The Adventures Of The Hebron Any Power Team: April in Altoona

Here is a trip I've been trying to write up for weeks. I'll put the pictures in place and then add the writing as time allows. The new Blogger software for uploading photos is a pain in the butt in some ways and a joy in others. It will be a long string of photos with the writing in draft form for a while...

I started out for this particular "April Vacation" adventure on a Wednesday afternoon, intending to stop in Rutland, VT on the way to Altoona. I thought I'd check out the Connecticut River valley to see what had changed since my last visit in the 1990's.

A stop in St. Johnsbury reveals a new paint job on the yard office since the CP Rail days. Cleaner track too.

The scene looking north hasn't changed much in decades. Of course it's nice that the trackwork has been cleaned up considerably.

The trip south along Rt. 5 yielded a southbound Washington County train of considerable size. This was after about 4:30pm on a Thursday in case it's a normal time. I caught a chirp of the F.R.E.D. well south of the Passumpsic RR in Barnet.

I finally got ahead of the train at South Bradford. Open places along the track are few along the river so I got quite far ahead of the slow train.

I was quite pleased with the results of the long wait. The train was led by a Clarendon and Pittsford unit. That made it my first shot of anything from that end of the system. A WACR unit would have been better but this was a good second place catch for me. The last time I saw the trailing unit was many years ago headed for Bennington and it was pure gray primer then.

Thursday morning started with a quick recon of the Rutland area and then I was off to do the same thing in Whitehall and Saratoga. Nothing of note to place here but I did see a lot of fossils. The first train I was able to stop and photograph was near Sayre, PA. A local was sitting behind an Italian restaurant done up in a depot motif. Several cars and cabooses decorated the place.

I took Rt. 220 south to Tyrone. I followed some tracks here and there and found the end of the shortline south of Corning. But again nothing of note. The same was true for Williamsport and Lock Haven. Lots of tracks around but I wouldn't know where to start looking for trains. I made my phone calls when I arrived at Tyrone. I was in a lull of course but I did hear that something was near. I got this Maersk shot before the light gave out.

On Friday morning I was enjoying the usual Tunnel Inn hospitality on the deck when I made the snap decision to photograph a helper going by. The "throw down" camera took too long to focus but I got a shot of my lonely car sitting in the Inn parking lot next to the bridge. I was the only one home too. I needed to meet "The Guide" and "The Fidder" in Altoona, so I couldn't hang around to do better.

We got a little surprise when we got to the station. We would have gone over there anyway but a 'heads up' from the Fiddler gave it some urgency. I'd seen on Facebook that the last UP genset to be built at Juniata was ready. I'd also seen that the PRR heritage unit was ready too. Imagine our surprise when we saw both sitting ready to depart at the head end of 11A. We were able to take our time with photos and then head up the line to Brickyard crossing for a few more. Of course these things don't stay very quiet so there were plenty of other fans around for this occasion. Brickyard proved to be well lit at this early hour and the train was full of unusual cars.

We the 25Z as we arrived but as you can see, shiny new units got all of the attention.

With that excitement behind us we skipped ahead to Cresson and over to Lilly. We weren't going to see heritage units again but we caught other things. We caught a helper set heading west before this Baltimore bound 13M "bare tables" train rounded the bend. They looked good under the old signals on the west end of Lilly. The second unit is one of a group of former UP SD60's which will be rebuilt and used by NS. You can see that it's already received an NS "patch" on the cab.

Our next stop was CP W near South Fork. This is where there used to be a "fly over" for trains to enter and depart the South Fork Secondary. Now it's just the end of a siding. We saw helper sets pass and 10G came into the great light. We also caught 22W down the road at South Fork itself. From there "the Guide" surmised that we could catch west bound 65D "oil train" at the Jamestown bridge. This train usually had BNSF power and this guy didn't disappoint. We actually packed up to leave and along came an empty PPLX Shamokin coal train 641. At this point on the line you can see a spur heading off to the right. We could hear activity which turned out to be machinery near a coal loadout. It also turned out that there were some SD80MAC's loading a string of cars at Sonman's Tipple, but they weren't what we heard at the bridge. They weren't very accessible for photos but we could see them.

As usual a stop at Cassandra at the right time of day can be very busy. We saw 12 trains in 2 hours and several were meets. I think the two trains in the left photo are 26T and empty 861.

Here we see 947 "Roving Track Gang" with it's flat cars of equipment. Among the others we have eb ethanol 66Q.

We eventually found a break in the action so we could head east toward Altoona. We stopped for some wb's at the Rt. 53 bridge. 21M came by quickly and I later took the opportunity to try working with the old signal bridge for 23M.

We decided to catch Amtrak someplace unusual so we headed to Gallitzin for a tunnel shot. It also gave me a chance to drop by my room for a minute. We pretty much headed to Altoona after this shot. A swing by Slope and Brickyard gave us a chance to see 64J and 13G. We had dinner at a good Italian restaurant down by the Juniata shops and called it a night. "The Fiddler" had to return home at this point.

A P&W auto rack sneaks by.

Saturday was overcast but not bad until later in the day. We started out by going right to Carney's Crossing west of Cresson. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened to my carefully typed up train log for the day. (Argh!)

I recall that we caught this first westbound and then stayed around for Amtrak. While we waited we had another pair of westbound trains. An intermodal on the middle track overtook the freight on track 3.

All this while we were waiting on the nearby Amtrak. Luckily they cleared the scene first. I had time to switch to the other side of the tracks to catch it on the curve. We would have seen Amtrak on track one but it would have been pretty crowded.

Our next stop was Portage. We pulled down in front of a small factory and waited for this eastbound ethanol train. We set up in front of the signals just as it started to rain. I managed to catch a decent shot of the helpers from the many poor ones I took.

Back at South Fork, a few trains were sneaking through. I wanted to try this angle from in town behind the convenience store. We headed to Summerhill after this. The rain was playing with us so we decided to sit under the bridge for westbounds. Naturally the first thing we get is a pair of eastbounds, but the rain had some mercy on us. We thought we had a eastbound near with time enough to head to the stone arch bridge. It turned out to be helpers but they were on the bridge. Thank heavens the leaves were not full yet.