It’s no longer fun

“I gotta get outta here!” (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—“I hope you got that!” I shouted to my brother.
He had been wedged between a grade-crossing stanchion and Track One at Brickyard Crossing. He was about 10 feet from the track.
We heard a westbound approaching at about 40 mph, and it was on Track One.
Never before had we seen a westbound on Track One. In our experience, Track One was only eastbound.
Phil Faudi, my Altoona railfan friend, said Norfolk Southern would never operate Track One both eastbound and westbound.
Yet here came a westbound on One.
“I gotta get outta here!” yelled my brother, grabbing his chair.
I was set up on tripod for telephoto toward Two and Three, so couldn’t get a shot. That required taking my camera off the tripod, changing lenses, and then re-aiming. A minute or two, yet here it comes! —I was about 15 feet from the track.
“When I was up at AR yesterday,” my brother said later; “Track One was signaled both ways.”
“Westbound ya gotta climb The Slide,” I exclaimed. The Slide is the ramp Pennsy built to get up to New Portage tunnel, which is higher than the original Pennsy tunnel. A 2.28% grade (originally 2.36%); not impossible, but steep.
The Slide was always eastbound down.
“I guess recent locomotive technology makes climbing The Slide possible,” I said to my brother.
Chasing trains over Allegheny Mountain is no longer fun.
Blame Positive-Train-Control (PTC) along with in-the-cab signaling. Lineside signaling is done. No longer are train-engineers calling lineside signal aspects on railroad-radio.
That’s how we chased trains.
“21E, west on Two, 254; CLEAR!” “Where’s 254?” “Just past Lilly.” “Summerhill?” “Maybe; we gotta boom-and-zoom.”
Nearly all the signal-towers are removed. Signaling is in-the-cab.
Old Pennsy signal-towers are gone. The one that silhouetted the sky at McFarlands Curve is gone. So is the one at 263 that had its eastbound signals on masts to be visible over a nearby highway overpass. So is the one at 249 over tracks Three and Four.
Defect-Detectors were also removed. 258.8 and 238.2 (or .1, or .3; I can’t remember) are gone. 253.1 is still there. Often those detectors were all we had.
Fortunately that railroad is busy. But in Lilly we waited over an hour for an eastbound, and finally gave up empty-handed.
The picture at bottom is the only eastbound we got at Lilly. After that we waited and waited and waited.
My brother is also com-pulsed to identify every train he photographs. Without engineers calling out signal-aspects, he’s often in the dark.
Sometimes he has to follow a train some distance hoping he’ll hear a radio-transmission that indicates the train-number.

Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian stops
in Tyrone. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Yrs Trly decided to try side-elevation this time, instead of the classic three-quarter approaching-train shot.
Above is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian stopped in Tyrone (PA). It’s the most extreme side-elevation I took. Some tilt toward three-quarters approaching, or going away.
Just shaddup-and-shoot. You never know what you’ll get. A potshot might be extraordinary, while a well-planned shot might bomb.

The fact train-chasing is no longer fun prompted the following observation:
“Track One may be doomed, as is New Portage tunnel.”
“Never happen!” my brother snapped.
“Faudi said Track One would never be signaled both ways,” I commented; “but now it is.
On top of that we have Hunter Harrison (deceased) with his Precision-Scheduled-Railroading, which cuts infrastructure and employees. That pleases Wall Street = cut costs to maximize instant gratification.
Harrison cut Canadian Pacific to the bone. Now all the railroads are doing it. Witness train-length. Two miles long with only a crew of two. And that’s here. Some railroads get by with only one crew-member.
Loose-car railroading is time-consuming. Bypass yarding — even humping — with unit-trains; solid coal or crude-oil, or all-autos.
Helpers over Allegheny Mountain are also expensive. The future may be radio-controlled helpers, or radio-controlled distributed-power mid-train. They do that out west.
In fact with Positive-Train-Control and Trip-Optimizer railroading may no longer need humans; there already are self-driving trains.
Although I can imagine Faudi saying there is no way to get a long unit coal-train over Allegheny Mountain without humans to keep it from breaking.
I predict Horseshoe Curve becomes a two-track railroad,” I said.
“Norfolk Southern needs three tracks to ship coal,” my brother said. Faudi suggests four.
“Probably that controlled siding north of Altoona is toast,” my brother added. “As is that storage-track at ‘five-tracks’.”
“Only two tracks over Horseshoe,” I said. “10 years.
I think Tunkhannock Viaduct reduced to only one track from two, and Rockville Bridge no longer carries four tracks.”

Eastbound trash-train approaches Lilly; it’s probably empty. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

• A “grade-crossing stanchion” is the post on which the crossing-gates and flashing red lights are mounted.
• “Brickyard Crossing” is the only road-crossing at grade in Altoona. All others are bridges. It’s actually Porta Road, but it’s so lightly travelled an overpass wasn’t warranted. The railroad and railfans call it “Brickyard” because a brick-manufactory was once adjacent, but now it’s gone.
• “AR” are the telegraph call-letters of an old signal-tower beside Track One atop Allegheny Mountain. The tower still stands, but it’s abandoned.
• “New Portage tunnel” was part of a state-sponsored railroad in the “State Public-Works System,” a long-ago combination canal and railroad built to compete with the Erie Canal. The original “Public-Works” used an inclined-plane portage railroad to get over Allegheny Mountain, but it was so time-consuming and cumbersome it prompted the privately-capitalized Pennsylvania Railroad. A new portage railroad was built to circumvent the original inclined-plane portage railroad, and it included “New Portage tunnel” atop Allegheny Mountain. But it was quickly abandoned, and “New Portage Railroad,” including that tunnel, went to Pennsy for a dollar. A ramp —The Slide— had to be built up to the tunnel. Plus New Portage Railroad became a secondary over the mountain, but didn’t go to Altoona. It’s abandoned.
• “Positive-Train-Control” is gumint-mandated. Trains are controlled independent of human input, supposedly to skonk human error. I have a computer. What if PTC mucks up? Suddenly humans are needed to override PTC.
• “263,” “249,” ”258.8,” and “253.1” are all milepost locations from Philadelphia. Other signal locations were named the telegraph call-letters of old Pennsy signal-towers, e.g. “AR” and “MO.”