Monthly Train-Calendar Report for February 2017

NS 11A merges back onto the main in Tyrone. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—(“tie-RONE;” as in “own.”)
Norfolk Southern has trackage-rights on Nittany & Bald Eagle Railroad.
The February 2017 entry in my own calendar is Norfolk Southern train 11A merging back onto Norfolk Southern’s ex-Pennsy main in Tyrone, PA.
Nittany & Bald Eagle is Pennsy’s old Bald-Eagle branch, from Tyrone up the Bald Eagle valley toward Williamsport, which it may no longer access.
Nittany & Bald Eagle intersects the old Pennsy Buffalo line in Lock Haven. That line is now Norfolk Southern.
Nittany & Bald Eagle is built like a Norfolk Southern main so it can support heavy coal trains.
NS had rights so it could deliver coal to a power-plant near Williamsport.
Nittany & Bald Eagle is also used to get mixed freight from Norfolk Southern’s Northumberland yard down to the cross-state NS main. Norfolk Southern could use a more roundabout route of its own tracks. But compared to N&BE it would be busy.
I find it interesting 11A is using a CSX diesel as shared power.
CSX is competition, but railroads are using shared power willy-nilly. I’ve seen NS diesels out in southern CA. Foreign power often leads.
6719 is an EMD SD-60I, a “Whisper-cab” version of the SD60.
Only Conrail ordered the SD-60I, and those units were transferred to CSX and Norfolk Southern after Conrail’s breakup.
What irked us most was that mailbox, although it’s not noticeable dominated by a locomotive.
The mailbox is now gone.
It was Friday morning. Lots of action in Tyrone.
Amtrak has a station-stop at a tiny shelter adjacent.
Tyrone is where the main turns east toward Harrisburg.
Nittany & Bald Eagle locomotives were shifting cars in a small interchange yard.
They were assembling the day’s mixed freight north, only a few cars.
They couldn’t go up their line until 11A cleared.
All this finished, 10A appeared to follow the N&BE local up the line.
My brother and I photographed both the local and 10A. We also photographed Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian earlier.
The Pennsylvanian is the only passenger-train left on the ex-Pennsy main. It once carried a blizzard of passenger-trains.
The Pennsylvanian is both eastbound and westbound to-or-from Pittsburgh.
As we left 10A was still in Tyrone waiting for the N&BE local to clear off its main.




Nighttime at Macon Terminal in GA. (Photo by Will Martin.)

—Hooray-hooray!
Paging through my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar, it seems they finally left behind infatuation with the old Pennsy main.
Also infatuation with mainline action, somewhat.
My February 2017 entry is nighttime action at Macon Terminal in Brosnan Yard in Macon, GA.
Instead of hurtling lead-units, we see here a slug set preparing to shove a cut of cars onto the yard’s hump.
If a yard has a hump, cars are shoved up it, then coast downhill into classification tracks.
Slugs are not road units. Instead of having a diesel-engine, their traction-motors take power off a mother unit.
By so doing the slug-set puts down maximum tractive effort. It just can’t go fast.
The slug set pictured has two slugs and one mother unit.
The triple fans atop the hood of the mother tell me it may be a GP-40 or GP40-2.
EMD’s Dash-2s had more modern microprocessor switching.
Every time I viewed an NS calendar-picture on the old Pennsy main I felt I was viewing Pennsy operations by Norfolk Southern.
When my brother and I shoot train operations near Altoona, we are more-or-less photographing the old Pennsy.
Pennsy was remarkable. It made trade with the nation’s interior possible.
Half the success of the Industrial Revolution was Pennsy. Pennsy made moving mountains of material possible.
For years the Pennsylvania Railroad paid annual stock-dividends — it never failed once. It was called “the widow’s and orphan’s stock.”
Pennsy was once the largest railroad on the planet. It justifiably called itself “The Standard Railroad of the World.”
But cost of operating the east-coast megalopolis came calling, particularly taxation and commuter operations.
Along with the Interstate Highway System, and government subsidization of airlines. —Who built the airline terminals with their gigantic runways? It wasn’t the airlines.
Now governments are jumping through hoops to keep the economy rolling.
I’m a Pennsy-man; always have been.
Pennsy merged with arch-rival New York Central to avoid falling apart, and Penn-Central soon went bankrupt itself.
With the collapse of east coast railroading, there was dramatic fallout. Government stepped in to found Conrail out of Penn-Central and other east coast bankrupt railroads — there were many.
Conrail become successful and privatized. It was broken up and sold in 1999, part to CSX, and part to Norfolk Southern — a merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway in 1982.
Commuter districts were shed to government, and railroad rate-making deregulated. (It had been since 1887, and that became an albatross.)
Many branches were abandoned, or turned over to shortline operators, e.g. Pennsy’s old Bald-Eagle branch.
Norfolk Southern purchased what it did after a struggle.  CSX was gonna get everything.
CSX ended up with most of the ex-NYC lines, and Norfolk Southern got the old Pennsy line across PA. NS also got other coal-roads in PA, particularly Monongahela.
Conrail still exists as Conrail Shared Assets.
Service in north Jersey, etc, couldn’t be fairly divided, so remains as Conrail with both CSX and Norfolk Southern having trackage-rights.
There’s a lot more to Norfolk Southern than old Pennsy. NS serves the entire east coast, except south of Jacksonville, FL.
In Jacksonville it connects to Florida East Coast and has haulage rights.
It’s nice to see something other than ex-Pennsy.
Paging through the calendar, it seems the winners are always the same: Durfee, Bruce Kerr, Kyle Ori, Mark Shull, Tim Calvin (two entries), and next month is Sam Wheland.
You can figger those guys shoot the same area, near where they live.
Martin and two others bring new areas.
Not surprisingly the oldsters seem to enter this contest every year. Do any NS employees beside them portray the drama of their jobs?
At least the railroad is not discouraging trackside photography.




Previously road power, now switching. (Photo by Jim Buckley.)

—Pennsylvania Railroad never did large switchers.
A C-1 0-8-0 was developed, but not built in quantity.
There were B-6 0-6-0s and A-5 0-4-0s, but nothing 0-8-0.
What Pennsy did was downgrade its 2-8-0 road power into switching.
The February 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsy H-10 Consolidation used as a switcher in Chicago.
It’s taking on coal and water.

Builder’s photo of a B-1 0-8-0.

A PRR B-6 (0-6-0).

A PRR A-5 (0-4-0).

Reading’s 0-4-0 switcher.

I saw many B-6s, and probably some A-5s. A-5s were used on the Philadelphia waterfront to switch the many tight pier-sidings. Diesel-switchers were better at this.
That was Delaware Ave., hard by the river. I’ve driven it, dodging trains on street-trackage in bumpy cobblestone streets.
The yards in Camden (NJ) had B-6 switchers. Sometimes B-6s got assigned to local peddler freights, the kind of railroading ya never see any more — small shipments went to trucking.
I can still visualize a B-6 trundling over Adm. Wilson Boulevard in Camden. Probably the old Camden & Amboy main.
Reading (“redd-ing;” not “reed-ing”) also had tiny 0-4-0 switchers to ply the Philadelphia waterfront.
I had to help this photograph.
Photoshop applied.
Old color photographs tend to fade bluish.
The calendar guys didn’t do much, if anything.
I had to reduce the RGB blue channel, plus boost red and green.
Steam-locomotives, usually being black, render dark enough to lose definition of running-gear, etc.
I can offset that with general shadow lightening, although I have been told not to.
The artist, me, weighs in. Steamers look better lightened. What the eye sees in reality isn’t what the camera sees, and I want that running-gear to define.
I get that with my own pictures. Norfolk Southern locomotives are black with black running-gear.
I wanna see that running-gear, so I lighten shadows.
My Boston brother concurs. I lighten one of his pictures, and “Whoa! Looks much better. Where’d ya learn that trick?”




The General enters Chicago. (Photo by Otto Perry©.)

—It’s 1939.
The February 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) #6349 (or 8349; whatever) pulling train #49, Pennsy’s westbound General, from New York City into Chicago.
Famous railfan photographer Otto Perry is recording the scene for posterity.
I note trackworkers adjacent to the train.
They’re probably finessing that double turnout. A train could pass through it four ways.
Such switches are still in use, but now probably maintained by machines.
Although frog-points hafta be repaired; which usually involves welding, which can be done individually.
I don’t see a watchman; they may not have been required back then.
Often on railroad-radio I hear “make some noise” directed to a train passing a work-site = blow your horn.
You need to be really careful crossing Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. This was true in the ‘60s when the Corridor was Pennsy. Electrified trains make little noise until they’re right on top of you.
The K-4 is still the slatted pilot, and lacks the front-end “beauty-treatment;” swapping headlight and generator positions to permit easier access to the generator.
This is when K-4s looked great. The beauty-treatment made ‘em look goofy.
The name plaque is under the keystone number-plate.
In 1939 railroading was still the primary means of long-distance travel. The airlines were just getting started.
And of course there was no Interstate Highway System.
Paved roads across America’s heartland, particularly out west and in deserts, were the exception.
To get from New York City to Chicago meant overnighting by train.
This train probably had sleeping-cars, probably Pullman Company.
Pullman wasn’t affiliated with Pennsy. It was independent, and ran sleeping-cars on railroads all over the country.
With any luck your employer reserved a sleeping-car accommodation. Better that than just a coach seat.
Pullman even went as far as individual compartments. At first sleeping-cars were just coach-seats that folded into upper and lower berths, separated by curtains.
Good luck sleeping! Every switch or grade-crossing could toss you outta bed.
A trip from New York to Chicago required meals. Usually dining-cars were supplied by the railroad.
Try to not choke your coffee into your table-mate. Track could be rough.
Now we find ourselves crammed into tiny airplane seats, the seat ahead in your face.
Or dreadfully long hours on-the-road. “Next rest-facility, 362 miles.”
In my opinion my 2017 Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is not as good as their previous calendars.
But black-and-white is what photography was back during steam. Color photography was just getting started as steam-usage ended.
So black-and-white usually skonked color for drama.
Some of the pictures in my All-Pennsy Color Calendar are plain.
Now color photography is much better. It wasn’t for Otto Perry.
And of course mighty Pennsy, the Standard Railroad of the World, once the world’s largest railroad, is long-gone.