Railfan overload

Them weeds don’t stand a chance. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

“How many times ya gonna write down that train-number?” I asked my brother as we chased trains around Altoona (PA).
“Ya already wrote it twice,” I said.
My brother looked at his log and sheepishly put away his pen.
At which point his coworkers reading this blog start razzing him.
“Boy, he really skewered you,” they will say. “Read you like a book.”
Unlike me — I ain’t that interested — my brother keeps track of every train we photographed. We’ll photograph a train, and at some point, like before or after, the engineer identified the train as he called out a signal on railroad-radio.
E.g. “590 on One, 238, CLEAR!” 590 is the train-number (even-numbers are eastbound), “One” is Track One (eastbound over the mountain), 238 is the milepost, also the signal location, and the signal aspect is “clear.”
We’re monitoring that on our railroad-radio scanners.
His coworkers are making a mistake. I prefer a supremely confident managerial type helping me chase trains.
I’m 73 = not young. I can’t charge up-and-down the railroad like him — he’s 60.
I also can’t make decisions on-the-fly.
Sometimes I hafta hold out for a place I wanna photograph. Retired bus-driver = ornery as Hell. “Siddown and shaddup! As long as I’m drivin’ the bus, I’m captain of the ship!”
Anyway, we have a good time. “Here we go again.” (And of course it works both ways.)

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Wednesday, August 30th
(My brother alone.)


#1070, an EMD SD70ACe, Norfolk Southern’s Wabash Heritage-Unit, ducks under the old Pennsy signal-bridge at Summerhill. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Helpers on 16N push uphill past Carneys Crossing. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Helpers on 39Q push past venerable Alto Tower, now closed. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Westbound 11J (all auto-racks) approaches 17th St. overpass in Altoona. At right is 16N. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

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Thursday, August 31st
(My brother alone, before I arrived.)


Westbound 51M, a grain-train, exits MO interlocking. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


SD-60E #6969, a Norfolk Southern rebuild with Crescent-Cab, approaches Cassandra Railroad Overlook. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Eastbound M4G passes through Altoona, after going into emergency due to its FRED pulling off. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


11J (again) on Track Two passes Altoona’s Amtrak station; the stacker on Track One is 26T. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

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Thursday, August 31st
(Both of us [I arrived].)


Norfolk Southern #1069, an EMD SD70ACe, their Virginian Heritage-Unit, leads 20T past Altoona’s Amtrak station. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


60N, a loaded westbound slab-train, passes Altoona’s Amtrak station. The train is all gondolas loaded with heavy steel slabs being transferred to a rolling-mill. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Two SD40-E helpers are on the back of 38Q after descending The Hill. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

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Friday, September 1st
(Both of us.)

-First stop: Plummers Crossing railroad east of Tyrone (PA).


Westbound stacker 25Z blasts Plummers. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Trash-train 62Z heads east at Plummers. The purple containers are for trash. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

-Second stop: Railroad-west of Tyrone.


38Q, a mixed, bounds through the curve toward Tyrone. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


The engines of 39Q depart westbound on One from Tyrone. (Track One is normally eastbound, but becomes westbound in the morning so Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian can use Track Two to load. Two is right next to station-platforms.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

-Third stop: Gray Interlocking.


22W approaches Gray-Interlocking toward Tyrone. Gray is where the long signal-controlled siding toward Altoona begins = Track Three. Slowly the vestiges of mighty Pennsy disappear. That old signal-bridge is DOOMED. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


21J approaches Gray after leaving Tyrone. It’s passing 22W on Track Two. The third unit is the Norfolk & Western Heritage-Unit. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

-Fourth stop: The Route-53 overpass railroad-east of Cresson.


21J approaches the Route 53 overpass. The third unit, #8103, a General-Electric ES44AC, is the Norfolk & Western Heritage-Unit. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


21J continues west of the Route 53 overpass on Track Four. Tracks Three and Four are on the original Pennsy alignment. Tracks Two and One are on the New Portage Railroad alignment, which Pennsy got for peanuts when the state gave up. One and Two aim at New Portage Tunnel, and come together at AR. The fifth track is Main-Eight, storage. Often eastbounds get Track Two. (“Never before have I seen a mainline with five tracks!” my brother exclaims.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

-Fifth stop: Toward MO-Interlocking.
(“MO” are old telegraph call-letters for a tower once there, as are “AR” and “MG.” MO-tower guarded an interlocking near the summit.
An old Pennsy branch to Clearfield switched off at MO. That branch is now operated by Corman. A large ethanol plant is in Clearfield, so NS delivers unit covered-hopper trains of corn for Corman to deliver.


Doublestack 23Z exits MO interlocking. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


64E (unit crude-oil) heads past Cresson toward MO. #6317 is one of two SD40-E leading helper-units. (Loaded crude gets helpers for The Hill.) (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

-Sixth stop: Signal 254.3 railroad-west of Lilly in the town of Plane Bank declared by a know-it-all, all-knowing, knower-of-all-things (not my brother) to be “Plane Blank.” You get to it through Lilly, but it’s not actually in Lilly.
(Our light was going away.)


294 heads toward Lilly after ducking under the old Pennsy signals at 254.3. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)


Only the rear SD40-E helper-set on the back of eastbound 76N. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

-Our final stop was to turn toward the overpass in Lilly, but our light was about gone. I’ve shot there before, and it never works.
Same results. Nothing worth flying.

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Going home Saturday, September 2nd, I decided to try two other locations.

—Built 1888-1890, later expanded 1924-25, mighty Pennsy built giant shop facilities in Juniata just north of Altoona.
Juniata Shops still exist, and are a main reason Norfolk Southern wanted the original Pennsy line across PA when Conrail broke up and sold in 1999.
All one has to do is look. Hundreds of Union Pacific castoffs await rebuilding in Juniata Shops. Norfolk Southern could rebuild and overhaul its own power, plus castoffs from other railroads for its own use.
All the Heritage-Units were painted at Juniata. Experimentals are built there. Upgrades are made to older power. It’s a gigantic facility in central PA, area that would otherwise be rural outback.
A monument to Pennsy, who made so much of Altoona. Overhaul and manufacture of steam-locomotives in Altoona proper, testing, then Juniata Shops.
I’ve seen those shops in photographs: the north face with its many tracks leading to a turntable.
I checked my Google satellite-views: Sixth Street south of Eighth Street bridge over the Rose Yard crew-change point.
We decided to check it out; YOW-ZUH! Right next to the turntable, and no chainlink. Fencing of vertical rods about five-six inches apart. I could poke my camera between the rods.
It was night, so we decided to shoot it the next morning. But in the frenzy of charging about, we forgot the Shops.


Juniata Shops. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


—The other location was tiny Fostoria, railroad-east of Altoona. It’s little more than a place to live, except the railroad goes smack through it.
The main road crosses the tracks at-grade, and next to the grade-crossing is a large signal-bridge for the three remaining tracks — the railroad right-of-way has room for four.
Tracks One and Two are at left, and rightmost is the signal-controlled siding, still signed as Track One per Pennsy, but for NS it’s Track Three. NS One and Two are signed as Two and Three with Pennsy’s numbering.
Since all tracks are signaled both ways, it has six signals, and Pennsy’s old targets are used.
Over-and-over I’ve shot that signal-bridge, but it never worked. I decided to try wide-angle right below the signal-bridge to put those signals up in the sky.
I tried that a few weeks ago, but Fostoria is morning light.
Fostoria was our first stop Friday morning (9/1), but a crew was there rebuilding the grade-crossing. I couldn’t shoot.
They finished that afternoon — we heard it on our railroad-radio scanners. Tracks had to be closed so the guys could work.
So I thought I’d try Fostoria Saturday morning (9/2) on my way home.


The train-number is 591. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

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People ask why I keep coming here. TRAINS MAN! Wait 15-25 minutes and one shows. Mind-bending frequency.
Anyplace else, and I’ve visited other railfan pilgrimage spots, there can also be incredible frequency — Cajon Pass out of LA is comparable = here comes another!
The old Pennsylvania Railroad was a major conduit of trade between the midwest (and west) and the east-coast megalopolis = the northeast.
The other major conduit was New York Central across NY state. The famed Water-Level Route, since it paralleled the Erie Canal — sometimes right next to it. (CSX now has it.)
Pennsy didn’t have a canal to parallel; what it had instead was Allegheny Mountain across the state, which couldn’t be canaled. In the early 1800s Allegheny Mountain was a barrier to trade with the nation’s interior.
Pennsy had to surmount Allegheny Mountain to get to the midwest. The old Pennsy was therefore a mountain railroad.
Norfolk Southern, a successor to Pennsy, is still a mountain railroad. The line across Allegheny Mountain is the same route John Edgar Thomson laid out in the 1840s.
Helper locomotives are still needed to conquer the mountain, and anything climbing is throttle-to-the-roof = WIDE-OPEN!
Descending is maximum braking to stifle runaways; and helper locomotives stay on so they can add dynamic braking.
As a railfan, it’s thrilling. My brother has visited other railfan sites, yet none are as exciting. I’ve visited some myself = ho-hum also.
They have heavy train-frequency, but no throttle-to-the-roof. Before our most recent chase, my brother visited a railfan site in OH. But it wasn’t as thrilling as Norfolk Southern’s old Pennsy line across Allegheny Mountain.

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Reflections on M4G.

Sometime during our chase my brother asked if I ever heard of “04G?”
“No,” I said. “Sure it wasn’t ‘M4G?’ ‘M’ would be a second section of 14G.”
“It was ‘04G’,” my brother said emphatically.
A few minutes later we heard “M4G” call a signal.
“That’s it!” my brother said. “It’s M4G!”
“Uhm, a few minutes ago you loudly declared it was ‘04G’,” I noted.
I can hear the razzing all the way from Boston — to which I’ll add the following:
“Negatory, dudes. He’s my brother. We have a jolly-good time.”
“Tried to tell ya! Too many cars for 14G, so M4G runs ahead as a second section.”
Beyond that M4G had problems.
Its FRED (Flashing-Rear-End-Device) that monitors train-line air pressure at the rear of the train, fell free, bouncing along behind the train.
It caught in the loop-track switch at AR, and pulled out, dumping the train into “emergency” (full-stop braking).
Now the railroad was blocked atop The Hill until that FRED could be put back in place, air-line for train-brakes reassembled.
That took a while.

• Norfolk Southern has 20 recent locomotives painted the schemes of predecessor railroads = the Heritage-Units. “Wabash,” “Virginian,” and “Norfolk & Western” are all predecessors — I’ve seen many others. They’re all regular road locomotives.
• “Alto” Tower, now closed, was the last operating tower on the mainline from Pittsburgh. The railroad is now dispatched from Pittsburgh. “Alto” was closed June 16, 2012.
• A “Crescent-cab,” made by Curry Rail of Curryville, PA, for Norfolk Southern, is a new cab for older locomotives. The “Crescent-cab” is not made by standard locomotive manufacturers.
• #6969 is also known as “the love-engine.” (This reiterates “the barcode engine,” #1111.)
• An “interlocking” is where railroads cross at grade, and/or crossovers or switches are at play. Everything is “interlocked” so signals display “stop” to avoid conflict — and so routing won’t conflict.
• Atop The Hill (Allegheny Mountain) the railroad had a “loop-track” to circle helper locomotives back down the mountain. It’s not used much any more, since helpers often stay on; helping hold back the descending train with dynamic-braking.