Altoona Recreation Department Again

18G passes the soon to be replaced Alto Tower in Altoona, PA.

(Latest Draft 1/15/11)

Thanks to Christopher Columbus and his sailing the ocean blue, I had a three day weekend. Thanks to my school district and its falling short of money, I had a furlough day to add to it. What better idea than to call some Pennsylvania friends and head to Altoona for some escape.


I started this expedition on Thursday 10/13 by driving straight from work to Southington, CT in order to get some miles behind me. On Friday my day started by driving to the Reading, PA area in order to pick up the "Fiddler". On the way out of town we stopped by the Railroad House Restaurant in Sinking Spring to eat and watch for trains. Not much happening but we didn't get far once we finished lunch. We stopped at the old depot in Wernersville to catch a couple of trains. My first shot of the trip was this bad grab shot of a westbound ethanol empty. The shot was mainly gates and other junk. The next turned out to be a high hood GP38 leading a local by the steelworks of the platform. Not bad. I got a few shots of the steel platform structure and we moved on. Our plan was to follow the old "Middle Division" to Altoona. While that's what we ended up doing, we ran into serious traffic congestion around Harrisburg, some of which seemed to be related to the next day's football game at Penn State in State College, about 100 miles away. We exited the main highway and headed for Newport to stop by the local park, a previous trip's stop. While it's not too picturesque for still photography, it's wide open for video of fast freights. It was growing dark for me but we still had much railroad to follow. As it turned out, it was homecoming in Newport and our egress was blocked by the front of a parade. Fiddler did some video work as I waited, no doubt to add color to his shows.

We continued on to now familiar stops at Front Royal, Mifflin, and a few more. Eventually we landed at the Amtrak station in Lewistown. This turned out to be a hopping place. The local fans have been maintaining the old building and Amtrak was sharing space. Other fans and families were in the area watching the trains. It was a nice place to stop and we chatted with plenty of folks as we listened to the scanner. We saw plenty of rail action and heard the unusual symbol "294", which looked like a detour of some sort.

Eventually we had to move on toward Altoona. I called our friend in Altoona, "The Guide", and arranged for the next day. We also ended up chasing an ethanol train which we had seen earlier. We could catch up to its "FRED" from time to time but it stayed out of our reach until the route broke off past Huntington.

On Saturday morning our small crew left the exciting confines of Motel 6 - Altoona and headed downtown to see what was happening. "The Guide" was driving and had a pretty good idea what was moving. Our best shot was to head over to Brickyard Crossing. There is where we caught the helpers on 25Z. The 65J trash train came along after a short wait and eb helpers gave us something to look at for another minute. (above left).

Soon thereafter we continued on to the ledges at the local sportsman's club downgrade from Horseshoe Curve. There we encountered an empty coal train going west (left) and a 36A auto rack train going east under the signal bridge (right). The string of auto racks included a fairly well graffittied P&W car. The two oddball shots way above left show the coal train changing the new signals

The Guide had an idea that we would see quite a group of trains through town. It would also give us a chance to photograph some action when the light was right at Alto Tower. Not knowing how much longer Alto would be in operation, or even located in its present spot, made the visit even better. The photo of Amtrak 04T shot at the right was made on this part of the return voyage. From here we headed up to Slope Interlocking to catch what would be a meet of sorts. A newly acquired ex-UP SD60 was part of the westbound 21Q, which stopped to pick up a rear helper at Alto. We also caught the eastbound 18N autorack passing the signals at Slope.






From our overpass vantage point at Slope we decided to dash up the hill. We looked over the usual haunts in Gallitzin and headed for the Rt. 53 bridge in Cresson. We got a quick look at 21Q which met us there and then 10N came along for this helper end shot on track 1 from the bridge. (right) A group of New Jersey fans drove down to track level so the Fiddler and I walked down behind them. There we were able to get a nice sunny view of the decaying steel highway bridge and soon to be gone signal bridge. 12G came along and gave us some great sun angles to go with the rusty props. The helpers were producing some dramatic shadows and sun. (right)




We moved on rapidly and caught the 22w and 11v at the east portals of the tunnels. After lunch we headed west for Cassandra. We avoided downtown Cresson on this trip because the town was celebrating some form of heritage days and the track area was crowded with activity. Boy did we catch plenty of action at the overlook. Plenty of fans were on hand too. The Guide knew some of these folks from his days as an actual guide and some were local fans. It was fun hearing the scanner action in surround sound stereo! Here we caught Eb helper, 17g, 21e, 056t high/wide with heavy equipment, 21j, 650 coal from Sonman's, 294 detour? Intermodal and 11j.








The light was beginning to give out a bit and The Guide knew we still had some trains coming. It was tough to get away from Cassandra though. We finally found a gap in the trains and headed to Lilly. We barely had enough time to set up under the bridge. 21m and 20Q passed while we were there. Fiddler took time to shoot some commentary for his videos. We headed east and caught 20Q again at the Rt. 53 bridge. Amtrak 07T. As can be seen in the photos on the left, the shadows were getting long. O7T had the Kitchi Gammi Club pullman car on the tail end.


It was time to call it a day so we headed to town for dinner. The Fiddler and I traditionally take The Guide and his wife out to dinner when we're in town. It's always an enjoyable way to spend the evening. We went to one of their regular Italian restaurants in eastern Altoona, the third one I've tried out in the city.

On Sunday morning after walking to breakfast at Denny's, the three of us headed to town again. We decided to take advantage of yet another bright morning to photograph Alto again. We pulled up in time for the 18g which turned out to be to "cover photo" at the top of the page. The operator came out to the fence for a quick chat before we all had to move on. The Guide moved the car to the other end of the bridge while Fiddler and I went up top to catch the "Cove local" CB60 and 25Z. The local, heading out to Hollidaysburg, was led by
5901, one of two recently built GP22ECO's rebuilt from GP38AC's (according to "AltoonaWorks"). It's built to operate with road slugs. This time it is trailing two GP38-3's.

Before we left town we went over to the turntable at Juniata to see what strange beasts were lurking. Nothing really super unusual but some oddities were there for sure. The first thing that hit our eye was the Sandersville switcher. A closer look revealed a CSX hybrid unit which may have been assembled recently. Finally, among the other units was a mate for the GP22ECO's, an NS GPTEB unit. This is one of two road slugs built here by EMD/NS. (according to "NSDash9.com")







Once again we elected to head up the hill and down the other side. First stop was a quick shot of 25Z at Lilly, this time from on top of the bridge. (left) We were headed in the general direction of South Fork where the SD80MAC's tend to hang out. We made a stop at CP-W, the far end of the siding out of South Fork. Here there was once one of those famous Pennsy "fly-overs" to allow access without crossing over the whole railroad. You can still trace out most of the embankments and abutments. Westbound train 227 came along in good sun for the head end and helpers. In the shadows came the C90 local featuring 5 SD80MAC's lite on the way to Cresson.


At this point we thought it best to head into town where the light was better for eastbounds. The Guide thought we might soon have a flurry of activity and that was a better place to catch it. 22W, a helper wb, and W6A (autoracks extra 36a) obliged us.



Our next stop is a relatively private location where the owner allows The Guide to use when someone's around. It's an old county road steel bridge that allows a farmer to access his land. We pulled out the lunch cooler and had a nice chat with the owner in the process of waiting. We got really lucky here. 12g, Rail grinder eb Loram 311, 37a and M0N graced us with their presence. 36A had some nice pipe loads up front and the Loram rig came out of hiding.

We had to deliver Fiddler to the Amtrak station for his ride home so we had to move back toward Altoona. We parked over at the shopping center and used the bridges to get to the depot. I had no idea just how many steps and detours that meant. You cross the big bridge and then you cross the street to the depot. Then from the depot you climb steps to get over the street and back down to the platform. I guess it made sense to some engineer who couldn't move tracks or the road on a small budget. Parking isn't great either.

Anyway we delivered Fiddler in time for his ride east. The tail end of his train had a returning "Kitchi Gammi Club" private car.

The Guide and I used the rest of our light between Slope and Brickyard Crossing. Slope turned into another session where we couldn't leave because there were too many trains. 13G (helpers both ends), 64J (trash), N0N (ethanol tanks), AMK,
I0T, 294, and 23m. There was a triple meet in there somewhere.







The last shot is an intermodal passing under the signal bridge at Brickyard Crossing. This was the end of the day and the end of my voyage. It was time for pizza.


BC


L to R: Fiddler, Guide and Me.