Another train-chase in Altoona

#8025, the Monongahela Railway heritage-unit, leads a loaded crude-oil extra around the bend at South Fork. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Years ago I wondered how long I’d be able to keep doing this.
Altoona (PA) is five hours away in central PA. It’s mostly interstate; rural two-lanes in New York.
A five-hour drive with only two breaks was getting to be a drag.
That was 3-4 years ago. Now it’s even more a drag.
I’m old and weak — age-70.
Except when I get there it’s a pleasant distraction from my dreadful situation here at home, mainly the loss of my beloved wife.
Chasing trains is great fun. I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
Altoona is a railroad town, the base and shop-town of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad.
Except Pennsy is no more. Its railroad is still there, now operated by Norfolk Southern.
Altoona is the base of the grade over Allegheny Mountain. The railroad is still the same route laid out in the 1840s.
The railroad attacks Allegheny Mountain suddenly. Helper-locomotives would still be needed to make the grade.
The railroad could have located on mountainsides approaching Allegheny Mountain to ease the climb.
But John Edgar Thomson, chief engineer of the original Pennsylvania Railroad, decided against it based on prior experience.
But not too sudden.
The westbound grade up the east slope of Allegheny Mountain averages 1.8 percent (1.8 feet up for 100 feet forward). Eastbound is easier.
Helper-locomotives would be needed, but it wasn’t the dreadful 2 percent or more of Baltimore & Ohio’s West End, which included a 2.4 percent grade facing eastbound loaded coal-trains.
Pennsy became a monolith. Railroads from the midwest were merged to feed the mainline at Pittsburgh.
A torrent of traffic came over Allegheny Mountain.
And it’s still that way as Norfolk Southern.
So a trip to Altoona is rewarding for a railfan like me.
Trains are being sent willy-nilly, often fleeted, separated by about 5-10 minutes.
When I go to Altoona I can expect to see quite a few trains.
And it’s a mountain railroad, which means assaulting the heavens climbing, and then hold the train back descending.
Very dramatic!
But I’d say the main draw of Altoona is train frequency.
I can expect to see quite a few trains.
I’ve been going to Altoona for years, but six years ago I began “touring” with a railfan from Altoona named Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”), a railfan much like me. —He calls ‘em “tours.”
When I tell people I’m a railfan, they tell me their uncle had a Lionel set.
“Model-trains just collect dust,” I say. “I prefer the real thing.”
And so another train-chase with Phil.
Phil was doing it as a business my first tour.
Since then he gave up the business, but he continued leading me around as a fellow railfan.
Train-chases with Phil are “railfan overload.” He knows the schedule, and monitors railroad radio, so tries to get every train.
I think my first tour we got 20 trains; one time we got 30.
20 trains for a railfan like me is “railfan overload.”
But I have this depressing situation at home.
“Railfan overload” is a pleasant distraction, but I end up bawling profusely as I leave.
“Back to reality,” I say through tears.
I used to say that before my wife died; now “reality” is even worse.

Things were a little different this time.
Phil likes to get up with his wife, who has Multiple Sclerosis, yet I wanted to shoot in Tyrone (PA, “tie-ROWN;” as in “own”), north of Altoona, early in the morning.
Tyrone is where the railroad turns east through a notch toward Harrisburg.
Tyrone has always been a failure photographically.
There’s a beautiful old station I’d love to include, but I never can.
Interstate-99 flies over the railroad-curve east, so I decided to incorporate it in my photograph.
I decided to use strong telephoto to crop out the sky and mountain, which always distract.
I would shoot straight into the overpass.


Westbound stack-train pokes out of the gloom. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Well, it ain’t bad, but it’s not what I expected.
The camera doesn’t see what our eyes see.
Under the overpass is pitch-dark; it’s lighter to the eye.
And of course you’d never know it was Tyrone.
But now I see a location where I might get that beautiful old station — although a train would have to be eastbound, which puts it on the faraway track.
I had forgotten the antenna for my railroad-radio scanner, but Phil loaned me his.
Without a working railroad-radio monitor I might have left Tyrone too early.
But the Altoona-East dispatcher in Pittsburgh said three westbounds were coming.
My picture is the final train.

Back to Altoona to find Phil.
I found him no problem, so off we went in my car, me driving.
First tour it was Phil driving his car, but he gave that up. Too many near-misses, plus a newer car in excellent condition he didn’t wanna mistreat. —Chasing trains often involves dirt farm-tracks.
First we went to Brickyard-Crossing, the only grade-crossing in Altoona, and the location of a brickyard since replaced.
Railfans still call it “Brickyard-Crossing,” as does the railroad.
I do okay photographically at Brickyard if the light is right. But I feel like I’ve milked it dry.
Trains are in your face, but eastbounds don’t seem to work.
Westbounds can be from an embankment, but I’ve milked that dry too. —I got a really good photograph up there once, plus another down at trackside.
Eastbounds from that embankment the light is wrong, too backlit.


Westbound stacker at Brickyard. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

From there we continued railroad-west to Carney’s Crossing, where Carney’s Crossing Road crosses the railroad at grade.
We were chasing a train we had already photographed at Brickyard, and we beat it.


Same stacker as Brickyard, but at Carney’s. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

At Brickyard the train was climbing, at Carney’s it’s descending.
Where we went from there I can’t remember.
I had to eat to keep going, so we ate at a McDonald’s in Portage (PA).
We eventually went to South Fork (PA), where the railroad curves west towards Johnstown and Pittsburgh.
South Fork is an old coal-town on its last legs. Streets are narrow, almost 19th-century — not wide enough for a dually pickup.
It was named after the south fork of the Conemaugh River, and is where the Johnstown Flood started.
The curve in the railroad makes a very dramatic picture.
My lede photo is on that curve.


The Keystone Whistle-Stop Safety Train. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

An out-of-the ordinary westbound appeared; it was the Keystone Whistle-Stop Safety Train.
It was an assemblage of many of the passenger-cars from the Norfolk Southern Executive-Business-train, plus a few others.
Apparently displays had been set up inside to promote safety to the public.
That is: if you see railroad tracks, expect a train.
A railroad crosses the main drag in nearby Canandaigua, yet I see people stopping their cars on the tracks.
Not this kid!
You can be sure I stop short of the tracks, to allow clearance if a train approaches.
Trains on that railroad do about five miles-per-hour, and stop at the grade-crossing if their way isn’t clear.
When I drove bus I used to stop and look both ways at an unused railroad-siding. It went inside a warehouse.
One of my passengers protested: “What are ya stopping here for?”
“In case the 20th Century comes!” I’d shout.
Most of the cars were gorgeous. Only one car looked bad, but it wasn’t sagging. All it needed was paint.
The safety-train pulled ahead, but stopped. An eastbound passed which I photographed.
We readied to leave, but trains kept coming. The defect-detector at 268.1 kept reporting eastbounds.
I shot another, an empty slab-train.


Eastbound empty slab-train through South Fork. The Keystone Whistle-Stop Safety Train is stopped at right. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Slab-trains are all gondola-cars. Loaded the cars transfer heavy steel slabs to a finishing-mill to be rolled into plate.
Phil reflected this is how things often are. Maintenance-crews work on the railroad early in the afternoon, during which a lull occurs as portions of railroad are closed.
Then later in the afternoon after the maintainers finish their work-stints, the railroad is opened and a flood of trains occurs.
During that lull is when we did lunch; and the torrent began at South Fork.
Finally things died down enough for us to move back railroad-east, but still in South Fork.
An overpass. I shot a westbound stacker, and then the rear helpers as the train continued west.


Westbound stacker approaches South Fork. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


We’re only seeing about half the train. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Looking at this helper-picture, I imagine what a mess it would be if that many trucks were clogging an interstate. And every one of those trucks needs a driver.
The train has a crew of two or three, plus two more on the helpers.
Where to next?
Phil noted trains were scheduled, so we might wanna be in Altoona.
That’s a long drive down The Hill, during which we might miss some of those trains.
“Dangerous,” he called it.
“How many people would understand ‘dangerous?’” I asked. “I understand it, but I’m a railfan.”
We motored to Gallitzin (PA.; “guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), and then took a single-lane dirt-track into deep woods.
“This is why I bought this thing!” I declared, as we bounced along brushing aside tree-branches; an all-wheel-drive SUV that could do such roads; a Ford Escape.
We ended up at a deep-woods clearing overlooking Tracks Three and Two just east of the eastern tunnel-mouths.
We couldn’t see the tunnel-mouths, but my last picture (below) is at this location.


Westbound stack-train in the woods. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I’m happy with it. The sun is shining on the locomotive-front, but the locomotive looks bedraggled. It’s a great photograph, but it makes the railroad look bad.
I have others where the locomotives look newer, but the sun isn’t out.
What I don’t have here is Phil at trackside taking down weeds to improve my picture.

Logistics:
I couldn’t stay at Station-Inn in Cresson (PA., “KRESS-in”) because it was booked solid. And of course Tunnel-Inn in Gallitzin is closed.
So I stayed at a motel, not a bed-and-breakfast. When I left Friday morning it was via the Perkins Restaurant next to the motel where my wife and I stayed before Tunnel-Inn.
I always liked hitting that Perkins. It’s pancakes and sausage, which I’d never get to eat — which we lost when we switched to Tunnel-Inn.
Station-Inn is a great breakfast, but not Perkins. Perkins is in Altoona, too far from Station-Inn.
A couple of guys appeared while I was there, and they began talking about steam-locomotives.
“There’s this gigantic locomotive out west being restored for operation,” one guy said.
I usually don’t say anything, but “that sounds like the Big Boy,” I interjected; “4-8-8-4, being moved to Cheyenne, WY to be restored operable.”
“Yep, that’s it, ‘Big Boy,’” he said.
The other guy said something about taking his son to Cass Scenic Railroad (“kass;” as in “gas”) in the outback of WV.
So I ambled over.
“I been to Cass,” I said. “Every railfan, BY LAW, should be required to experience Cass, just to hear them steam-whistles echo through the hollers.”

• RE: “Heritage-unit.......” —In 2012, in honor of of its 30th anniversary, Norfolk Southern had 20 of its new locomotives painted in schemes of predecessor railroads: e.g. Pennsy, Lackawanna, Nickel Plate, Norfolk & Western, Erie, Southern Railway, Wabash, Central of Georgia, etc. Monongahela Railway, from the Pittsburgh area down into WV, is one of the predecessors. Much of it followed the Monongahela River. Monongahela Railway was mainly a coal-hauler.
• New York Central Railroad’s premier passenger-train was the “20th-Century Limited.” It was New York Central that went through Rochester; now it’s CSX.