Foil Fallage at the mighty Curve

At the Tunnel Hill overlook. (Train is on Track Two.)

DAY ONE:
—1) Little by little, every trip to the mighty Curve gets shorter and shorter.
-A) the segment of expressway (the future I-99 corridor) from the New York/Pennsylvania state line south to Tioga Junction is now open.
That leaves only a few portions that are not expressway, namely:
-1) The segment off of I-80 at Route 26.
And of course.......
-2) that portion north of the state line in New York. In fact, now that Pennsylvania has replaced Route 15 with expressway, the gauntlet is thrown.
When is Schumer gonna get an expressway built?
Whither Hillary?
But........
-B) the segment of expressway over Bald Eagle Mountain is still not done.
We really were hoping this time, but back to 322.
Swooping bridges are built, and giant cuts made, but parts are still not in use; nothing westbound.
The tortured southbound section through Steam Valley is still there, although crews are busily beavering away.
My guess is -a) the crossing of Bald Eagle Mountain, and -b) improvement of the Steam Valley segment......
......will both be done before I kick the bucket, but.......
.....when it comes to -a) improving the interchange with I-80, and -b) replacing the two-lane in New York with expressway.......
......I have my doubts.
—2) We stopped at the Foy Ave. Sunoco north of Williamsport to buy gas.
After buying gas, I went inside to use the bathroom, opened the door which said “vacant,” and inside was some teenybopper widdling.
“Poor Denny,” some faraway girl said.
“It said ‘vacant,’” I said.
—3) The hillside coke kilns are visible along Glen White Road.
A railroad branched off the Curve up Glen White Run to a coal mine, and I guess that mine set up coke ovens. —I saw the ovens three times.
Everything is abandoned, of course, and the railroad long-gone, but the coke ovens remain in the hillside.
Similar coke ovens can be found along the Chesapeake & Ohio main in New River Gorge.
The only time I’ve ever seen the Glen White coke ovens is when the leaves are off the trees.
—4) No mistakes this trip.
And only two widdle-stops; the first only a matter of convenience. (“Here comes a john; I might as well use it.”)
Our trip started later, because we first reconnoitered a 5K footrace this coming weekend in nearby Geneseo.
It starts at a Catholic church, and looks somewhat challenging.

Amtrak westbound at the mighty Curve.

—5) We of course visited the mighty Curve after checking in, but only after doing the Tunnel Hill overlook (lead picture).
We got to the Curve at 4:50, and they were closing at 5, so we parked across the street.
And then climbed the 194 steps.
I was expecting to have degraded some, but marched right up just like I always do, huffing at the top, but not out of breath.
The only train we saw was an Amtrak climbing Track Two (second picture).
The shadow of the mountain across the valley was quickly obscuring the tracks.

DAY TWO......
.....Dawned dark and cloudy, and as we headed out to Perkins for pancakes it was misting.
The cloud deck was breaking leaving Perkins, and it wasn’t that cold — no long underwear yet.
So I decided to try “the Ledges” as originally planned.
It looked like a clearing sky might illuminate the Ledges (it wasn’t worth doing if too cold or raining or cloudy).
After a short hike up a rocky jeep trail, and falling once, we got there, but it was awfully windy.
My wife, in fear of being shot by blood-crazed drunken hunters, or even Sarah Palin with her moose-hunting AK-47 (“shoot first; ask questions later”), had our red canvas Tops grocery-bag held up high.
My scanner said two were coming down; one each on Tracks One and Two.
We missed the one on Two, an Amtrak (camera not on) — but got the freight on Track One (third picture).
The light seemed pretty fair, which was why we waited despite the cold; about a half-hour.

Down on Track One at the Ledges (east of the Curve).

After that we returned to Tunnel Inn to put on our long underwear.
The weather was getting worse.
The overcast was what pilots would call broken; quickly scudding clouds, mostly obscuring the sun.
From now on we were trying to find “Faudi-spots;” spots I had been taken to with Phil Faudi last August. (The Ledges was a “Faudi-spot.”)
We managed to find ‘em all; the first being the highway overpass pictured in picture #4.
But after that the clouds became thicker and some rained.
Two of the most photogenic spots, South Fork and Summerhill, became impossible.
We gave up and went back to Tunnel Inn.
By then we got the password for Tunnel Inn’s wireless Internet — it needs to be in the room. Computers are pretty much standard luggage any more.
Sun having shown for a while, we set out again, but it began raining as soon as we stepped out.
Showers and sun were intermittent, but it appeared a clear spot was approaching, so we angled off at Lilly, where Faudi and I had shot a double.

Eastbound on Track One at the Jamestown Road overpass near Portage.

One was climbing on Track One — that is picture #5. As we left another came down Track Two.
We drove to Summerhill and camped out there a while.
Nothing; so we went back down to South Fork.
Again, nothing; so we headed for Tunnel Inn.
But scanner-on inside the car had one coming down on Track Two, passing the detector at Cresson first, and then the one in nearby Portage (I think).
So we reversed to head back to Summerhill, but the train, mostly auto-racks, was ahead of us.
Off again at Summerhill, in hopes the one ahead had a follower; and it did, an empty coal-hopper train descending on Track Three.
But Track Two had a down-train too; that’s the one in the last picture.
The empty hopper-train pulled past the train I shot, but since it was blocked I couldn’t shoot it.

Up the West slope on Track One at Lilly.

“Where to next?” my wife asked. “I’m with you!”
“Elz would have left years ago,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’m not your sister.”

DAY THREE:
—1) Back home.
The most depressing thing about these forays is putting our dog in the slammer.
Tunnel Inn doesn’t allow pets, nor does the mighty Curve.
You can tell; chipmunks have the run of the place. They need a dog to set ‘em straight.
—2) So began another season of long underwear.
50 degrees camped out at trackside in the wind requires long johns.
It wasn’t the first time the mighty Curve initiated the beginning of long johns.
—3) We wonder about all the fabulous highways in Pennsylvania.
They’re nice, but little used.
Sweep through wide-open Sebring above the Blossburg Hill and ya might see one other car.
Onto Interstate-390 in New York, and we were surrounded by semis.
A truck with an oversized load — what appeared to be a 100-foot tall silo or something 10 feet in diameter — was in a rest-stop.
It was so big they had to use three escorts; one to block the passing-lane.
(Thankfully it switched to I-86, the Southern Expressway [across lower New York]; not Interstate-390 [north].)
Okay, so Pennsylvania is building for the future — presuming the automobile continues as the chosen mode of transport.
Suppose gasoline climbs to $5 or $7 or $10 per gallon.
Do we make Saudi Arabia a state; and even then we’re competing with China and India. (“Send troops.”)
Meanwhile much of the alternative to automotive transport was abandoned: the steel wheel on the steel rail — incredibly efficient.
AutoTrain is the right idea. But that’s only one route with a known market.

Westbound on Track Two at Summerhill. (The higher signals are at that height to be seen over a nearby highway overpass behind.)

—4) No mistakes driving back, and only two widdle-stops.
Our first stop was at mighty Sheetz on Beale Ave. in Altoona to buy gas ($2.75.9 per gallon). I thought I’d look for a john there, but couldn’t see one right away.
Oh well, there’s always the MacDonalds half-way to Williamsport, but I drove by that too.
So the first widdle-stop was the mighty Williamsport Weggers; where I was buying bananas anyway.
It’s the old waazoo: whatever goes in, has to come out; so lay off the coffee.
“Doncha want a sody?” Faudi would ask.
“Whatever goes in, has to come out,” I’d say. —Nine hours with only one widdle.
The next widdle-stop was rest facilities on I-390 in New York state.
And that was only a matter of convenience.
Seemed the guys with the 100-foot silo were doing the same thing.
—5) Our neighbor Billy, across the street, said it snowed while we were away. But it had melted away before we returned.
—6) I would say my railfaning at the mighty Curve has benefited from the Faudi experience.
I still don’t know train-numbers and scheduled trains like him, but I can better tell when a train is coming.
And I can make a sudden Faudi move to catch one if I hear it on the scanner.
The scanner-chatter makes a little more sense, although once it sounded like we were getting schoolbuses departing a school.
Zagging up-and-down the railroad to view trains is more fun than just sitting at the Curve.
On the scanner, the engineers are calling out the signals as they see ‘em; first giving the train-number, their direction, and what track they’re on. Used to be that train-number was just gibberish. I still don’t know the stuff Faudi knows, but we had more fun; which I guess means progress.
The Faudi experience also took me well beyond Horseshoe Curve.
No longer is it the Curve and Cassandra.
The Curve is nice, but not photogenic; and Cassandra only works with strong telephoto.
The reason the Curve and Cassandra were successful were train frequency.
And that applies to all the Faudi-spots.
It’s the Norfolk Southern mainline across Pennsylvania — the old Pennsy.
Wait 20 minutes, and a train passes. STAND BACK EVERYONE!

All photos by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.

No footnotes — too many would be required. I’ll just say that “Elz” is my sister Elizabeth in Florida, and Tunnel Inn is the Bed & Breakfast we stay in at Horseshoe Curve.