April in Altoony

04T (the eastbound Amtrak Pennsylvanian) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

One would think April in central PA would be fairly pleasant.
It was cold and damp with a raw wind.
Not cold enough for a down jacket, but enough to require long-underwear, double hoody sweat-shirts, and even gloves.
My brother from Boston joined me. He had driven there Wednesday, April 22nd. He would chase trains himself all day Thursday, April 23rd while I was driving down. We would both return home Saturday, April 25th after chasing trains all day Friday, April 24th.
Altoony, PA is where the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed Allegheny Ridge, once a barrier to commerce across PA.
Altoona is also the location of Horseshoe Curve, a trick by Pennsy to climb Allegheny Mountain without steep grades.
The railroad loops around a valley.
Pennsy is no more. The railroad is owned and operated by Norfolk Southern, who took over the Pennsy main across PA when Conrail broke up and sold in 1999.
The railroad is quite busy. Pennsy merged midwestern railroads that fed its main at Pittsburgh, and also outlets east of Harrisburg (its eastern terminus) to the east-coast megalopolis.
It became a conduit of heavy railroad traffic, also the largest railroad in the world. But it began falling apart in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
It was saddled with costly commuter-districts, and competition from airlines and trucking. The government subsidized trucking with the Eisenhower Interstate System.
Pennsy had to merge in 1968 with arch-rival New York Central system, the other major conduit of commerce from our nation’s interior.
That was Penn-Central, which went bankrupt two years later, partly because merger with New York, New Haven & Hartford was required.
Conrail was formed by the government to rationalize the east-coast railroad mess. Many other east-coast railroads were also going bankrupt.
Conrail became successful and privatized.
Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999. Most of the ex-NYC lines — like across New York state — went to CSX Transportation. Most of the ex-Pennsy lines went to Norfolk Southern.
Norfolk Southern is a merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway in 1982.
Norfolk & Western was a rich coal-carrier; it served the Pocahontas Coal Region in VA and WV.
Pennsy was also a coal-carrier; a lot was mined in PA.
Rather then detail every move of our train-chase, I’ll just run all the pictures.

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On the 23rd:


25Z leaves Altoona passing CP Works. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


67Z on the Controlled-Siding at McFarlands Curve. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


67Z pulls into Rose for a crew-change. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


10N heads east at Rose. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


10N, also on the Controlled Siding, goes through the signal-bridge at McFarlands Curve. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Westbound mixed approaches the Tipton road-crossing. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


538 comes down The Hill, passing 11V going up (pushers on the back). (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


A descending empty slab-train passes closed Alto Tower. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

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On the 24th:


Oil-empties with Canadian Pacific shared power climb toward Slope Interlocking. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


25Z climbs toward Horseshoe Curve. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


64Z takes loaded crude-oil east. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Crude-oil (64Z) continues toward the summit. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


22W reaches the summit on Track One into Gallitzin. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


The MACs (V20 engine) on 591. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


21E (the UPS train) roars toward the Tipton grade-crossing. —This thing was doing about 70! (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


21J west at Cassandra Railfan Overlook. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


RoadRailer (262). (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


An eastbound stacker approaches the overpass in Summerhill. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Westbound stacker passes eastbound coal at Cassandra Railfan Overlook. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


07T, the westbound Amtrak Pennsylvanian. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


A dimensional-train (054) goes through the Portage signals on Track Two. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

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We shot at least 20 trains at 22 different locations. And that was just Friday.
And unlike with my railfan friend from Altoona, Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee,” as in “wow”), who knows what to look for next, our paradigm was if we saw a train, where could we beat it to next?
Which means some of our pictures are of the same train.
We had along our scanners. My brother got one, and he finally got it working. Which means I didn’t take along mine.
The train-engineers have to call out the signal aspects over Norfolk Southern’s radio-frequency. So if we hear “25Z, west on three at 254; clear,” we know a train is on Track Three at milepost 254. And since I know where 254 is, I know if it’s coming where we are.
The railroad also has trackside defect-detectors that transmit on the railroad radio. If I hear “Norfolk Southern, milepost 253.1, Track One, no defects,” I know a train has passed the defect-detector at Carney’s Crossing, and if we’ll see it where we are. Or if we should go somewhere else.
Defect-detectors sense hot wheels, dragging equipment, etc, what the guys in the caboose used to watch for. Cabooses are no longer used.
Track One is always eastbound, Track Three is westbound, and Track Two can be either way, so the engineer has to say “east” or “west” to know which way his train is going.
Helper-sets also trigger defect-detectors, so the “train” may just be a helper-set.
The helper-set engineers give the locomotive-number at signal-aspects, and if’s 6300 (e.g. #6316) it’s a helper.
Helper-sets get moved to and fro over the railroad to help trains up and down Allegheny Mountain. They are in “sets” of two SD40-Es.
The SD40-Es are EMD SD-50s Norfolk Southern has downgraded and rebuilt for helper service. Downrated from 3,500 horsepower to 3,000 horsepower. The SD-50s were a bit stretched, enough to be unreliable.
So a train over Allegheny Mountain might need helpers. A really heavy train, like a long unit coal-drag, might get one helper-set up front, and two more helper-sets in back. That’s six additional locomotives.
My brother also had his Smartphone tuned to the Station-Inn radio-feed. Station-inn is a bed-and-breakfast for railfans. It streams a local railroad scanner-feed over the Internet.
“Fifty miles of railroad,” my brother bragged. With his scanner he could monitor the east slope of Allegheny Mountain, if that was where we were. And with his Smartphone he was monitoring the west slope.
I can monitor the Station-Inn radio-feed with my iPhone6, but didn’t as long as he had his Smartphone doing it.
Our Smartphone transmissions are a bit delayed. We might get a scanner transmission on the west slope, and perhaps 10-30 seconds later we’d get it on our Smartphones. And for some reason my brother’s Smartphone is a little behind mine.
Anything over our Smartphones has to get -a) streamed to the Internet, and -b) sent out over the cellular network.
I always get a kick out of using my cellphone to locate my brother. Usually he’s within shouting-distance, yet I’ve used the cellphone network to ring him up. A cellphone call might use hundreds of miles shoveling this-way-and-that all to ring up a target within shouting distance.
Back-and-forth we zoomed, all over creation. “Can we beat it?” We tried.
Various small unwanted diversions occurred. We ran into a detour on a back road, intent on getting over to a nearby expressway.
“Try this!” I said, noticing a two-lane road aimed toward the expressway.
The two-lane quickly became a side-street as its double yellow line disappeared. We turned up into a residential neighborhood. Following the street we finally ended up on the other side of the barricade where we started, so we had to retrace our entire loop to get back where we began.
We passed through a town that had a brand-new aluminum footbridge over the tracks.
It has long ramps for wheelchair access.
“I never been to no footbridge,” my brother crowed, since we didn’t actually pass it.
“Have too,” I said. “We went there with our sister Betty.”
“I never been to that footbridge!” my brother bellowed.
“It’s not worth it; it’s covered with chain-link,” I said.
Later we passed the footbridge.
“I don’t see no chainlink,” my brother said.
“It’s covered with chainlink, I tell ya!”
Later we went to the footbridge.
“I been here before,” my brother said.
“Ya don’t say,” I said.
“And it’s covered with chainlink,”
“Tried to tell ya!” I said. “But no, you gotta see for yourself and thereby waste 10 minutes of my precious time when I coulda chased trains.”
We were at Cassandra Railfan Overlook (“kuh-SANN-druh’” as in “Anne”) with a bunch of other railfans shooting video and pictures. They didn’t have a scanner.
They packed up to leave.
“Don’t leave yet,” my brother said. “Amtrak is coming.”
“How long?” someone asked.
“About two minutes. It just triggered the detector at Carney’s Crossing.”
Bam! They got it. I bet they have a scanner next time.
“You can tell we’re brothers,” I said to someone. “Snide remarks and potshots would never work in normal conversation.”
Yet I feel like my brother did better than me, at least this time. Last time I was luckier than him, although one of my shots I planned to use as a calendar-picture is fuzzy. So I’ll use one of his instead.
That was last February, when snow was on the ground. January, February, and December have to be snow pictures.
It’s MY calendar, but if I feel he got a better shot, I use his.

• “CP Works” is a control-point in Altoona, where the Pennsylvania Railroad had its “Altoona Works.”
• A “Controlled-Siding” is a siding that’s signaled.
• A “slab-train” is all gondola-cars for shipping heavy steel slabs to a rolling-mill.
• “guh-LIT-zin.”
• “MAC” equals modified-cab, AC traction-motors. Conrail got these to reduce locomotive usage on the line from Harrisburg to Altoona, but they worked better dragging coal off coal-branches. So now they are based in Cresson (“KRESS-in”), near Altoona. Same shop as the helpers.
• “The UPS train” is a very high-priority train of UPS trailers, etc, that must be delivered to Chicago on time, lest the railroad get penalized.
• “Cassandra Railfan Overlook” (actually it’s “Cassandra Railroad Overlook”), is an old highway-bridge over where the railroad began it’s 1898 bypass, that took out many of the curves when the railroad actually went through Cassandra. The bridge remains, no longer used as a highway-bridge, so railfans congregate on it to watch the action.
• “RoadRailer” is a train of special highway trailers, that ride on rail-bogies, road-wheels and all. It will be discontinued, since the rail bogies are at the end of their service life, plus a RoadRailer can’t be switched or backed up.
• A RoadRailer trailer on a rail-bogie:

• A “dimensional-train “ is too high and/or wide for normal railroad-usage. 054 had a truckless export locomotive on a flatcar up front, plus 100 feet steel I-beams loaded on 80-foot flatcars, with idler-cars at each end.