brush from the abandoned tower. Alas, it didn't take the local urchins too long to discover the now-clear walls of the building and it is now covered in graffiti. I opted for a distant shot of the tower from the east side of the Lehigh River, where I captured the outbound 3:00 train. I then drove into downtown Jim Thorpe, bought a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water, chugged them both down, and shot the returning 3:00 train passing the F3s in the Jim Thorpe yard, wrapping up a great day of tourist line shooting.

A Canadian Encounter

2006-07-04T23:41:00.000-04:00

All the images from this trip can be viewed at Photologues. Use the link at left.
Every year I take a trip with George Pitarys and Bill Linley to somewhere in eastern Canada, with George planning out the complete itinerary. It's one of the few times each year where I'm truly along for the ride with no worries about logistics -- George has it all planned out. Our 2006 schedule included visiting the Huron Central, chasing VIA's Canadian and riding the VIA Rail Diesel Cars between Sudbury and White River, Ontario.

Prologue
I have a lot of last minute proof-checking to do on the current issue of Railfan & Railroad, so I don't get away from the office until after 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9. A late drive gets me to George's house near Nashua, New Hampshire, at about 2:00 a.m. Since our scheduled departure time is 4:00, a motel is definitely not worth it. Not wanting to disturb George, I pull over in a parking lot about a mile from his house and get some sleep.

May 10
My cell phone rings at 3:20 a.m. Sure enough, it's George. He's up and ready to go. I drive the couple of minutes to his house (after de-grogging myself), we transfer my gear to the rental car, and we're away before the 4:00 schedule. Our first stop is a solid seven-hours-plus away -- we want to catch the Ottawa Central as its freight makes its return trip from Pembroke to Ottawa on the Ottawa River bridge at Portage du Fort, Quebec. An uneventful border crossing into Canada, and we're soon in cell phone contact with the third member of our group, Bill, who's been chasing the freight with Ray Farand and Dave Stremes. Our schedule is looking good -- we'll be at Portage du Fort well before the train.

We all rendezvous at the Smurfit-Stone plant in Portage du Fort, where another Ottawa Central crew is working. Soon we're off for the short walk in to the Ottawa River bridge, and a slightly longer walk downriver to improve our photo angle. The train, powered by two ex-Canadian Pacific RS18s, crosses the bridge in good sunlight (not bad with a forecast that had called for clouds and rain), and soon we're piling Bill's gear into the rental car and bid farewell to Ray and Dave.

With some sunlight to burn still, we head down to the Canadian Pacific, where we chase a train eastward, finishing with a nice shot at Pakinham, Ontario, across a field dotted with yellow dandylions. But the train is heading east and we need to head west (we have a reservation in North Bay, Ontario, four hours away) so we leave our eastbound to resume our journey. We do bag one more eastbound on the way, however.

May 11
The traditional stop at Tim Horton's gets the day started, and soon we're off to Parry Sound to get set for the day. A stop on Canadian National on an old wooden overpass yields four trains, but our info (thanks to a CN sectionman who stopped and gave us a rundown) says nothing more is due for a few hours when VIA's westbound Canadian is due. This gives us a chance to grab some maple ice cream and scope out our set-up point for VIA.

The Canadian is our top priority for the day. A one-time Canadian Pacific train, it retained its CPR routing into the VIA era. Alas, VIA decided eventually decided to route the train over the Canadian National in central and western Canada, taking the train off its historic route. However, CN and CPR utilize directional running on their parallel lines between Parry Sound and Sudbury, and thus the westbound Canadian runs over its original route on this stretch.

Our chase begins at Nobel, where trackwork brings the train to a brief stop, allowing us a second grab shot almost immediately. Photo locations are picked to allow both good comin'-at-ya shots and going away shots, taking advantage of the round end observation car Waterton Park on the rear. The bridge at Pointe au Baril is good, but while looking for a place to turn the car around (after getting the shot) we find an even better shot 100 yards up the road. Add that one for later in the trip. We bag the train a few more times on the CPR, with the last at Rutter. By Sudbury Junction the train is back on the CN and we're in a downpour. The planned rest of the chase to Capreol is scrubbed due to weather, and we're soon esconsed in our hotel room at the Sudbury Quality Inn with a good view of the CPR yard and the parading hookers on the street below.

May 12
This was a day where the Huron Central was our primary goal. We could see the Espanola Turn being made up in the yard from our motel room, and soon we were set up at Copper Cliff (in the rain) waiting for the westbound move.

The trip goes well, with several good shots in the clouds (at least the rain is letting up) along the way. The crew was getting used to seeing us, and near Nairn where they were switching a spur we could hear the conductor on the scanner (riding the rear car) tell the engineer, "Three cars to the photo op." After working the spur, the locomotives pulled to a stop next to us and we're able to give the crew copies of the latest Railfan & Railroad, which includes an article on the Huron Central.

Upon arrival at Espanola, its time to start thinking about bagging the eastbound Canadian. We think we can make it to the ghost town of Milnet, and scanner chatter says there is a train coming. Sadly, the train coming is a freight -- we missed the Canadian and had to beat feet to get ahead of it during its servicing stop in Capreol. Crossing the tracks at Capreol, we are relieved to see the train still there (we can try this shot again in a couple of days), but we still have a challenge. The shot we want involves a bit of a walk and climbing some rocks, so we head towards Coniston.

Once at Coniston, we scramble up the rocks and get set. We don't wait long for 22 cars of stainless streamlined beauty to come past. Bill, who has been rather diligent about getting going-away shots of the Canadian this trip, for some reason decides not to scramble over rocks with me and George to get this going-away shot, and somehow misses the shot of the trip, the Banff Park observation car with the rest of the train snaked through an S-curve.

With the Canadian out of the way, we head back on the Huron Central to pick up the road freight working east from Sault Ste. Marie towards Sudbury. The scanner soon has us triangulated in on the train, which features matched GP40s in numerical order on the head end -- 3010, 3011, 3012, 3013. Somehow the comin'-at-ya shots are in clouds while the going-away shots are in sun. Soon we're back in Sudbury, but we're too late to get the VIA RDC's coming in from White River. We head into town and see the RDC's leaving as they deadhead back to Capreol for the night. We'll be riding these cars for the next two days to White River and back.

Alas, we get some bad news (fairly serious, but nothing with long-range implications) that evening that will require us to return to the United States, cutting our trip short. We make all the appropriate phone calls to cancel reservations for the remainder of the trip.

May 13
Today is a book-home day, but a couple of trains fall into our laps and are duly recorded. We overtake an eastbound CPR freight at Mattawa, Ontario, just in time to get him passing the CPR depot there. Another eastbound is tied up at Chalk River and we shoot him. Bill gets dropped in Ottawa, and just before crossing the border George and I encounter Amtrak's northbound Adirondack stopped for its customs inspection at Cantic, Quebec. We arrive at George's house late that evening, and I don't even consider trying to push the extra five hours to New Jersey.

May 14
The weather doesn't cooperate as I head across Massachusetts and Connecticut, but I need to see something on this final leg of the trip, so I pull into Danbury, Connecticut, hoping to find one of the last FL9s in the yard. It was not to be, so a shot of a Genesis unit next to Danbury's old depot (now home to the Danbury Railway Museum) is all I get before making the final push home.