My calendar for February 2019

“To the sand-plant.”(Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The February 2019 entry of MY calendar is Norfolk Southern train C42 eastbound past the small yard in Tyrone PA.
It was bitter cold, about five degrees, and I had just snagged Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian east of Tyrone station after an incredible chase. It was my January 2019 entry.
After photographing the Pennsylvanian I motored to Tyrone station, then up a road alongside Tyrone’s tiny yard. C42 was on my scanner. They were dropping off cars for Nittany & Bald Eagle, Pennsy’s old Bald Eagle branch. N&BE is a shortline, but it’s built-to-the-hilt since NS has trackage-rights for heavy coal-trains.
C42 is a Norfolk Southern local-freight out of Altoona yard. It heads east on the old Pennsy main, now also Norfolk Southern.
I thought I could camp out in my car, but it also quickly got cold.
Slowly C42 set out cars for N&BE. Freightcars have much more capacity than a highway trailer, but limited destination. Switching freightcars is also ponderous, and you can’t go off the track. If you’re on the track another train can’t pass.
Trucking also has almost unlimited right-of-way (roads) usually maintained by gumint entities. Railroading is still 19th century. Its right-of-way is maintained by the railroad itself, and they own it.
Included was a single tankcar. A brakie or the conductor had to ride it outside in the bitter cold. I cropped out the tankcar.
Finally the tankcar was dropped, and C42 accelerated toward a switch in Tyrone that would take it back to the main. C42 was also moving a long string of covered hoppers.
And that switch put it on the westbound main. It needed to continue eastbound, and to do so it had to back all the way to Gray Interlocking, about 2-3 miles west.
Time was passing, well over an hour to drop its interchange, then get back eastbound. I was frigid, but I heard C42 on my scanner get an eastbound signal at Gray.
All the way back it came, and finally there it was. “To the sand-plant,” I heard on my scanner. The covered hoppers were for “the sand-plant.”
I shot this picture on a Thursday, and N&BE won’t get to its interchange until the next day. Trucking could move a lot faster, but wouldn’t have the capacity of those covered hoppers.
5631 is a GP38-2, non-turbocharged, only 2,000 horsepower. GP-38s aren’t road-engines, although sometimes they’re added to road-trains. The railroads needed something like a GP-38, only four axles, for locals like C42. This train has two units.