Railfan overload in bitter cold

Snag of the century: 04T at left, Nittany & Bald Eagle local-freight in Tyrone yard, and Norfolk Southern 11A at right. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—(”Tie-RONE;” as in “own.”)
I’ve been told what people enjoy most about these train-chase blogs is pictures.
So I’ll dispense with the preliminaries, and get right to it.
I’d like to think anyone reading these blogs knows by now -1) why I chase trains, and -2) why I like chasing trains at Allegheny Crossing, where the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad crossed Allegheny Mountain in 1854.
Mighty Pennsy is no more. Now it’s Norfolk Southern, a merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway in 1982.
NS purchased the old Pennsy line across PA from Conrail in 1999. Conrail was a government response to the bankruptcy of Penn-Central and many other eastern railroads.
Penn-Central was the merger of Pennsy and New York Central in 1968.
Conrail became successful, and eventually privatized.
I drove to Altoona on Thursday, February 5th. My brother had driven there the previous day. It takes him nine hours coming all the way from his home near Boston, MA.
It takes me five hours.
My brother chased trains himself on Thursday while I drove down.
But the railroad was dead.
Usually Thursdays see the most traffic, but over five hours he only saw one train.
My new iPhone6 is not paired to my car yet, so I didn’t have Bluetooth.
But it wouldn’t have made any difference, because when I called from our motel I got his voicemail.
I decided to try texting, and that worked. He was at Cassandra Railfan Overlook, and light was getting difficult. It was already 3:30.
So I headed for Cassandra, but he said he’d meet me at 24th St. overpass over Slope Interlocking in Altoona.
We took some pictures there, but they’re not worth anything, The sun had dropped too low.
There are two pictures worth flying my brother got earlier that day.


Toward South Fork PA. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


At Cassandra Railfan Overlook. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

He shot from an overpass just north (railroad east) of South Fork. He also shot at Cassandra.
Friday, February 6th, would be a better day. My weather-app said “partly cloudy,” which to me means “partly sunny.”
Light would be difficult until after 10 a.m., so we went to a restaurant for breakfast.
After that Tyrone, where the Pennsy turned east through a notch toward Harrisburg.
Tyrone is always a challenge. It has a beautiful old station, but I never can get it successfully into a photograph. It’s off-to-the-side, and the train way over here, or the train blocks the station, or I can get both with mountain and sky in the background, which looks stupid.
When we got to the station a Nittany & Bald Eagle Railroad local-freight was idling in the tiny yard, waiting for Norfolk Southern 11A to clear.
Nittany & Bald Eagle is the old Pennsy Bald Eagle branch, and Norfolk Southern has trackage-rights.
NS runs heavy unit coal trains up NBER to a power-plant in north-central PA.


Westbound charges through Tyrone. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


The Nittany & Bald Eagle local. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


11A enters Tyrone yard. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

But 11A isn’t a unit coal train. It’s mixed freight, and starts in Northumberland, PA. It used to work out of Reading (“REDD-ing;” not “REED-ing”), in which case it could run all NS.
Northumberland puts it on NBER.
Meanwhile 04T, the eastbound Amtrak Pennsylvanian, was nearing Tyrone where it would make a station-stop.
So that’s my lede picture. 04T is braking for its station-stop, while the NBER local idles behind.
Meanwhile 11A appeared and trundled into my picture at right.
A snag of the century; three trains in one picture.
04T made its station-stop and left, 11A disappeared toward Altoona, and the NBER local started north.
We decided to hang around and wait for 10A: it was on its way. 10A is the northbound counterpart of 11A. It too would use NBER, and would follow the local until it got off the NBER main to switch various NBER branches, which was when 10A could pass.


NS 10A comes into Tyrone. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

“I think we should chase 10A north on the Nittany & Bald Eagle,” my brother said.
“If we do, we get out of the range of my scanner,” I said. “I have NBER programmed in there somewhere, but I know not where.
I don’t know what frequency it is.
And even if I could get it, it’s not Allegheny Crossing with its 89-bazilyun radio transmissions. When Linda and I did that around-the-state rail excursion a few years ago, which included Nittany & Bald Eagle, all I heard was the train-engineer calling out signals.
NBER is only a shortline. 10A would have the railroad to itself. It ain’t Allegheny Crossing with its mind-bending train-frequency.”
We headed north out of Tyrone on Interstate-99, and got off at Route 350, the next exit.
It would bring us parallel to NBER next to the old 220 two-lane.
“Where’s the railroad?” my brother asked.
“We just crossed it,” I said.
We turned east onto a rural two-lane, and that too crossed NBER on an overpass.
At this point NBER is only single-track, but very well built, enough to support a heavy NS unit coal train with its 120-ton cars.
Headlights were visible in the distance, with locomotives assaulting the heavens.
It was a northbound train skedaddling out of Tyrone. Tyrone has many grade-crossings, and I think there is even street-running.
But north of Tyrone NBER is high-iron, good for 60 or more.
We stopped and waited, thinking it was 10A. But no, it was the NBER local. It was doing almost 50 as it passed underneath, and the engineer didn’t have to back off — he had his three units in Run-Eight.


Skedaddling out of Tyrone on the NBER main. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

None of the units were turbocharged. You could hear, and see, every piston-pulse.
Back to Tyrone. My friend Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) was monitoring his railroad-radio scanner at home and calling my cellphone. He said a slab-train was coming, but it was actually a gypsum-train. My brother got it, but I was too late.
Where to next? My brother wanted lunch, so we went up into Tyrone to Mighty Sheetz, but it was closed under construction.
Phil called and said an eastbound had just left Altoona. We tried McFarlands Curve, a really wonderful location, but the farm-track to it wasn’t plowed.
So we headed south to the road into Tipton, and stopped at a small sandwich-shop Phil used to take me to during train-chases.
But the train from Altoona was rocketing toward us.
We drove up to the Tipton grade-crossing just in time to see it speed past. A second train passed in the other direction.
“Altoona,” my brother said. “Rose;” the crew-change point, visible from an overpass.
We drove down to Altoona on the east side of the tracks, ending up in downtown Altoona far from Rose.
So we drove to Brickyard Crossing in Altoona.


Eastbound on Track 2 at Brickyard. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Two helper-sets (four units) push the heavy gypsum-train up The Hill. —RoadRailer is coming down. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Conditions were awful. Crunchy snow; icy on top, so you’d fall through and end up unable to move your feet = maintain balance.
We’re both semi-crippled. Me hobbling with an extremely arthritic left knee to be replaced, and my brother recovering from a broken leg.
Last summer we were chasing trains with my brother on crutches.
I fell a few times, and it’s difficult for this old geezer to get up.
It was so bad at Brickyard I couldn’t get out to the edge of an overlook to shoot approaching westbounds.
But I could aim railroad-west at approaching eastbounds, and westbounds going away. Usually this overlook doesn’t work; too backlit in morning light.
But it was afternoon.
We then went to where PA state Route 53 crosses the old Pennsy main north (railroad east) of Cresson (“KRESS-in”) on a bridge — what Faudi calls “high-bridge.”
My brother wanted to get there around 2 p.m.
Five tracks go under the bridge: 4, 3, 2, 1, and Main-8. Main-8 is barely visible, and is used to store heavy coal-trains to eventually climb to the summit.


Eastbound on Two. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


130 coal-gondolas get taken down the mountain. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

1 and 2 go higher than 3 and 4, because 1 and 2 go toward New Portage tunnel, which is higher than the original Pennsy tunnel, which 2 and 3 come out of — which become 3 and 4.
Pennsy got New Portage tunnel when the original state Public Works System failed. Pennsy had put it out of business.
Where to next? The trailer in Portage.
“The trailer” needs explaining. Pennsy built a bypass in 1898, which cut out difficult curves eastbound climbing Allegheny summit. It also bypassed Cassandra, and runs straight from Cassandra Railfan Overlook all the way to Portage.
Then it curves back into the original mainline.
Portage has a station, and right past it you can turn behind it. Behind the station is an old highway trailer parked next to the tracks.
Phil took me to it long ago, but I missed how good it was because I was looking the wrong way.
It only works for westbounds, which are perfectly lit as they curve off the bypass.


Off the bypass back to the old alignment. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


21E, the UPS train. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

We could have continued railroad-west after a shot or two, but they kept coming. My brother parked so we could see a train far away coming onto the bypass. And I left my tripod set up outside — a trailer-shot is my big telephoto lens.
We saw nine trains at this location, and I shot 24 pictures.
It’s too bad we couldn’t try the overpass near South Fork, but trains just kept coming, and the sun came out toward the end.
But light was getting difficult — it was late afternoon. My shadow was getting long enough to be in my picture.
Well, not as bad as last year, when it was both windy and bitter-cold.
But it was bitter-cold; we could only be outside about 15-20 minutes.

• “Linda” is my beloved wife of 44+ years. She died April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.