Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar

Again, looks like something my brother and I might do. (Photo by Lance Myers.)

—The March 2018 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar looks like something my brother and I might take.
Except it’s well east of Altoona along Pennsy’s old Middle Division. It’s an eastbound Norfolk Southern stacker crossing Juniata River on another of Pennsy’s gigantic monuments, a large stone viaduct only Pennsy could afford. The viaduct is between Mt. Union and Kistler, PA, half-way to Altoona from Harrisburg.
My brother and I have never been that far east.
Norfolk Southern’s Penn-Central heritage unit, #1073, an EMD SD70ACe, leads the train. Norfolk Southern has 20 heritage units, modern locomotives painted the schemes of predecessor railroads.

Last year’s April Entry. (Photo by Lance Myers.)

This is the same viaduct Myers ran last year as the April picture in the contest calendar. Except that was a Herzog ballast train. The viaduct was built in 1906 when Pennsy was a cash-cow.
Penn-Central was a 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with New York Central. New York, New Haven & Hartford (NY,NH&H = “New Haven”) was included by gumint fiat. It was not a marriage made-in-Heaven. Pennsy and Central were rivals. Penn-Central went bankrupt in two years, but lasted six more. The company tanked in 1976; but the actual railroad remains.
All three lines were restrained by heavy regulation and taxation, plus all had costly commuter operations. They also were hampered by what they did. Break-bulk freight operations, endemic to northeast railroading, were lost to highway competition. Western railroads shipped longer distances, plus they weren’t burdened by commuter operations.
Railroad shipping was so necessary to the northeast the gumint stepped in. Conrail was founded in 1976 with gumint funding. Amtrak took over nationwide passenger-train operation in 1971. Commuter operations were farmed out to local gumint agencies. Many branch-lines were abandoned or sold to become shortlines.
Conrail was freight railroading. Pennsy’s Middle Division became part of a main shipping corridor across PA. Its Washington DC-to-New York City electrified line became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. The “Corridor” even became Amtrak. Conrail used an old Reading main, etc, to access the New York City area. Not New York City in actuality, but more north Jersey across the Hudson.
Conrail became successful enough to privatize. Too bad Penn-Central couldn’t be what Conrail became later. That PC heritage unit might be just another Penn-Central locomotive.
Conrail became so successful it attracted CSX Transportation. CSX was Chesapeake & Ohio, Baltimore & Ohio, plus Seaboard and Atlantic Coast Line to the south. If CSX were to merge the old New York Central main across NY, it would promulgate the C&O/NYC merger Chesapeake & Ohio sought years ago.
Norfolk Southern, a 1982 merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway, became interested in the old Pennsy main. Also the large locomotive shops in Juniata, PA.
CSX was gonna get that too, but Norfolk Southern bid the old Pennsy. It also bid the old Erie to Buffalo across lower NY. From Hornell west toward Chicago the original Erie main was sold to a shortline or partly abandoned.
Allowing Norfolk Southern to merge the old Pennsy main brought about the merger proposed earlier by Pennsy: Norfolk & Western and Pennsy.
The breakup and sale of Conrail restored rail competition in the northeast, which previously was New York Central and Pennsy.
So now Pennsy’s old Middle Division is part of Norfolk Southern’s “premier corridor” from Chicago to New York City. CSX does the same, but across NY instead of PA.
That “premier corridor” is extremely busy, both ways too. This viaduct would be just like what my brother-and-I see near Altoona: wait 15-20 minutes, and a train blasts past.
I was crossing the old Central up near Rochester the other day, and coming west was an empty CSX crude-oil unit-train of all tankcars. Just like what my brother-and-I see in Altoony.
A lot of what we see are doublestacks like pictured, 200+ individual intermodal containers loaded with consumer-goods double-stacked in well-cars. Stuff from the Pacific Rim, but also unloaded on the east coast now that the Panama-Canal was widened.
Many containers are “domestic,” 53 feet instead transoceanic at 40 feet. If the containers are “J.B. Hunt,” it’s probably product for WalMart.
I wonder what train this is? 20T or 26T perhaps. My brother-and-I usually see both.