Monthly Train-Calendar Report for June 2017

“Trash is back.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The caption is “Trash is back,” which I should explain.
The June 2017 entry in my own calendar is a westbound trainload of trash on Track Three near South Fork, PA.
South Fork is where the Johnstown Flood began.
All the purple containers contain trash; often it stinks.
For some time Norfolk Southern held the contract to move east-coast trash out west.
Then it lost the contract, probably to CSX. I’ve seen trash-trains on CSX too.
But last September I went to Allegheny Crossing myself. I set up my tripod on an overpass near what my brother-and-I call “the sewer-plant” (visible in back), and here came a trash-train.
Norfolk Southern apparently got the contract back.
A single helper-set of two SD40Es is leading.
Often the trash-train doesn’t get helpers; it’s fairly light.
One of the train’s lead units may not be loading. I hear that on railroad radio occasionally.




Something my brother and I might do. (Photo by Michael Breen.)

—The June 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar looks like something my brother and I might take.
It’s an empty coal-train from a power-plant in NC, headed back to western PA, probably giant Bailey Mine, for reloading.
Photographer Breen successfully pulled off a difficult lighting challenge.
Perhaps his location is the only place to photograph this trestle, and early morning light the only time it works.
As the sun continues across the sky, it would strongly backlight.
Even at dawn the train is backlit. It’s traveling through scenic Shenandoah Valley.
At least the front of the locomotive is lit.
Verdant countryside, no buildings, although one is barely visible at left.
Looking at this, early railroad builders would ask “where’s the traffic?”
That powerplant burns what is called “steam coal.”
Bailey Mine is huge; underground mining of the Pittsburgh No. 8 seam.
Although Enlow Fork and Harvey mines are affiliated.
Norfolk Southern serves Bailey with its old Monongahela line. The complex can load 10 unit coal-trains per day. The cars get dumped at the powerplants — they’re not hoppers.
Giant rotators grab the cars, and turn them upside-down. I’ve included a YouTube video of this.
The cars have rotating couplers.
Boom-zoom! Load ‘em up; dump the contents. Vast quantities of coal get burned to satisfy our nation’s need for electricity.
Except burning coal is dirty, and now natural-gas is cheaper.
Coal-burning powerplants require scrubbers to clean up emissions. And coal-burning creates gobs of carbon dioxide. Natural-gas probably does too.
Our thirst for energy may eventually make living on this planet impossible.
So too the freedom of auto-travel.
Meantime, don’t take away my air-conditioning, or my car.
When the crunch comes, engage engineers and Microsoft’s Cloud to solve all our problems.




Beautiful Bel-Del. (Photo by Robert Malinoski.)

—The June 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a southbound freight on Pennsy’s bucolic Belvidere-Delaware branch.
Bel-Del has a long history, chartered in 1836 as the Belvidere Delaware Railroad, but not actually built until 1851.
PRR began operating it as the Belvidere Division of the United Railroads of New Jersey Grand Division in 1871, and purchased the line soon afterwards.
Bel-Del was originally intended to connect to a proposed line west to the Susquehanna River through PA.
That line wasn’t built, but the Bel-Del funneled coal from PA’s anthracite region (northeast PA) to New York City, becoming fairly successful.
Bel-Del also intended to ship freight between Philadelphia and New York City.
But that was roundabout compared to Camden & Amboy, and Pennsy later having its own railroad Philadelphia to New York City.
(Camden & Amboy, one of our nation’s first common-carrier railroads, was entirely within NJ, requiring ferry-crossings both at Philadelphia and New York. —Pennsy crossed the Delaware River at Trenton.)
Bel-Del is gone, lost to trucking on gumint highways, and also lack of lineside traffic generators.
All it really did was move anthracite coal from northeast PA toward New York City — and that declined with the decline of anthracite heating.
Visible is the Delaware River at left, and the Delaware & Raritan Canal right next to the railroad.
The canal was also proposed to get anthracite from northeast PA toward New York City, and was suggested much earlier than the ascendency of railroading.
It was also suggested to shorten shipping from Philadelphia to New York City, to avoid shipping around southern NJ.
But the canal wasn’t chartered until the same day as the Camden & Amboy Railroad, and wasn’t completed until 1834 — railroading was already skonking it.
The Bel-Del ran north out of Trenton up to Belvidere, and eventually farther north where it connected to Delaware, Lackawanna and Western at Delaware Water Gap. Anthracite from DL&W could be shipped on Bel-Del.
Bel-Del was very scenic, more scenic than successful. It’s just one of many scenic railroads lost. What’s left are the main stems that became profitable.
So even now, ancient as they are, mainly that they’re privately owned, railroading flattens trucking. Truck companies are privately owned too, but not the highways.
A single train may have as many as 250+ freight-containers. That’s 250 trucks, maybe less if double-bottom.
Each truck has a driver, yet that 250-container train gets by with only two-or-three crewmen, sometimes just one. No wonder the Teamsters hate railroading.
And there is no way under Heaven trucking can move as much bulk cargo, e.g. grain or coal, as railroading.
No way can a single highway-truck hold 120 tons of coal. Single coal-cars are now 120 tons, and a single train may have more than 100 cars.
The locomotives pulling this train are also venerable. They’re Alco RS-11s.
Alco is American Locomotive Company dieselized. American Locomotive, of Schenectady, NY, a merger in 1901 of Schenectady Locomotive Engine Manufactory with seven smaller locomotive manufacturers, supplied many of the steam-locomotives used on railroads.
Alco made the transition to diesel locomotives, and was fairly successful.
But it went out of manufacturing locomotives when General-Electric, its electrical supplier, brought out its own locomotives.
Diesel-electric locomotives use electric traction-motors. The diesel-engine turns a generator.




Who’da thunk. (Photo by William F. Herrmann©.)

—Who woulda thunk these two rivals would merge and become the largest corporate bankruptcy at that time?
The June 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is Pennsy and New York Central passenger trains side-by-side in Buffalo Terminal.
The Pennsy train is the Baltimore Day Express, Pennsy’s only passenger-train leaving Buffalo during daylight hours during the ‘60s.
It’s pulling out.
Both engines have simplified paint-schemes, Pennsy no longer cat-whiskers, and Central no longer lightning-stripes.

Cat-Whisker E7 at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

Lightning-Stripe NYC E-unit.

By now both railroads were in trouble, and could no longer afford the original schemes.
Chessie went after Central, and Pennsy went after Norfolk & Western. Neither happened. The gumint refused.
Penn-Central occurred because both railroads needed merger.
It’s interesting to note the recent shakeout in northeast railroading since Conrail was broken up and sold.
Conrail, which included both mains, was the gumint solution to the Penn-Central debacle. Conrail became profitable and privatized.
Norfolk Southern is N&W/PRR consummated, and CSX — previously Chessie — now owns the old Central main across NY.
4309 is an E7A, 2,000 horsepower. The Central unit is an E8A, 2,250 horsepower, a later model of EMD’s E-unit.
Both contain two V12 diesel prime-movers, and ride on six-axle trucks.
But only four axles were powered. The center axles were unpowered.