one hour in Palmer

My survey work on the Chicopee River near Springfield ended early on the Friday of Columbus Day weekend, so on my way home I spent an hour having a late lunch trackside at Palmer, to take pot luck on rail traffic.  In one hour, I was able to catch movements on all running tracks!

 Shortly after I arrived a westbound ballast extra rolled up to the west end of the siding, and dimmed its headlight.  I suspected a meet was in progress; ten minutes later, an eastbound loaded auto rack track sailed by:

 

 

 

Once the autorack cleared up, the extra got a high green and went west with it’s freshly repainted GP-40

 

note the solar panel and electrical cabinet on the ballast car. Each car was so equipped. Not sure what purpose they have

a few minutes after CSX cleared the interlocking, a New England Central GP-38 scurried north across the diamond

The final act was the reverse move of the northbound Vermonter, which rolled in from Springfield being pushed by it’s Genesis engine, paused while the engineer changed positions from cab car to locomotive, and the conductor dismounted and lined the two manual crossovers.  All in all the reverse move, and manual turnout process consumed almost 15 minutes

 

after crossing to the connection to New England Central, the train then stopped again to let the rear brakeman (I assume) realign the turnouts before leaving town

 

And off they went (shortly after that, so did I)!

Black Friday and black diesels

Charles Kadyk who now lives in Mohnton, PA (near Reading) kindly hosted me for a bit of railfanning this past Friday. We chose the former Reading RR (now NS) west of the city of Reading, as NS was running their full schedule and I had never seen that part of the railroad.  It’s essentially the funnel between Harrisburg and New York, and connects the former PRR MIDDLE DIVISION mainline as well as RDG Hagerstown gateway to the south with Allentown and NY/NJ, and Philadelphia. Multiple track and rolling country, so trains are frequent and fast. I think the longest we waited between trains may have been 30 minutes.  Plenty of signals and crew chatter so its easy to know when trains are nearby.  East of the Reading area, suburban sprawl has drained the area of much of its character and clutters most views, but from Reading west the feel of the region is still very much present, there's still some RDG atmosphere, and the landscape around the railroad less cluttered.

We started out at Wyomissing Jct, which is where the lines from Philadelphia and from Allentown both converge on the west side of town.  There's signals, as well as a stiff westbound grade coming out of the Schuylkill valley there.  After a brief wait we nailed a hard working westbound work extra behind an unorthodox combination of SD 40-2 and MP-15, and including some “vintage” well used N&W and Southern rolling stock:

We moved a few miles west to Sinking Spring, a town with many grade crossings (so a nice place to listen to horn music), branch junction, and an ethanol plant.  No sooner than we arrived than an eastbound Enola>Allentown transfer job slammed by, with some garden variety road power

The most colorful lash up of the day was this empty oil can heading west with an SD-70 leading some BNSF power including a warbonnet

another eastbound, a double stack from NC headed for NJ

there were also some interesting line side structures such as this very modelgenic, smallish grain dealer (and active rail customer):

and the freshly restored Wernersville depot and freight station (the platform sheds still need some TLC)

That 150 MPH Sensation

Autumn leaves are flying as a southbound Acela Express approaches Kingston, RI at about 150mph.  Fastest in US.   10-20-13

SB Acela blows past Kingston.

I started to feel the "need for speed" after the school year began and had spent one too many an afternoon around District 1 watching slow freights plod along at 10 to 20 mph.  From previous trips and common knowledge I knew that the Acela Express hit 150 mph through the station at Kingston, RI and began eying the place on the web.  The excuse to go came when a friend agreed to go along.  We happened to pick an awesome day for sun, color and traffic too.  As it turned out we got a side order of "Swedish Meatballs" in the deal.

A "Swedish Meatball" AEM-7 leads a 'Regional'.

As easy as it is to translate a schedule, it gets complicated, apparently, when one tries to write down a lineup for Kingston on a Sunday.  Between filtering out the non-Sunday trains and putting down chronological times and numbers to distinguish Acela Express from Regional trains, I messed up a couple of North-South designations.  I even nearly missed one last Acela as I exited the depot just as it arrived. At least we were on the platform when 5 Acelas and some Regionals went by.
Mission accomplished. 

The last NB Acela we set up for overtook a late Regional in sight of the station.  That put them on the left-hand track and a bit slower than normal. We happened to be on the pedestrian bridge at the time so we had a good vantage point.   The low sun really made for some striking lines on all the hardware reflecting those rays.  The windows were actually pretty clean but the harsh glare was tough to work around.

The Acela trains did not disappoint.  No GE HHP-8 units but it was good to see the 30+ year old ASEA et. al AEM-7 "Swedish Meatballs" again.  They'll be replaced in the next few years as the new Siemens "Cities Sprinter" units are built and put into service.  I guess I'm attached to AEM-7's since I happened to do a semester in Sweden where their original ASEA "RC" form roamed in 1982.  I also caught the early Amtrak models in New Haven in 1981.  That makes these one of the few locomotive types I've seen and photographed throughout most of their lifespan.  I'll have to find those slides now.  They'll show up below one day. 

BC

ASEA unit on Swedish Railways (SJ).  Gavle, Sweden about Sept. 1982.

A typical AEM-7 "Swedish Meatball" leading a 'Regional' through Kingston.  10-20-13

An Old Friend Passes Through

A normal visit to Pan Am's District 1 with the DT&I Fan didn't yield much excitement, at first.  We started at 'the junctions' and worked our way to Leeds Jct.  We saw nothing and the scanner was silent.  At Leeds Jct. the signal was sporting a 'pair of greens'.  Strange since we saw nothing on the way. 

I got a photo of the signal since two greens are unusual, though not rare.  It could only mean we missed an eastbound back around L/A.  The scene at Leeds Jct. may also soon be changed, or at least cleaned up, by a tie crew working it's way east from Royal Jct. lately.  Still a far cry from the old Maine Central days when the track was good for 40mph or better. 

 In a rare moment of clarity I decided to head back into Greene to trace the rails in case something was actually eastbound and nearby.  Just after we crossed the tracks and headed for College Ave. in Lewiston, we heard "The Lady of The Woods" detector at MP 157 speak.  In fact is wasn't long after the two of us were talking about it being out of commission.  We turned around and headed for Sullivan Rd. crossing.  I was intrigued since I don't recall having used the crossing for railfanning before.

About 10 minutes later, a long time given that we were about 3 miles away from the detector and had to turn around etc to get to the crossing, POWA made its appearance.  602 on the point was at least reasonably clean but the lighting was pretty harsh.  It took a lot of editing to get that photo to show anything through all the deep shadows.  However, as the train went by I discovered that roster shots and such were ideally lit looking the other way.  Too bad I didn't see the shadow to the crossing signals first.

 The former BN unit caught my attention.  It had wandered these rails before but this is the first time I've had a chance to photograph it.  As I do with all BN SD40-2's I encounter, I checked the number real quick to see if it might have been a Colorado and Southern unit.  The number looked familiar enough but I'd have to check a roster to be sure.  In the meantime I simply checked the image on my camera and this is what I saw:

 There, above the rear end number boards was the elusive 'C&S' sub-lettering!  Nice!  The first one I'd seen in-person in Maine.  I spent the bulk of my growing up along the Colorado and Southern so this was a unit I'd probably seen in my youth.  These units were purchased by the BN for Powder River coal service mainly but they took their turn running along the Colorado front range by my home in Fort Collins.  This unit was built in 1978 while I was in high school.  The C&S was folded into the BN on the last day of 1981 while I was in college.  This unit probably rode the original C&S once in a while.

The original number was probably the C&S three digit #972.  However, the late batches were numbered directly into the BN four digit system right from EMD.  Given that 980 and 996 were 'master and slave' early model 'distributive power units' numbered well away from other units, and with no other numbers used in between, this one may have gone either way.   There were lots of 900 series SD40-2's on the rails along the front range mixed in with other BN and C&S six axle units.  After the merger was complete, the three digit numbers were updated into the BN four digit number system.  The paint on this one looks unaltered.



After POWA passed us in Greene, we had not heard any Rumford jobs yet so we headed to Danville Jct.  The idea was to catch a possible PORU following behind.  It was only a guess backed up by a hunch.  The radio was not helping us at all.  We met the head end of POSJ at Black Cat Rd. crossing as we approached Danville.  The long string of centerbeams on the point told us right away that it wasn't PORU.  No time for photos and it wasn't that photogenic anyway.  Driving over the crossings in the village we saw that the signals at the west end of Danville were dark.  At this point we decided to head home rather than give chase.  District 1 just didn't cause much excitement on this day.  Another eastbound might have changed that. 

A mere two hour tour and we saw two trains.  A high average for Maine but that's allowing the stats to lie for us.  If we'd kept going on until dark, the one train per hour average would have faded.   It was too nice a day to miss even a piece of it in the sun given all the clouds we've had all summer.

BC