Anniversary Trip

My lovely wife, of 17 years, and I celebrated this auspicious occasion by journeying to that railfan mecca that has been chronicled in these pages many times - The Tunnel Inn. We stayed in the "Alco" suite and enjoyed the hospitality of Mike K's wonderful inn again.

Friday night was spent getting there and dodging the high volume of Penn State Nittany Lions fans on US 22 and 322 (a way I wont take again to get out there). We took nearly 5 hours to get there but in the end we had a peaceful evening watching a few trains and then off the sleep.

Sat. morning was spent down to the Johnstown Flood Memorial in South Fork at the site where it all started - the ex South Fork Sportsman's club. After watching a gripping introduction film (which I found a trifle disturbing) of how it all happened we walked down to the north damn remnant to look out at the old lake bed.

At one time there was this whole lake in this area, built by the canal companies of the time to keep the canals replenished, then after the RR came thru it was abandoned. The Earthen dam, which would eventually fail, was string and secure during the time of the canal era but was let go, and even dangerously altered to the needs of the upper class patrons of this athletic club.

The boundries of the lake are quite clear, even almost 120 years after an entire body of water emptied out in a matter of minutes on that fateful afternoon of May 31st, 1889. The one major change is that the NS South Fork secondary runs exactly thru the middle of the dam breach and on up the middle of the lake bed. Unfortunately this day no trains, just a string hoppers parked below the old dam area.

It was a fascinating visit to be sure.

Sat. afternoon was spent watching the parade of trains at Cassandra, with quite a parade to see. Saw the likes of 21E, 21G, 21J, 21M, 10N (with a nice mighty pull up the grade), 922 and even Amtrak over at Cresson.

Sat. evening was spent watching the PSU game over dinner at the Iron Horse Cafe and then back to the Inn for an early evening.

Sun. was spent at first dodging rain drops then off east heading home. We stopped off at the East Broad Top for a quick visit. We saw the 3:00 come into the station. After a look around the shops we decided this would be a great spot for a visit later on. Nice to see steam in action once again!

Happy Railfanning

The Fiddler!

Recent Wide Cab Encounters

One has to be careful when describing Pan Am's District 1 as an "exciting place" because that term is exceedingly relative. Excitement here can be a big yawn elsewhere. 6 trains a day plus a local switcher out of Danville Jct. can be the equivalent of an hour's drama at Horseshoe Curve or Sherman Hill. Here railfanning is like fishing a "pickerel pond". There it's like shopping at the seafood counter at Hannaford's.

So, when fan's of the "sludge gray" encounter some mildly unusual power leading among those few trains, it's relatively exciting. The ho-hum of a normal move now has something worthy of a photograph. These two photos were taken on Saturday Sept. 20 and Sunday Sept. 21 when the weather was too nice to ignore, even if the subject might have been unimaginative.

The top photo is of 517 and 516 leading a westbound out of Waterville (WAED?) at New Gloucester East on the 20th. No big deal except that these units are commonly used for the OCS train so they are cleaner than normal units. They met EDRU(?) at Leeds Jct. and took the siding, which is where the DT&I Fan and I began our chase. A recent OCS run provides a possible explanation for their appearance.


Above we see an eastbound that just passed through Danville Jct. and is approaching Rumford Jct. West. The view is from Sunday the 21st at the overpass by Channel 8 and the Sleepy Time Motel (W.F.P.T.'s Billy Leazer's Maine HQ). This unit has been painted blue for a couple of years now but to catch it in the lead when the front door is closed is a big deal around here. This was a grab shot with my spare camera since the DT&I Fan and I were actually headed to Neal's NGauging Trains down near Portsmouth. "The Junctions" are always part of any southbound trip. It didn't hurt that the last SD39 #690 was in the mix either.

With this weekend's hurricane weather and fall approaching, it may be a while before we see this kind of "excitement" again. After all, it's been a while (July) since Pan Am graced these pages, and that's with good weather.


BC

Return of the Maine Scanner Feed

After an extended absence, I have reenergized the Maine Rail Scanner Feed. I would appreciate if you could test it for me. Just click the link above and let me know if you can hear scanner chatter.

Please send responses to hapt.wheelman@yahoo.com

Sept. Picture Worth A Thousand Words

This is a photo at the Strasburg RR in Pennsylvania from about a month ago (Aug.'08). Now, it does have a bit of deliberate "lense lice" in the form of Train Time's "CEO and Chief Video Tape Rewinder" at the ready with a video camera. (that will be a great episode too!) But, the main reason for the photo being here is the vast array of details that no longer exist or are on the way out in modern railroading. Finding such detail is like shooting fish in a barrel at Strasburg, but we all know that anyway or we wouldn't visit the place. I would judge that this scene would look normal as late as the 1940's, if you ignore the modern parts.

The tower is the most obvious detail of the past that has changed, and probably changed the most as well. There are only a handful still in operation in the whole country now. Last summer the HAPT expedition to Sand Patch detoured to Hancock tower on the old B&O and caught it in operation a month or so before it closed. Prior to the adoption of electronic signalling and control devices, guys with telegraph sets for communication threw levers to move the switches and change the semaphore signals. It was a gradual process and for decades various electronics enhanced tower operations before they replaced them. Centralized traffic control (CTC) allowed for one tower to do the job of many but quite often there were some junctions that still needed a guy to throw the switches and pull the levers because things were too complex for a machine to handle reliably. Computers, reliable machinery, telecomunications and economics changed all that over time. After all, the guy in the tower was a huge expense.

Another semi-obvious detail is the Pennsylvania RR position signal. The PRR tested and researched signal systems that were visible in any weather or sun conditions, full of redundancies (extra bulbs in this case) and could be seen from the greatest possible distance. All bulbs were a bright yellow that could be seen at great distances in many lighting conditions. These systems were not cheap so the "Standard Railroad of the World" was the only one to adopt this style totally. The B&O used a variation involving no middle bulb and using color so that if one bulb died, the single remaining bulb still showed the correct indication by bulb color. A different concept of redundancy. Position signals are gradually disappearing as they are replaced with modern electronics on both lines. While these systems used relays and other electro-mechanical devices that made them work, they were way ahead of mechanical semaphores and guys throwing levers. However, by today's standard they are maintenance intensive energy hogs.

Now look down by the clean and busy depot. There's a passenger train complete with observation car on the end. Next to the train are people milling around or waiting for someone. Relatively few depots outside of a handful of large cities see this activity today. Once upon a time, any town with tracks might see this multiple times during a typical day. Train time was an exciting time when people came and went on journeys around the globe. It was your portal to anywhere. Now you have to travel to a distant airport to get the same impression. And, look at those street lights! What character compared to the modern mercury vapor or halogen lighting that would blast the scene at night. Less need to light the world to reveal street ruffians or thieves lurking in the shadows back in the day. People probably thought the lights were bright enough too since they had dim bulbs or kereosene lamps at home.

Coal smoke is wafting up from the front of the train too. Most Americans cannot even remember when this was a normal scene from coast to coast. Now that would probably lead to calls to the fire department or the EPA. At one time, the people near this railyard activity probably didn't notice the smell or smoke simply because it was a part of every day life. No reason to take notice. Today, the untrapped vapors emanating from a car built before about 1975 gets people's attention where it was once unnoticed.

Only the parking lot full of newer cars really betrays the "old" scene. There is a recent electrical box and maybe some other "out of time" items, but they are subtle misfits. In the end, it sometimes pays to hang on to those old fashions since it's only a matter of time before they return. A modern rendition of this scene could return to a town near you in the next few decades unless fuel issues go away.

BC